5% time + 25% homes + 36% residents - 2% under construction = 98% to come

City Conversation #125: 20 months into the Broadway Plan, is it just a land rush?

Total Broadway Plan development currently in play—detailed counts below.

I was going to leave the numbers aside for a while, but they’re so darn compelling I just can’t:

• The 30-year Broadway Plan (BP) was approved just 20 months ago, so we are just 5% into it. 

• The 61 current mid-rise and high-rise proposals in the Kitsilano, Fairview and Mount Pleasant neighbourhoods that we are aware of (and we are aware there are many we are unaware of¹) already comprise more than 25% of the BP target of 30,000 homes—25.7% to be exact. So 5% into the timeline we are more than a quarter into the homes count. Sound like a land rush?

• These current proposals will accommodate 36.3% of the total extra population expected by the BP, at the current accepted standard of 2.2 residents per home—so we are more than 1/3 there in terms of added population. 5% into the timeline we have already planned projects for more than a third of the future additional residents. Sound like a land rush?

• If we were to apply the park provision standard that was mandated for False Creek North and Coal Harbour², we would have already made provision for more than 30 acres of new park space for the 18,000+ new residents, remembering that the BP has already seen applications for 80% as many new homes as all of False Creek North.  I am unaware of any park provision so far, and if there is it’s nowhere near 30 acres.

• Meanwhile only 2% of these projected BP homes (555 of 30,000³) have received building permits, and none are completed. 

Before I go on, please note that my BP numbers are only for mid-rise and high-rise. During the same time 20-month period the Kitsilano, Fairview and Mount Pleasant neighbourhoods⁴ have issued building permits for: 70 laneway homes; 53 secondary suites; 77 duplexes; 13 infill homes; and 68 other multiple dwellings. That’s a total of at least 400 low-rise⁵, lower density homes that have received building permits in just the BP neighbourhoods.

There were also 68 of the out-of-favour single family homes given building permission within that 20-month time period. It’s not clear from city data⁶ how many of those also had laneways, but they don’t figure in my 400-unit comparison. If they were included we would see that our city’s rate of issuing building permits is within a rounding error of being the same per unit whether low, mid or high-rise, with the low-rise being quickest to build and occupy.

Setting aside whether you prefer low- to mid- to high-rise, in terms of getting needed homes to market there is much room for improvement. The fastest building permit review intervals since the BP was approved are 92 days in Kits, 63 in Mount Pleasant and 107 in Fairview. The slowest intervals are 585 days in Kits, 728 in Mount Pleasant  and 1,597 in Fairview—so as “quick” as 2 months and as slow as 4+ years⁷. In fairness to city staff, we know that project permitting is sometimes delayed by applicants making changes, pausing for marketing or finance, etc. But we also know that smaller projects get permitted, built and occupied quicker.

Looking at all these numbers, it’s hard not to conclude that we are witnessing a land banking rush, with thousands of homes being locked up at excessive land prices through rezoning, then constructed at a market-driven (currently slow) pace—if I was a developer I would shrug and say something like, “We’re not a charity, you know.”

Town Hall meeting—what does the Broadway Plan mean for Kitsilano?

Thursday, March 14^th at Kits Neighbourhood House, 2305 West 7^th Ave, from 6-8pm, we are holding moderated presentations and discussions focused on BP impacts on Kits—we hope to have similar events in Fairview and Mount Pleasant in the near future. More information at CityHallWatch.ca

Kits Kount, Full Fairview and Mount Pleasant Masses numbers

With a lot of background work by colleague Stephen Bohus, I have started tracking BP related development in the three affected neighbourhoods. I will update them as I receive new information, and append any updates to future CCs regardless of their other content:

Kits Kount—10 BP projects identified so far

Full Fairview —26 projects identified—the 3 at the bottom with ? are the only ones with building permits so far

Mount Pleasant Massing—25 BP projects identified so far.

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Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, still teaching, writing and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 45+ year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and hoping to start in 2024 a book about how we can accommodate a growing population in the cities we love.

1. We become aware of BP proposals either when they are published on ShapeYourCity.ca (SYC) or announced in one of the real estate e-newsletters. Often when projects reach SYC they have been under review for many months.

2. FCN was planned at 10,511 homes and 17.05 hectares of park. That’s the ratio I’ve used here.

3. identified with a question mark (?) in the detailed stats.

4. City stats do not get as fine grained as, for example, Kits/BP as compared to all of Kits, so I have used the numbers available.

5. “at least 400” means counting only 1/2 the duplexes (2 homes for 1) and at least 3 homes for each multiple dwelling—less than 3 and it would be a duplex.

6. City stats total single family homes separately from laneways. But I only counted each one once.

7. These numbers are straight from the city’s building permits database, which is publicly visible.