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Update: 10/01/16 11:30 a.m.
By John McDonald and Andrew Bates, UBCO Phoenix
The owners of the property on which a gate was built denying UBCO students and staff access to the back of the campus have said they will comply with the order.
Michael and Jill Treschow, owners of the property on Curtis Road, did not immediately respond to a request for an interview. However, in a printout of an undated email, attached to court documents, the Treschows did respond to Hubert Lai, general counsel for UBC.
“As we have stated it is our hope and expectation that the grantees to the Curtis Road easement will work out their differences among themselves. We recognize that the grantees have both a right and responsibility to maintain the easement. We also recognize UBC’s status as a grantee to the covenated easement. We therefore do not and will not oppose or obstruct any legal actions that UBC or any of other grantees to the covenated easement, take to secure and maintain rights of access to the easement as it crosses our property,” the email reads.
Treschow is a professor at UBCO and his wife works in the university library.
Meanwhile, the race director of the Campus-to-Campus road race say it is too late to change this year’s race course back to the old course, which ran down Dry Valley and Curtis Roads.
The race was an annual target of protests by residents along the private road.
Last year’s start line was changed at the last minute when some residents threated to block the passage of runners with a barricade.
UBCO withdrew as a sponsor from this year’s Campus-to-Campus when it could not resolve the issue.
Despite Wednesday’s injunction granting full access to UBCO, race director Christine Ulmer said it wouldn’t be possible to switch it back before the March 28 race.
“We have to have the course approved by the city and provide a traffic management plan,” she said. “We’re to far into it for this year.”
Ulmer said the race organizing committee would definitely try to bring back UBCO as the start line for next year’s race.
“It’s an awesome course,” she said. “It’s great for the runners to be able to start beside the UBCO gym, where it’s warm and there’s washrooms.”
Update: 1:24 p.m.
By John McDonald and Andrew Bates, UBCO Phoenix
UBC Okanagan has obtained an injunction against two Dry Valley Road residents who constructed a gate barring pedestrian and cyclist access to what they insist is a private road.
The injunction, granted by Madame Justice Allison Beams in B.C. Supreme Court in Kelowna, confirms an easement for permanent access for UBCO and allows the university to remove the metal gate blocking the road (sometimes known as Curtis Road).
Michael and Gillian Treschow, named as defendants in the application for injunction, have refused comment. They did not appear in court to contest it.
Bud Mortensen, spokesman for UBCO, said vice-deputy chancellor Doug Owram and the university’s legal council have received the injunction and will review it before commenting.
UBCO’s Garry Appleton, manager of security and parking, and Hubert Lai, the Vancouver-based legal counsel for the university both gave affidavits in support of the application.
Appleton said the gate crossing the road was constructed around Oct. 1, 2009 on the lot owned by the defendants. Once finished, the gate was left open until early January of this year.
Appleton swears in his affidavit that the gate appears to have been constructed with the intention of preventing a person riding a bicycle or a pedestrian from walking or cycling around the gate.
On the instructions of Lai, Appleton had a locksmith use boron alloy chain to lock the gate in an open position just after Christmas, but by Jan. 1 someone had removed the chains and locks.
The next day, Appleton says the gate was closed and locked and an airphone had been installed allowing guests to contact homeowners to operate the gate. It could also be operated through a pressure pad, electronic fob or keypad code.
Shortly after, Appleton says a sign was put up beside the gate, pronouncing Curtis Road a private drive.
In conclusion, Appleton says the gate has cut off access to any pedestrian and bicycle access, traffic he estimates amounts to some 25 to 50 people each day.
In his affidavit, Lai says the university, as owners of lot A on the private road, are entitled through an easement to access for its “servants, licensees and invitees.” He established ownership through a land title search.
Lai notes in his affidavit that the easement has been “continuously used as a walking and bicycle path for student, staff and other members of the public using the facilities offered by Okanagan University College” since 1992. Ownership of the campus was transfered to UBC Okanagan in 2005.
He describes it as an important method of access for the institution that is generally considered the safe pedestrian and bicycling route to the campus.
According to Lai, since the gate was closed in early January, the university has received numerous complaints from people trying to use the access, some of whom reported being accosted and harassed by “individuals who appear to be property owners whose lands are crossed by the easement.”
Lai goes on to say he is “very concerned” about the possibility of a violent confrontation unless access is restored.
He says that two key fobs that could operate the gate were delivered to deputy vice chancellor Owram on Jan. 4 but that they clearly do not “represent a reasonable or viable method of access” for UBCO.
john@kelowna.com
By John McDonald
The long-simmering dispute between UBC Okanagan and residents of a private road that skirts the backside of the university campus has prompted Okanagan College to change the route of the Campus-to-Campus road running race.
Organizers announced today the route for this year’s Campus-to-Campus and UBC Okanagan is conspicuously absent from the race map. The race was so named because the point-to-point style race started at UBC Okanagan and ended at Okanagan College’s KLO Campus.
Race director Christine Ulmer told Kelowna.com that the race committee asked UBCO to resolve the issue after last year’s race where the start line was changed at the last minute when Curtis Road (sometimes called Dry Valley Road) residents threatened to block passage of the runners with a barricade.
“That provided some logistical issues not being able to use it,” said Ulmer. “We had to move a lot of runners around and it wasn’t good.”
Residents recently constructed a motorized gate across the entrance to the private road, something UBCO has vowed to fight with legal action.
Without a start line available at UBCO, the decision was made to run this year’s race out and back from the Okanagan College KLO Campus.
“Logistically, it’s better starting here and here, with a warm place to wait before the race and afterward.”
Ulmer said the college is not ruling out returning to the original route if UBC Okanagan can resolve its differences with the private road owners.
john@kelowna.com
3 Responses to “Update: Property owners say they will comply with injunction granting UBCO access to private road”
Tags: campus to campus, curtis road, dry valley road, injunction, private road, ubco
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If the courts have granted an injunction to UBCO, then the
legal system should act. The people putting up the gate
should be thrown in jail until the learn the value of the
weight of an injunction.
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If they city really wants to support UBCO they should build the public access route that they’ve been talking about instead of making the property owners pay for the cost of the UBCO expansion. That road IS private, meaning the city does not maintain it, the property owners do, and the University has never put a dime into helping maintain the road. UBCO has turned a farming easement into public access for a major educational institute.
The city is holding off on building the road through Glenmore, what are they waiting for?
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Unless persons commenting on this article have reviewed the easement agreement then they should not be speculating on what the agreement says. In plain language the easement agreement is in favour of the UBCO lands. The owners of the land initially (land developers) put the easement in place to get around the flooded rights of way which criss-cross the lake. It ensured that the UBCO lands (actually one small lot of the total) could not be cut off from access along the easement road and it also appears that UBCO is not obligated to contribute to the maintenance of the road.
The residents of the road were only able to purchase the lands after the easement agreement was filed in land titles back in 1981. Bad deal for the residents but this is obviously an access which has been upheld by the court. It appears that not liking what the easement agreement says is not sufficient to have it thrown out. The bottom line of the agreement:
12. The grantee hereby covenants and agrees with the Grantor:
(a) not to erect, place, install or construct nor permit any other person to erect, place, install, construct or maintain any buildings, structures, mobile homes or any other thing on any portion of the right of way area so that it interferes with the use of the right-of-way as an access area;
Please continue discussion on the forum: link