Rain can dampen outdoor plans, but it doesn’t have to ruin the entire day.

Here’s a look at a few of Nanaimo’s best indoor playgrounds, where kids or the whole family can escape the bad weather and enjoy the day.

1) Jumping Jiminy’s Playland & Cafe

This 8,000 square-foot indoor playground is a kids’ paradise. The massive play structure, ping pong & air hockey tables, private party rooms, toddler section and 80-seat cafe keeps children entertained for hours. Parents or caretakers can relax in the cafe with a clear view of the whole facility. The menu has something for everyone and parents who need to get some work done can hook up to Jumping Jiminy’s wireless Internet for free. Admission is free for adults and prices range from $4.25 (children aged 10-23 months) to $9.25 for kids aged 4-12. There are discounts for three or more children. Located at #400-2980 Island Highway North, 250-729-0999.

2) Nanaimo Aquatic Centre

Families can exhaust themselves inside this massive water park. The swimming pool is open all day and the slides, hot tub, sauna, steam room and diving boards offer everyone something fun to do. Admission for children is $2.75, Adults $5.25 and a family day pass (maximum two adults and three children) is $10.50. 750 Third St., 250-756-5200.

3) Romper Room Indoor Rock Climbing Centre

Pop in for a quick climb at this indoor facility with 7,500 square feet of climbing surface. The $7 per-person introduction lesson lets newbies try out the ropes twice to see if they like it. An all-day family pass (four members) is $60, but kids aged six to 18, who know how to belay and can do their own rope work can get an all-day pass for just $8. 4385-B Boban Dr., 250-751-7625.

4) Bowling

Brechin Lanes offers 16 lanes of computerized five-pin bowling.

Adults are $3.75 per game, 15 and under are $3.50 and shoe rental is $1.50.

For 90 minutes of bowling mania, families can choose the Kingpin package, which is one lane for six people including shoes, a jug of pop, a large french fries and six hot dogs all for $49.50. 1870 East Wellington Rd., 250-753-2341.

Splitsville gets the ball rolling with several 10-pin bowling lanes. Adults are $4.75 per game, children $4.25 and shoes are $2.50. 171 Calder Road, 250-754-2442.

5) Cyber City Adventures

It’s entertainment overload here. There are indoor and outdoor activities for those who aren’t scared of a little rain.

Inside, kids can play in the arcade ($25 for 85 tokens), laser tag ($9.99), or in the Tube N Tunnel soft play area (kids aged 2-5 cost $2.99, and kids aged 6-12 will cost $5.99 for an all day pass).

Go-karts rides cost $12.99 and the mini-golf is $5.99 or two for $10. 1815 Bowen Rd., 250-755-1828.

I had about 16 people over from Japan for the wedding and I did my best to fit in as much great Vancouver Island experiences with them as I could in the short time we had. You know what? It wasn’t that hard. It reaffirmed my love for this corner of the world. In the past two weeks, I’ve been to perfectly serene lakes surrounded by forest, gorged myself on a variety of  gourmet foods made from local organic ingredients, done tons of shopping, gone to beautiful ocean front parks, gone bungy jumping and a tackled a high in the trees ropes course, gone fishing and caught salmon, had parties in gardens that make Martha Stewart’s home look slovenly (well, almost) while listing to a really polished Jazz/funk horn ensemble, stayed at a bed and breakfast with an ocean view from the breakfast table which served amazing food, I fed a bald eagle, saw some humpback whales, a black bear, beavers, found items from a rather old shipwreck on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen and more.

For those of you who’ve only ever lived on the Island, most of this may not seem like a big deal to you. This is because you are spoiled! Trust me, I’ve lived and travelled all over the place. It’s not like this elsewhere. This is a big part of why I became a Realtor. It’s easy to sell something you believe in and enjoy. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Rudolf and Brunhilde of West Coast Magic Bed and Breakfast in Bamfield. You made our honeymoon perfect with your beautiful home, your warm hospitality and your fabulous cooking. I will be recommending your business for years to come! Initially I felt a little cheap having our honeymoon on the Island when we were orignally talking of Quebec City, Cuba, the South Pacific or Europe. But I can’t imagine how any of those places could outdo what we had in that little remote village of Bamfield at your place. I hope that many people read this and take my advice on staying there. Regardless, we’ll be back someday.

