More than 3,000 people have now viewed this post—a record for my City Conversations and I am told a more than respectable audience in any forum. Thanks to all for reading, and to many for responding so thoughtfully. There remains hope!
I am glad to see this information, although unhappy about what it portends. I responded to the Jericho planning process survey when the drawings were released last year - with shock. I have seen no mainstream media reporting about this issue, but have been led to believe that we have no say on what happens - the die is cast. I had been reconciling myself to the though that I may be too old at age 70 to see the destruction of all those beautiful views and the park and beach totally overrun (already very intensively used).
If there is a real possibility that this or a future City Council might modify the proposal and has the power to do so, then it brings much more interest to the forthcoming elections. It appears that no one on the current Council, despite likely good intentions (even if tainted by lots of developer money), seems to have any idea how to address any of our major problems. They have adopted the universal mantra that "all growth is good", namely more people, more consumption of energy, more pollution, more noise, more congestion ... just like all other governments since WW II .... look where it has gotten the world.
I am interested to learn more about how the group concerned about Jericho thinks it is possible to influence City Council, or whether a different Council would make any difference. I share their view that something more like the Arbutus and 12th development, even if quite dense, would be more appropriate to preserving what so many people like about Vancouver.
Tom, thanks for your observations as a longtime Vancouver resident. The Jericho Lands (JL) proposals are not cast in stone, in the sense that a future Council can modify or reverse them. TEAM for a Livable Vancouver is the only political party with both the platform and the fortitude to achieve balance between what has been proposed and what might make sense. At this stage, with a municipal election mid-October, you can: join TEAM and contribute to its evolving policy platform through participation in policy committees; donate to TEAM to help fund the fight for this and many other aspects of Vancouver that are under threat; and, of course, run for Council. Don't they say that "70 is the new 40," or something like that.
Thanks for your reading and your thoughtfulness and perspective.
I love your work and only want to add substance. The DCE charge does not increase condo costs it reduces land price. If you didnt have the DCE it wouldnt make the market price of the unit less, it would just give the land owner more profit. Lots of evidence on this. I myself think the DCE should be higher, probably over $400 per square foot with most of that tax going to pay for permanently affordable housing on the same site. Patrick Condon.
Leaving aside the absolutely ridiculous expense of a subway to UBC (even the current estimates could cure all of the other civic problems) they fail to discuss the massive overruns that may occur when solid bedrock is found on the proposed route. Surface light rail along 10th, with perhaps a sideline to Jericho, is the only rational plan.
Given that: we passed the "safe" 350 ppm of CO2 in 1988: last year the average was 419ppm; at 450 ppm the IPCC suggests we will hit 2 degrees of warming and, in 2020, Nature magazine reported human made materials reached 1.1 trillion tonnes, surpassing the mass of all living things, including humans. ie this is stuff that doesn't provide air, water, food, or habitat, I would like to see thorough assessments of the embodied carbon emissions of all the new construction plans in the works,as well as ongoing monitoring, for example https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10962247.2014.978485 as well as environmental impact assessments of all the resource depletion (water sheds, fish habitat, hydrology cycles, soil fertility, local communities affected by resource extraction for all these building materials etc). What I see in the city plans overall are not the creation of necessary housing and an improvement of our health and well-being, but the continued general destruction of our home and any sense of self-agency we might have imagined we had over our own lives.
Thanks for your comments. I wish I could disagree with you. One great finding during this election campaign is the discovery of many passionate and expert folks who are focused with environmental rather than political bias. Thanks for reading,
Sigh. Note the Musqueam haven't built towers full of little cages on their land in Southlands - 'housing' isn't homes. Soon we'll have to go live in the mountains to be able to see them. Will there be any forest left.
Ironically, the recently released Phase 3 of the Vancouver Plan states:
"A majority of respondents indicated a preference for density to be spread out with more 6-12 storey buildings distributed throughout rapid transit areas, versus concentrations of over 12 storeys closer to stations."
How this Plan is supposed to be integrated with recently released Phase 3 of The Broadway Plan (which is proposing buildings closer to 40 stories around the stations) and this plan for The Jericho Lands is anyone's guess. It is clear, however, that the COV is not listening.
These questions must be answered before any real discussion is to take palace for building a subway.
1) Where is the now $6 billion to fund this line? To date no funding is being offered.
