City planning cracks down on beach shack

DENISE RIDEOUT

The city’s lands department put the brakes to a plan by an Iqaluit boat owner to build a large shack on the beach.

This week, the lands department delivered a “stop-work order” to John Hess, an Iqaluit resident who had moved a trailer down to the beach, near the Coast Guard area.

He was building an addition to the trailer and didn’t have a building permit to carry out the work.

Hess, who appeared before city council at its Aug. 27 meeting, said the trailer would act as a shack — similar to the other wooden buildings that line Iqaluit’s beach and are used by hunters and boaters to store their equipment.

The shack, Hess explained, would be a safe place to store his boat.

“Usually throughout the year the boats have been broken into. My boat was broken into,” he told council.

Hess also has a quantity of expensive boating equipment and some tools he wants to keep locked up.

“They all have to be stored for the winter,” he explained.

Hess told council that when he asked the Coast Guard if he could put up a shack, they didn’t see any problem with it. He did, however, admit he was wrong not to request a building permit.

Last week, a resident concerned the shack would cross onto snowmobile trails lodged a complaint with the city’s lands department. That’s when a lands officer delivered the stop-work order.

During the council meeting, other concerns about the building came up, including whether Hess was really using the shack as a workshop. That’s because Hess told council he will use the shack to make repairs to his boat over the winter.

Now the lands department has to figure out if Hess is even allowed to put a shack there.

Chrystal Fuller, the city’s director of lands, said she’s made numerous phone calls to the department of transportation, which has jurisdiction over the beach area.

Until the matter is figured out, council said the stop-work order will remain in effect.