Ryan Coffey

Cable Bay Lands no longer wants the city to annex 97 acres of agricultural land in Cedar for an 1,800-unit housing subdivision and golf course.

The developer now proposes to put its entire project on the 422 acres that is already within the city limits.

The impact of the change of the project won’t be known until the developer draws up news plans. That has to happen before it goes to public hearing in the first week in September.

The Calgary developer had originally planned to build its subdivision on the consolidated 519-acre property straddling the south-east corner of Nanaimo and the Regional District of Nanaimo. Once the agricultural land was annexed, it planned to seek an amendment to the official community plan for the entire property, then apply for the necessary zoning. But that idea was thwarted last week when city hall took nearly 8,000 signatures from city residents opposed to the annexation.

That was well above the minimum 10% of city voters needed to force a referendum.

That left the developer with the option of taking its annexation to public referendum or abandoning the process.

Monday night Cable Bay’s intentions were made clear when Coun. Jeet Manhas said the developer plans to abandon its annexation bid.

With the annexation no longer an issue, council still had to deal with the official community plan revision.

That was an issue Coun. Bill Holdom had problems with, since council now has no idea what the new development could look like - if it would still include an 18-hole golf course, 1,876 units of housing or a commercial component.

City planner Andrew Tucker said details will come later.

"Elements of what was on the 97 acres has been relocated to what was Phase 1, with five-acre lots on the east side of the project, and others have been shuffled around," he said. "I don’t have the numbers on what the potential development would be."

It would all have to be made public before it goes to hearing. That is expected to happen on Sept. 4 or 5.

Holdom, who headed up the OCP review committee, said that’s not enough time to analyze it properly.

Mayor Gary Korpan said if more time is needed, a second hearing can be held.

Tucker said because of the timing of the city’s OCP review, the OCP amendment bylaw needed for the project must be given council’s second reading now.

But Manhas said he saw no problem with the timing, saying developers typically reveal their detailed plans at hearings, then the public responds.

Ryan Coffey

9 Easy Tips For a Healthier Home

Home is where health begins. From carpets and wall colours to window shades and overhead lighting, your home can play a role in how much you weigh, your mood, even your cancer risk. It’s important to eliminate toxins, pollutants and other health risks from your home. There are many small changes that you can do to make your home healthier and improve your mood. The following recommendations can be implemented immediately and won’t cost you anything.

1. Keep Pollutants Outside
With every step you make outside your home, your shoes come in contact with all kinds of toxins (oil, gasoline, pesticides, cleaning chemicals, dirt and more). Leave those pollutants outside.

Make it a habit to take your shoes off as soon as you walk in the door of your home. Place a chair or bench near the door and place a shoe basket or shelf near it to make it easier for your family and visitors to take off their shoes by the door. This will cut down the amount of dirt and allergens brought into your home.

2. Use Natural Cleansers
Commercial cleansers may make cleaning easier, but they may also contain carcinogenic ingredients, respiratory irritants and even pesticides. Try safer cleansers such as a mixture of baking soda and vinegar to clean tubs and toilets, salt to scrub kitchen sinks and borax for laundry.

Once you try cleaning with non-toxic cleaners you’ll find it hard to believe you ever used harsh chemicals. Not only do they work just as well, they smell better, don’t make you dizzy and don’t pose a health risk.

3. Clean Smarter and More Often
The greatest health risk for children at home comes from the dust that gets on their hands from crawling on the floor and touching dust-covered surfaces, exposing them to dust mites, mould and pet dander, all of which can trigger allergies and asthma attacks.