2) Why are we building a $9 billion subway (total cost) on a bus route that offers a maximum capacity of only 2,000 pphpd?
3) Why are we building a $9 billion subway (total cost) on a route primarily used by deep discounted U-pass ($1 a day unlimited travel) students and faculty?
4) Why are we building a subway based on the now obsolete Movia Automatic Light Metro system (SkyTrain is the name of the light metro network), now owned by Alstom, which will probably cease production the MALM cars in 2025, when two of the MALM systems will cease operation (Toronto and Detroit), leaving only five in existence but with only Vancouver expanding its system?
5) Where are the future subway customers going? Trips to the downtown or Richmond, will have to make a very inconvenient transfer to the Canada line, which has severe capacity issues. In peak hours this means a one or two train wait. An even more inconvenient transfer can be made at Commercial Dr.Broadway, which would certainly deter ridership.
6) it is estimated that the annual operating costs for the subway will be in the $40 million to $50 million neighbourhood and with the majority of customers will be deep discounted U-pass holders, where is the money coming from?
7) Will the subway cannibalize parts of the transit system, as subways have done elsewhere.
8) Will demographic change alter travel patterns away from the rigid subway route, which would mean a shortfall of funding and the demand for improved transit on other routes, leaving the subway another White elephant transit project.
A white elephant is a possession that its owner cannot dispose of, and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness.
9) Will the subway further drive up property values, which in turn will increase rents and leases to the point where transit dependent low income people are forced to move away from the Broadway area, thus depriving the subway of an important customer stream?
10) Will the onerous costs of a subway lead to the collapse of TransLink leaving Vancouver holding the bag, so to speak, to fund a yet unbuilt subway or worse, a partially built subway?
This land was handed over to the Musqueam to develop. I can see their point of view might be to maximize their capital gain. They might reply, "We've been angry for a long time"
Anger is not an excuse for bad urban design. The ownership is complex but irrelevant to good urban design, which includes integration with adjacent neighbourhoods, etc.
I suspect many people who have heard of this plan think it simply can't and won't happen in Point Grey and so are complacent. That seems to be the attitude of some of my neighbours. Maybe a campaign titled something like "It CAN happen here." or to paraphrase Obama, "Yes, THEY can." might draw attention to this.
This is urgent information and simply HAS to reach a huge audience. Your new drawings give a much clearer idea of what this development will look like than the Jericho planners ever provided. Have you sent this info to things like the Vancouver Sun, Province, Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV etc?
This Jericho plan will ruin WPG! I have lived in WPG for 30 years and this is just an unacceptably massive change. I can foresee people blockading the bulldozers on these lands similar to logging and anti pipeline protests.
I wonder if the Folk Festival organizers know about this? They might want to help spread the word to their members.
We need a well organized hard hitting innovative far reaching push back against this.
I have sent this to several media contacts I have, but many are compromised because they accept lots of advertising from developers. Please send to any contacts you may have. Thanks,
That type of compromise is alarming, anti-democratic. I am afraid I don't really have much in the way of media contacts. Maybe the way to get it into the media is to stage a protest or other media even to force them to cover the story. But the catch-22 is without media coverage of the issue, it is harder, though not impossible, to attract protesters.
If a protest could be arranged - maybe people standing social distance apart all the way around the boundary of the Jericho lands with placards etc. - then maybe the media would cover the protest and thus the issue. A news release could be sent to all the media ahead of time. And photos/videos posted on social media. Or maybe in addition something can be set up to really illustrate the scale and shadowing of these towers. A banner flown at their height? A huge tarp from a crane to demonstrate the shadowing? Just brain storming...
Frightening. This plan will kill Vancouver as we know it. Who will want to come down to the beach surrounded by a mega-city? Who will want to live in West Point Grey when all you see are towers. I wonder if this will area will end up having the highest density of people in Canada? Mountains? Obscured. Nature? succumbed to itty bitty bits of green, a few trees, a few shrubs. Towers? As many as can be squeezed in. And tankers in the harbour? Double or triple waht we currently see. It won't be swimmable water in the Burrard Inlet which will be a commercial zone no longer a pleasure area for the city. Little sailboats won't want to hazzard out into the polluted waters for the only glimpse of the mountains that will be left. It cannot be allowed to go on this way...
