
Saturday May 31, 2025 | COLWOOD, BC [Posted at 7 pm PT]
Housing development feature by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
The Beachlands! Being an oceanside community is amazing enough in itself. Add to that a significant number of new homes in a wide range of offerings plus public spaces, restaurants and retail, and for Colwood this is a winner!

The $1.2 billion master-planned community this week reached a major milestone with the completion of their sales and display suite facility, called the Community Experience Centre.
Hugging the top of the property at Latoria Boulevard and Metchosin Road, the expansive 15,000 sq ft Community Experience Centre is the largest, most distinctive display centre ever built in the west shore region.

The views of ocean, mountains and shorelines are magnificent through windows in the Community Experience Centre that are 14-feet tall and 141-feet long. The building is perched above the sprawling slopes upon which 2,850 homes will be built (including single family homes, townhomes and condos) on the 134-acre site that boasts a 1.4 km shoreline.

There will be two full size furnished show homes and separate sales galleries for condos, townhomes, single family lots, and commercial spaces. Animated video fly-throughs of the completed community and custom artwork will top off the visitor experience at the bright spacious sales centre.
The Beachlands development site used to be a gravel pit, which ceased operations in 2008.
15-year build out:
Currently two multi-family condo buildings are under construction to provide 181 homes plus a boutique collection of 16 townhomes.
That first phase called Origin is at the south end of the property, near the entrance to the development immediately across from the Community Experience Centre.

At the end of the 15-year project development period the Community Experience Centre will be converted to commercial space including a possible 1,500 sqft cafe available for lease. But until then, it’s an exciting place to find out more about the development by Reliance Properties and Seacliff Properties.
Construction will potentially generate 10,500 full-time direct, indirect and induced jobs (i.e. jobs that are created when people spend money in the community). Once everything is up and running, hundreds of jobs are expected to become available in commercial and retail spaces.
Almost 50 acres are dedicated to public parks and green spaces.
Timeline:
The Beachlands got rolling in 2017 when Seacliff Properties bought the land from the provincial government and got the land rezoned. Reliance Properties merged into the project in 2022.

Both companies held a joint project renaming announcement about The Beachlands (renamed from the previous Royal Beach) at the shoreline in the summer of 2023.
That was held as part of the new location for the City of Colwood’s annual Eats and Beats summer festival (previously held at the Esquimalt Lagoon end of the shoreline).

In April 2023, $6 million in federal funding for constructing a multi-use trail from the Lagoon over to The Beachlands helped anchor the future success of the site. Reliance Properties will undertake construction of one half of the trail, starting from The Beachlands, says Reliance Properties President and CEO Jon Stovell. The project commitment was “steadfast” either way, says Seacliff Properties VP Development, Georgia Desjardins.

The development experience:
Reliance Properties is a multi-award-winning family-owned company that has provided sustainable and creative housing and office solutions for nearly 70 years.
In the Victoria area, the company has developed projects like The Janion and Northern Junk, and the upcoming master-planned community on the Capital Iron lands in the downtown area.

Reliance Properties:
Jon Stovell, President and CEO of Reliance Properties enjoys the creative process of developing buildings and communities. “To be a developer you have to be an extreme optimist and a stoic,” says Stovell. His whole career for over 40 years has been in real estate. “I love to see the transformation,” he said, adding that he sometimes drives by completed projects and says “at one time that was just a twinkle in my eye”.
“In society we’ve created a lot of ephemera like software and films, and books that come and go, and they have their moment. But when you’re building real estate it’s a physical thing that’s in the world which tends to be around for a long time. I like the permanence of it,” Stovell told Island Social Trends.
There have been no hiccups or development challenges with The Beachlands so far. “We’ve got a great partnership with the City of Colwood,” said Stovell.