To keep dust to a minimum, dust every few days with a slightly damp cloth, to prevent the dust from returning to the air. Avoid furnishings that trap dust, such as drapes, carpeting, throw pillows and stuffed animals. Wash curtains and slip covers regularly in hot water.

Use a vacuum with a high-efficiency particulate air filter, and use it twice a week. If you are building a new home consider a central vacuum system that vents outside. This will help remove dust and debris from settling back into your home.

4. Breath Fresh Air
Fresh air saturated with oxygen is essential for healthy indoor living. A properly ventilated home will also help release humidity that may build up, condense and cause bacteria, dust mites and mould.

Whenever possible, open the windows to allow old air out and fresh air in. In colder or humid months, use a mechanical ventilation system to help keep indoor air fresh, dry and comfortable.

It’s very important to ventilate areas of your home which may have increased air pollutants such as the basement, laundry room and workshop. Glues, paints, solvents, laundry detergents and even just dirty clothes can all cause unwanted air pollution. Keep all of these stored properly in a well ventilated area.

5. Stop Smoking
Take the smoke-free pledge. Don’t smoke in your home or let visitors do so. Small children are most vulnerable to the health risks of second-hand smoke such as allergies and respiratory disease. If you must smoke, go outside. Moving to another room or opening a window is not enough to protect your children.

6. Drink Clean Water
Clean water is essential for good health. If your water comes from a municipal supply it is tested regularly by the water authority. If you have a private drinking water well, test it periodically.

On the way to our taps, water can pick up asbestos from old concrete pipes, rust, lead particles and dirt. The glass of water you take from the tap has had a long eventful journey but it is clean enough to drink. However, it could be cleaner and better for you if you use a good in-house water filtering system.

In order to keep your water filter functioning effectively, it is important to change the filter cartridges on a regular basis.

7. Inspire Healthy Eating Habits
Keep a bowl of fresh fruit and vegetables on your kitchen counter to encourage healthy eating and cut down on bad snacking habits.

Fresh fruit is best for you and your kids. Choose different colours to give you the widest variety of vitamins, minerals and nutrients that your body needs. Choose whole fruit over fruit juice. Often juice has lots of added sugar and preserving chemicals. Whole fruit has more fibre and will leave you feeling more satisfied.

8. Give Your House a Mood Boost
Research shows that a naturally lit home will help ease blues, insomnia and may even boost concentration. Whenever possible open the curtains and allow sunlight in. Equip your home with broad-spectrum light bulbs that closely resemble daylight. Research also shows that good lighting helps prevent overeating.

Keep a bright bunch of flowers in the living room. A vase of vibrant flowers along with green plants help generate a positive mood around the house and helps reduce stress, fatigue and illness. Indoor green plants also help reduce carbon monoxide.

Cut down on heavy and loud music. Play soft, classical or country background music to create an easy atmosphere to help you unwind.

9. Encourage Family Activities
Reduce the use of TV in your home and encourage family activities. Excessive TV watching has been linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Place a Chess or board game in your living room. Playing board games familiarizes young children with letters and numbers, builds hand-eye coordination and encourages kids of all ages to interact with others. Board games can be a steppingstone for discussion about almost anything. Strategy games like Chess or Monopoly provide opportunities to talk about not only the game itself, but how it applies to the real world, real problems, etc. and most importantly helps build family bonds.

The choices we all make on a day to day basis can make a huge impact on living a healthy lifestyle. With just a little forethought and initiative, we can make our homes healthier and happier for all family members.

Now, we wait for news of a referendum.

FYI, 39 hectares is about 96 acres. That’s a fairly subtantial chunk of land that is at the centre of this controversy.

More details in the article below.

Ryan Coffey

City says annexation of land is on hold

Thousands sign to halt Cedar land loss

Darrell Bellaart
Daily News

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The city’s plan to annex 39 hectares of agricultural land in Cedar has been halted.