I think that this plan proposal (let’s get serious, they don’t consider it a proposal but a forgone conclusion) is appalling and outrageous. There should be absolutely NO Skytrain station in Point Grey or anywhere west of Arbutus. Cities that are five to eight times larger than ours rely upon buses and light rail transit more than expensive rapid transit. The height and volume of the buildings proposed block out the sun from the park and beaches through much of the year and would very likely be home to the the wealthiest of citizens and INVESTORS. Plans for communities should contain many more considerations and serve the greater good. Instead, the communities we see built now are around transit hubs without consideration of infrastructure, services, or socio-economic variation of the population.
If, if, the skytrain becomes unavoidable then at least somewhere which links access to The Chan & the Museum of Anthropology which are scandalously under-supported by the City & Province.
The selling of development rights around transit stations is a well established approach in places like Hong Kong, with much higher population densities. It’s already started here with the Broadway Plan proposals, hopefully will not become our normal
Unfortunately the practice started many years ago. I agree that it shouldn’t be our normal, especially given our population compared to much larger cities.
I see you have moved away, cannot blame you. But please point your remaining Vancouver friends to the TEAM for a Livable Vancouver party (https://www.voteteam.ca/) as the only viable alternative.
Thanks Brian! These images are very impressive. It is hard to believe they could transform the WPG views like that. I posted them in the NextDoor social media and the Queen Mary Elementary School PAC website.
INSANITY!!! So illogical. Gotta love Kennedy Stewart and his stooges. F@ck all the high rises In residential neighborhoods!!! We need an actual VANCOUVERITE in City Hall. Colleen…
More than 3,000 people have now viewed this post—a record for my City Conversations and I am told a more than respectable audience in any forum. Thanks to all for reading, and to many for responding so thoughtfully. There remains hope!
I am glad to see this information, although unhappy about what it portends. I responded to the Jericho planning process survey when the drawings were released last year - with shock. I have seen no mainstream media reporting about this issue, but have been led to believe that we have no say on what happens - the die is cast. I had been reconciling myself to the though that I may be too old at age 70 to see the destruction of all those beautiful views and the park and beach totally overrun (already very intensively used).
If there is a real possibility that this or a future City Council might modify the proposal and has the power to do so, then it brings much more interest to the forthcoming elections. It appears that no one on the current Council, despite likely good intentions (even if tainted by lots of developer money), seems to have any idea how to address any of our major problems. They have adopted the universal mantra that "all growth is good", namely more people, more consumption of energy, more pollution, more noise, more congestion ... just like all other governments since WW II .... look where it has gotten the world.
I am interested to learn more about how the group concerned about Jericho thinks it is possible to influence City Council, or whether a different Council would make any difference. I share their view that something more like the Arbutus and 12th development, even if quite dense, would be more appropriate to preserving what so many people like about Vancouver.
Tom Perry
Tom, thanks for your observations as a longtime Vancouver resident. The Jericho Lands (JL) proposals are not cast in stone, in the sense that a future Council can modify or reverse them. TEAM for a Livable Vancouver is the only political party with both the platform and the fortitude to achieve balance between what has been proposed and what might make sense. At this stage, with a municipal election mid-October, you can: join TEAM and contribute to its evolving policy platform through participation in policy committees; donate to TEAM to help fund the fight for this and many other aspects of Vancouver that are under threat; and, of course, run for Council. Don't they say that "70 is the new 40," or something like that.
Thanks for your reading and your thoughtfulness and perspective.
I love your work and only want to add substance. The DCE charge does not increase condo costs it reduces land price. If you didnt have the DCE it wouldnt make the market price of the unit less, it would just give the land owner more profit. Lots of evidence on this. I myself think the DCE should be higher, probably over $400 per square foot with most of that tax going to pay for permanently affordable housing on the same site. Patrick Condon.
And thanks for your kind words
Patrick, thanks for the clarification. The planner’s comment was quickly made and I obviously missed that nuance.
Glad to help and happy to privide more supporting info.
These are not small buildings, and if approved by the City of Vancouver - will dramatically change the character of this area forever.
Think "Metrotown - comes to Jericho".
A sadly accurate image
Leaving aside the absolutely ridiculous expense of a subway to UBC (even the current estimates could cure all of the other civic problems) they fail to discuss the massive overruns that may occur when solid bedrock is found on the proposed route. Surface light rail along 10th, with perhaps a sideline to Jericho, is the only rational plan.