“When Reliance bought into the site with Seacliff the zoning was already done. But we had to develop the detailed master plan together with Seacliff, we had to get the parks plan approved by council which we’ve done, and then we also had to do the design and permitting for our first phases,” explains Stovell with the rapid ease one would expect of an experience developer.
“We have to get this building built as well — this Experience Centre — and we’ve also started construction of our first multi-family building called Origin which is going to be offered out of this building starting soon,” said Stovell amidst the clamour and din of indoor construction.
“And we’ve also been doing a lot of grading and soils work at the south end of the site called The Bluffs where Origin is. But also in that sub-area of the site we’re going to be bringing on ultimately 114 single family lots of which we’ve already filed a subdivision of the first 36 and we’ve begun to sell as well,” says Stovell. There is also zoning for single-family lots at the north end of the site for about 100 homes.
“We had to design the road system and the layout of the lots,” Stovell explains, noting there is a variety of lot sizes for a range of housing types. Preferred builders — known for building high-quality homes around Victoria and the region are coming in and starting to buy lots from us,” Stovell told Island Social Trends.
The grading at the south end is being changed to deal with old sediment ponds that needed filling in and also to produce good views as well as the necessary drainage for sewer and stormwater to the storm channel.
The whole development is starting at the south end partly to do with road access but also the drainage at the south end does not require a pump station (an added infrastructure challenge for the north end of the site where effluent will need to be drained down toward the waterfront and then be pumped back up).
The outdoor plaza is an exciting feature that Stovell likens to Olympic Village in Vancouver or Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver with restaurants, bars and activities.
Stovell anticipates outdoor live events and also a new hotel for The Beachlands plaza area near the beach.
He expects the first phase Origin buyers to be local people who love living in the western communities and closer to the water with a more park-like setting, helping to serve some pent-up local housing demand. He also expects a lot of ‘move-up buyers’.
As more phases are developed closer to the water and the mid-to-highrise buildings and some of the premium single family, Stovell expects to be appealing to a buyer’s market across BC as well as Alberta and Ontario and possibly some US customers.
Pre-retirement and work-from-home markets are also anticipated by Stovell for The Beachlands.
Seacliff Properties:
Seacliff Properties is privately owned, with more than 30 years experience in the acquisition, development and management of large-scale project in Western Canada. The company has five large scale master-planned communities underway on Vancouver Island.
Georgia Desjardins, Vice-President of Development, Seacliff Properties, says every detail has been curated at the Community Experience Centre “to help people experience what the future is going to be — physically and emotionally, when you walk through the space”. She points out that separate displays are set up for the various housing types and the regional experience.

Media was invited to get “a sneak peak of the space” before it’s open to the public, said Desjardins in front of TV cameras yesterday as construction personnel continued their work all around.
“It’s a really unique building that has a number of incredible features,” said Desjardins. The building is not open to the public yet but prospective buyers can book a priority preview at TheBeachlands.com though pre-sale opportunities have not yet started.
Registrants will be contacted over the summer months for private previews, says Desjardins. The sales centre will be open likely in the fall, she told Island Social Trends.

There will be two fully constructed show suites (1-bedroom and 2-bedroom) within the Community Experience Centre.
The first phase of development is actively under construction, said Desjardins. Phase 1 which includes two six-storey buildings along with 16 townhomes (181 doors in total).

The regional footprint:
The City of Colwood has evidently had their eye on the development potential of the former gravel pit since the 1990s. Other properties that have developed in the Royal Bay area (on the other side of Metchosin Road) including extensive high-density housing, a high school, and a shopping centre.

In the next few years there will also be a new SD62 elementary school, an Island Health long-term care facility in Colwood (scheduled to open in 2027) and the still-in-development new Royal BC Museum Collections Building.

There has been talk for years about developing a West Shore ferry in that area of Colwood, to ease road transportation gridlock between the west shore and downtown Victoria.
That end of Colwood borders on the rural Metchosin area.
===== RELATED:
- The Beachlands: rebranding the Colwood oceanfront (July 29, 2023)
- Beach Food Days are on for summer 2023 in Colwood (May 27, 2023)
- $6 million federal funds for Colwood waterfront multi-use pathway (April 17, 2023)
- Summer action every weekend in Colwood (June 14, 2022)
- 260 long-term care beds for seniors coming to the west shore in 2027 (March 22, 2023)
- Reliance & Seacliff partnership boosts Royal Beach in Colwood (January 24, 2022)
- Colwood Council hears about Royal Beach development (December 29, 2019)