Petitioners collected enough signatures to stop the city annexing agricultural land sought by developers for a golf course and 1,800-unit development at Cable Bay.

The city issued a report at 4:58 p.m. Wednesday confirming opponents to the development had delivered considerably more elector response forms than the 5,815 needed to stop the annexation on Monday, the deadline for stopping the annexation. A total of 7,908 forms were turned in, according to a report from Ian Howat, director of legislative services. On that basis, Howat said approval of the annexation "has not been obtained."

It means developer Cable Bay Lands cannot rezone 20% of its Cedar property for housing, a resort and golf course without a referendum. City council is expected to debate the issue on Monday.

Fred Pattje, a former Friends of Plan Nanaimo member and organizer of the signature campaign, is pleased with the news. "It is good news for my group and we fully realize the ball is in the court of the city council of Nanaimo," Pattje said. "It’s up to them what they want to do with this."

Pattje said city council underestimated how much the public opposed the development.

"There is a message here. I think we can frankly state that 7,908 citizens of Nanaimo are obviously motivated to have a say in this and sent a very strong message," Pattje said.

Cable Bay developments spokesman Roger McKinnon declined comment.

I’ve been to the island before, quite a few times in fact but I had never camped there before. In fact, due to it’s size I still haven’t even seen the whole thing. But I don’t need to in order to feel blessed to have this rather large island situated in/next to the heart of downtown Nanaimo where we can go for a walk, swim at the endless beaches, explore the tidal pools, picnic, camp, play sports in the giant fields, have something to eat at the concession stand, play horseshoes, lay in the fields at night watching shooting stars, not to mention the rather large and nicely built hall just up from the beach which you can rent for a large social function. A wedding, a dance or some other large party for example.

The beach just up from our camping spot was a rather interesting spot to be in at dusk and at night.  Looking left, you can see the natural scene of mountains and their forests on the mainland and on Gabriola Island, and then to the right you can see the cityscape of Nanaimo at night.

The thing that really impressed me these past few days was how beautiful and quiet it was. Since you can only get there by boat, or if motivated enough swim from downtown, there are no cars on the Island which not only means that you don’t have the noise of cars driving by your campsite throughout the day and night, you also don’t have their stereos or people passing through that show up in them. In fact, except for the couple of campers in nearby campsites, which aren’t as nearby as in most campgrounds, you hardly see any other people at all. Most people are down at the beaches or in the playground which we could see across field, but they were far enough away so that we couldn’t hear anything from them.

There was the occasional float plane overhead as they go from downtown Vancouver to downtown Nanaimo, which is an interesting point to explore in itself as there is the possibility of waking up in your tent, taking a shower in the facilities, hopping the shuttle back to downtown, taking a float plane to downtown Vancouver probably all in less than an hour. You could conceivably wake up in a tent in a gorgeous seemingly secluded park and then have breakfast an hour or so later in a four or even five star restaurant if you wanted to. Then, spend the day in Vancouver and come back sometime later in the day to enjoy the nature again and return to your tent. That would be quite the experience!

Ryan Coffey

Group claims to be able to force referendum

A group opposed to an 1,800-unit housing development and golf course says it has enough signatures to force the city to hold a referendum on annexing some rural land needed for the development

"We have the numbers," said Beverly Eert, who started campaigning to collect signatures in late June.

She and volunteers needed the signatures of 10% of Nanaimo voters to block the annexing of 97 acres of Cedar land Cable Bay Lands wants put under city jurisdiction.

The developer wants to revise the official community plan and rezone the land to allow it to put a golf course on roughly half the property and mixed-density housing on the other half.

Eert started collecting signatures in late June. She organized a team of volunteers to collect the signatures through a group calling itself Save Our Strategy, or SOS. Some Nanaimo volunteers helped. They needed 5,815 people to sign elector response forms.

The city of Nanaimo applied to the provincial government earlier this year to annex the 97 acres of rural property, currently zoned for agricultural uses. The annexation is under a reverse approval process in which the province assumes it has local support unless 10% or more of voters register their opposition.

