Mulvehill Creek Eco-Retreat promotes innovation and affordable living
Expanding into affordable, sustainable living, the innovative Mulvehill Creek Eco-Living Innovation Centre just south of Revelstoke is offering a variety of opportunities to participate in it’s evolution. Whether as a resident, a collaborator or as an actual investor, it’s a chance to be involved in something quite extra-ordinary in this off-the-grid, sustainable eco haven.
In it’s ideal form, a sustainable community provides for a way of life that addresses the four domains: ecology, economics, politics and culture. At the minimum a sustainable community must be able to support itself primarily by it’s own surroundings. It should also make a priority of utilizing renewable sources of energy to provide power. All this while creating the smallest possible ecological footprint, using the land efficiently and producing as little pollution as possible. In order to achieve this, composting, recycling and converting waste-to-energy where ever possible must be instituted into the overarching plan.
Affordable development, good return on investment and healthy living
Where it sits, down the road from Revelstoke on a peninsula at the foot of Mount Begbie facing Mount Cartier, Mulvehill Creek Eco-Retreat is the brainchild of an eager, committed group of local sustainable and affordable living enthusiasts. Residents Jean-Marc La Flamme, Glen and Nicole Cherlet as well as volunteers nurture aspirations of building a fully realized eco-living innovation centre: an off-grid wilderness resort on 33 acres with eight rooms, a chef, lounges, wedding chapel and event spaces. The goal of Mulvehill is to create an affordable development that, in turn provides a good return on investment while promoting and fostering healthy living.
Mulvehill will prove a testing grounds for building techniques, old and new, that tread lightly on both ecological footprint and capital. While at first blush the vision may seem a throwback, there’s nothing low-tech about it. It’s at its core about innovation. The facilities will encourage locals and visitors to sample the structures, lend assets whether they be knowledge, investment or feedback, to innovate alongside global experts who collaborate in a virtual environment.
Create a model for how a rural neighbourhood can evolve
In consultation with the North Columbia Environmental Society’s Sustainable Living Committee, the Local Food Initiative and entrepreneur organizations like Mountain CoLab, it is also part of the vision that Mulvehill might provide the model for what rural communities can look like, moving towards increased sustainability.
The bottom line: it takes a village! It will rely on partners, members, volunteers, business and citizens to incorporate all the networking resources available, ie. conventional and new media; to raise and increase awareness of the movement, promoting it to the world in real-time on location and the web.
Achieving affordable living while at the same time supporting the other integral investments such as family, education and business is a challenge that is shared across Canada. With the advent of high speed broadband in rural British Columbia, there has seen an increasing move from cities to rural areas, as evidenced these past few years in communities such as Revelstoke and Nelson where people are searching out a better combination of lifestyle, opportunity and affordable living.
A model such as Mulvehill Creek Eco-Living Innovation Centre could inspire the change rural areas need to support the rapidly changing demographics.