I agree but have found that arguments about construction (I’m)practicalities have no impact on this Council
Given that: we passed the "safe" 350 ppm of CO2 in 1988: last year the average was 419ppm; at 450 ppm the IPCC suggests we will hit 2 degrees of warming and, in 2020, Nature magazine reported human made materials reached 1.1 trillion tonnes, surpassing the mass of all living things, including humans. ie this is stuff that doesn't provide air, water, food, or habitat, I would like to see thorough assessments of the embodied carbon emissions of all the new construction plans in the works,as well as ongoing monitoring, for example https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10962247.2014.978485 as well as environmental impact assessments of all the resource depletion (water sheds, fish habitat, hydrology cycles, soil fertility, local communities affected by resource extraction for all these building materials etc). What I see in the city plans overall are not the creation of necessary housing and an improvement of our health and well-being, but the continued general destruction of our home and any sense of self-agency we might have imagined we had over our own lives.
Thanks for your comments. I wish I could disagree with you. One great finding during this election campaign is the discovery of many passionate and expert folks who are focused with environmental rather than political bias. Thanks for reading,
I am not competent to provide that assessment, but can support it in terms of sizes of buildings. Thanks for your knowledge
Sigh. Note the Musqueam haven't built towers full of little cages on their land in Southlands - 'housing' isn't homes. Soon we'll have to go live in the mountains to be able to see them. Will there be any forest left.
Ironically, the recently released Phase 3 of the Vancouver Plan states:
"A majority of respondents indicated a preference for density to be spread out with more 6-12 storey buildings distributed throughout rapid transit areas, versus concentrations of over 12 storeys closer to stations."
How this Plan is supposed to be integrated with recently released Phase 3 of The Broadway Plan (which is proposing buildings closer to 40 stories around the stations) and this plan for The Jericho Lands is anyone's guess. It is clear, however, that the COV is not listening.
I haven't had the time or energy yet to bring the Vancouver Plan into the mix...one battle at a time...or maybe 2?
Thanks for reading and commenting
These questions must be answered before any real discussion is to take palace for building a subway.
1) Where is the now $6 billion to fund this line? To date no funding is being offered.
2) Why are we building a $9 billion subway (total cost) on a bus route that offers a maximum capacity of only 2,000 pphpd?
3) Why are we building a $9 billion subway (total cost) on a route primarily used by deep discounted U-pass ($1 a day unlimited travel) students and faculty?
4) Why are we building a subway based on the now obsolete Movia Automatic Light Metro system (SkyTrain is the name of the light metro network), now owned by Alstom, which will probably cease production the MALM cars in 2025, when two of the MALM systems will cease operation (Toronto and Detroit), leaving only five in existence but with only Vancouver expanding its system?
5) Where are the future subway customers going? Trips to the downtown or Richmond, will have to make a very inconvenient transfer to the Canada line, which has severe capacity issues. In peak hours this means a one or two train wait. An even more inconvenient transfer can be made at Commercial Dr.Broadway, which would certainly deter ridership.
6) it is estimated that the annual operating costs for the subway will be in the $40 million to $50 million neighbourhood and with the majority of customers will be deep discounted U-pass holders, where is the money coming from?
7) Will the subway cannibalize parts of the transit system, as subways have done elsewhere.
8) Will demographic change alter travel patterns away from the rigid subway route, which would mean a shortfall of funding and the demand for improved transit on other routes, leaving the subway another White elephant transit project.
A white elephant is a possession that its owner cannot dispose of, and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness.
9) Will the subway further drive up property values, which in turn will increase rents and leases to the point where transit dependent low income people are forced to move away from the Broadway area, thus depriving the subway of an important customer stream?
10) Will the onerous costs of a subway lead to the collapse of TransLink leaving Vancouver holding the bag, so to speak, to fund a yet unbuilt subway or worse, a partially built subway?
Not enough space for me to respond to 10 questions—the sheer volume says it all, sadly.
This land was handed over to the Musqueam to develop. I can see their point of view might be to maximize their capital gain. They might reply, "We've been angry for a long time"
Anger is not an excuse for bad urban design. The ownership is complex but irrelevant to good urban design, which includes integration with adjacent neighbourhoods, etc.
