Image: RDOS
An outline of the Casorsos property at 164 Secrest Hill Road, near Oliver.
A large medicinal cannabis facility on ALR land near Oliver will be allowed to be built, after regional district board members gave permission to the developers yesterday.
The medicinal grow-op, to be built on 164 Secrest Hill Road in rural Oliver, will be just under 130,000 square feet in size with the ability to produce about 30,000 kilograms of cannabis each year.
The proposal needed a development permit from the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen as the proposed building will cover about 17 per cent of the 6.72-hectare land parcel—well above the usual limit of three-per-cent coverage.
The developers said if the facility wasn’t approved they would build a greenhouse just over 480,000 square feet instead, which would take up 67 per cent of the property.
A greenhouse of that size wouldn’t need a development permit, as rural Oliver’s zoning bylaws allow greenhouses to cover 75 per cent of a land parcel.
Rural directors voted 6-2 in favour of the facility, with Tom Siddon and Elef Christensen the dissenting votes.
“Personally I think it’s perfect in my humble opinion,” rural Oliver director Terry Schafer said. “It’s not really good agricultural land, right off the bat… And I like the idea of having some more jobs in Area C, and I think it’s a good location.”
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