When the Christiana Inn was opened by Sandy and Puddy Martin in 1967, it included lodging, a heated outdoor swimming pool, a beauty salon, gift shop, lounge area, and dining room. By the time they sold the property in the mid-1970s, they had added a second dining room, a tennis court, and poolside dining and dancing. The decor and menus changed over time, though the physical structure appears to have stayed more or less the same until the 1980s. The name did not change until the early 1980s, when the Christiana Inn became known as the Alta Lake Inn.
In May 1985, a Vancouver-based company called 6380 Developments purchased the Alta Lake Inn for $357,000 (adjusted for inflation, that would be just over $900,000 today). The inn had been closed since the previous summer, and the former owners had been foreclosed upon by the Morguard Trust. The owners protested the sale, and in early May were still assuring the operators of Whistler Windsurfing they would be able to base their rentals and lessons at the Alta Lake Inn, but their protests were overruled by the Supreme Court of BC, and Whistler Windsurfing was left to find a new home.
The new owners shared their plans for the site with the Whistler Question in June 1985. According to Bob Skinner, president of Combined Equities Ltd., which was involved in the development, the proponents were planning to demolish the existing buildings and build a 24-unit lodge. He told the Question, “It’s going to be designed as a lodge, and it is a lodge,” and denied the rumours there were plans to build condominiums on the site.
Not everyone waited for the permit before making changes to the site. After hearing the old Christiana Inn would be demolished, and thanks in part to a rumour the fire department was going to burn it down for practice, individuals removed parts of the building such as the sliding glass doors, kitchen appliances, and furniture before municipal building inspector Dave MacPhail posted a stop work order on the site.
The building was demolished in July, but construction did not start right away. Over the next few months, there were many debates and protests about the plans for the site. Some centred on the way the property was created, by filling in part of Alta Lake in the 1960s, while others looked at the access to the property, as at one point the developers proposed covering the long, steep driveway with a roof. In August, the municipality issued a building permit with the requirements that the developer install heat tracing along the driveway and “acquire legal title from the Crown to the landfill dumped 20 years ago by the original developer.”
In the fall of 1985, the property again made headlines when the developers proposed extending Lakeside Road across the lagoon to the property, cutting off access to Alta Lake from the lagoon. The plans for Alta Vista created when the subdivision was first surveyed did not show the lagoon, but did include a road right-of-way, leading to a debate as to whether the lagoon was a lagoon or not. The developers claimed residents created the lagoon by excavating a channel to Alta Lake, while residents claimed the lagoon had always been there and building this road would destroy it.
According to Rolly Horsey, who owned a property on the lagoon for almost 20 years, the surveyors had not personally visited the site before registering their plans. The claims of the residents were backed up by Sandy Martin, who wrote a letter saying “the area was never properly surveyed,” and the lagoon was certainly there when he built the Christiana Inn.
The developers did not receive permission to extend Lakeside Road, which still ends at the lagoon today. It is unclear to what extent this decision changed the plans of the developers, but a 24-unit lodge was not built on the property. In June 1986, 26 brand-new one- and two-bedroom condominiums with “live-in management and rental pool income” were advertised for sale, beginning at $85,000 (about $210,000 today), and the former Christiana/Alta Lake Inn site became known as Whistler on the Lake.