I suspect many people who have heard of this plan think it simply can't and won't happen in Point Grey and so are complacent. That seems to be the attitude of some of my neighbours. Maybe a campaign titled something like "It CAN happen here." or to paraphrase Obama, "Yes, THEY can." might draw attention to this.
Good thoughts. I am doing some related research, may have more on the subject soon. Thanks for reading and commenting.
This is urgent information and simply HAS to reach a huge audience. Your new drawings give a much clearer idea of what this development will look like than the Jericho planners ever provided. Have you sent this info to things like the Vancouver Sun, Province, Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV etc?
This Jericho plan will ruin WPG! I have lived in WPG for 30 years and this is just an unacceptably massive change. I can foresee people blockading the bulldozers on these lands similar to logging and anti pipeline protests.
I wonder if the Folk Festival organizers know about this? They might want to help spread the word to their members.
We need a well organized hard hitting innovative far reaching push back against this.
I have sent this to several media contacts I have, but many are compromised because they accept lots of advertising from developers. Please send to any contacts you may have. Thanks,
That type of compromise is alarming, anti-democratic. I am afraid I don't really have much in the way of media contacts. Maybe the way to get it into the media is to stage a protest or other media even to force them to cover the story. But the catch-22 is without media coverage of the issue, it is harder, though not impossible, to attract protesters.
If a protest could be arranged - maybe people standing social distance apart all the way around the boundary of the Jericho lands with placards etc. - then maybe the media would cover the protest and thus the issue. A news release could be sent to all the media ahead of time. And photos/videos posted on social media. Or maybe in addition something can be set up to really illustrate the scale and shadowing of these towers. A banner flown at their height? A huge tarp from a crane to demonstrate the shadowing? Just brain storming...
Frightening. This plan will kill Vancouver as we know it. Who will want to come down to the beach surrounded by a mega-city? Who will want to live in West Point Grey when all you see are towers. I wonder if this will area will end up having the highest density of people in Canada? Mountains? Obscured. Nature? succumbed to itty bitty bits of green, a few trees, a few shrubs. Towers? As many as can be squeezed in. And tankers in the harbour? Double or triple waht we currently see. It won't be swimmable water in the Burrard Inlet which will be a commercial zone no longer a pleasure area for the city. Little sailboats won't want to hazzard out into the polluted waters for the only glimpse of the mountains that will be left. It cannot be allowed to go on this way...
Sadly I agree with your assessment and your evocative imagery. Time to write, speak and act against this.
I think that this plan proposal (let’s get serious, they don’t consider it a proposal but a forgone conclusion) is appalling and outrageous. There should be absolutely NO Skytrain station in Point Grey or anywhere west of Arbutus. Cities that are five to eight times larger than ours rely upon buses and light rail transit more than expensive rapid transit. The height and volume of the buildings proposed block out the sun from the park and beaches through much of the year and would very likely be home to the the wealthiest of citizens and INVESTORS. Plans for communities should contain many more considerations and serve the greater good. Instead, the communities we see built now are around transit hubs without consideration of infrastructure, services, or socio-economic variation of the population.
If, if, the skytrain becomes unavoidable then at least somewhere which links access to The Chan & the Museum of Anthropology which are scandalously under-supported by the City & Province.
The selling of development rights around transit stations is a well established approach in places like Hong Kong, with much higher population densities. It’s already started here with the Broadway Plan proposals, hopefully will not become our normal
Unfortunately the practice started many years ago. I agree that it shouldn’t be our normal, especially given our population compared to much larger cities.
I see you have moved away, cannot blame you. But please point your remaining Vancouver friends to the TEAM for a Livable Vancouver party (https://www.voteteam.ca/) as the only viable alternative.
Thanks for your comments.
Will do.
Thanks Brian! These images are very impressive. It is hard to believe they could transform the WPG views like that. I posted them in the NextDoor social media and the Queen Mary Elementary School PAC website.
Thanks for reposting, Greg. I wish I was wrong or that the developers make me wrong by a more neighbourly scheme-still early days
INSANITY!!! So illogical. Gotta love Kennedy Stewart and his stooges. F@ck all the high rises In residential neighborhoods!!! We need an actual VANCOUVERITE in City Hall. Colleen…
...working on it...