Voters can only do that by signing and completing elector response forms to city hall. If the required number of forms are properly filled out and submitted a referendum is needed for the annexation to pass.

Organizers say they reached that 10% target this week. They plan to present the forms to city hall on Tuesday, the deadline for their return.

"We’re still collecting all weekend because we want to make sure," Eert said.

"It’s been hard work and we’ve been out in the sun and rain and we’ve managed to capture the attention of the people of Nanaimo and we’ve definitely convinced them we need to go down a different route."

Although we’re across the water from Vancouver, home owners in the Nanaimo area might want to consider renting out their extra space during the games. We are after all, only a 20 minute trip by float plane from downtown Vancouver. (Might want to tell would be guests to reserve their flights for that now.)

And here is a way to market your rental: www.2010houserentals.com

Read below for more info.

Ryan Coffey,

Coast Realty Nanaimo

Houses for rent during the Olympic Games

By Jennifer Feinberg - Chilliwack Progress

Published: July 21, 2008 6:00 PM
Updated: July 22, 2008 1:20 PM

Jarrett Vaughan has started up a new website called 2010HouseRentals.com to offer rental property options during the Olympics. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS

Chilliwack Progress

People from around the globe will be streaming into B.C. for the Olympics, but many have nowhere to stay.

That was the epiphany Chilliwack entrepreneur Jarrett Vaughan had last fall when he came up with the idea of maximizing revenue potential with rental properties with a website he called 2010HouseRentals.com.

“It is no secret that there is an extreme accommodations shortage in the Lower Mainland for the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Winter Olympic Games,” he said.

That strong demand has created an incredible opportunity for local residents to rent out their homes, be they houses, condos, townhouses, basement suites and even motor homes to the international tourists who will be arriving.

“It morphed into the website,” Vaughan explained about his new venture.

He went through a number of business plan proposals before hiring a website developer to create the site last fall.

“The site went live in mid-April.”

His goal is to have 400 houses and photos registered between Hope and Pemberton, but so far he has 12. But there are more every day.

“That’s the great thing about it, people will have no other option but to drive to the Olympic events from the Fraser Valley,” he pointed out.

About 80 per cent of the hotel rooms have been booked by VANOC.

In the past three months, 2010HouseRentals.com received 50,000 hits from all over the world, including the UK, Netherlands, China, India, Germany, Japan, France and the U.S.

“In fact guests from over 25 countries have been searching for accommodations on the site,” Vaughan said. “I didn’t think I would be able to accomplish that in two years, let alone three months.”

The site allows homeowners to post their properties for the duration of the games for a one-time fee that starts at $100.

Prices for an average home in the Lower Mainland are listing at a whopping $1500 per night or $45,000 for the month of February 2010, he points out.

Vaughan, 25, graduated with a bachelor of tourism management before going to work in the hotel business for the past few years. He’s also a real estate investor with rental properties of his own.

“Just seeing the demand that’s out there, the merging of two business ideas popped into my head,” he added.

The simplest option is someone with a room to rent, say in a bed-and-breakfast. The second is a basement suite, and the third is a vacant or investment property that can be rented out.

“Lastly it’s someone who owns a house and is going to Hawaii or somewhere else,” he said. “The rent could pay for the trip with still some money left over.”

Vaughan doesn’t take a commission off the price.

“It’s up to the owner to set a price and take all the money they make. I simply provide the listing services.”

Cruise ships are already a big deal for businesses in the downtown area, even though they have to shuttle their passengers into port via smaller boats, imagine the difference once we make it easy for them.

You’d be surprised at how many of these visitors from the cruise ships show interest in moving here even though they only visited for a couple of hours. I suppose the view by coming into Nanaimo along the green forested coastline with all its wildife is alluring.

Here are the links to the articles mentioned:

The Province

Nanaimo Daily News

Ryan Coffey