Requiem for Kitsilano?
CC #152—Things are moving quickly, and in the wrong direction
No, they’re not watching the Super Bowl!
Last Sunday, overlapping with the Super Bowl, TEAM for a Livable Vancouver held an information meeting at Kits Community House to talk about how the Broadway Plan is already affecting east Kitsilano. More than 200 folks braved the icy, unplowed streets and sidewalks and ignored American football in favour of something far more immediately threatening than American sport and politics. The standing room only crowd listened with full attention to a presentation by TEAM candidate Theodore Abbott and Kitsilano film maker David Fine, whose five minute trailer for his documentary (a work in progress) Is this the city we want to build? captures expert analysis and resident despair. Candidate Colleen Hardwick was also present to answer questions.
Although the presentations included lots of detail, I felt more focus would have helped—that’s my self-appointed job in City Conversations. First below, a spreadsheet borrowed with permission from Stephen Bohus. Stephen modelled the initial Broadway Plan from my analysis—our model was derided by the then-Mayor, some architects and urban designers—30 months later it and its successors remain the only models, frighteningly accurate. Stephen continues to track what’s happening across all the Broadway Plan areas (which also include Fairview, South Granville and Mount Pleasant). I’ve added to his Kits summary spreadsheet to include some important totals:
The Broadway Plan meets Kitsilano
For those who prefer skipping to the chase:
A year ago there were 10 Broadway Plan new high-rise projects in East Kits—today there are 25 new high-rise projects “in the pipeline” between Burrard and Vine Streets, 1st and 16th Avenues—that’s one additional per month.
Meanwhile the city’s official tracking advises 12 projects are in the pipeline—their definition of what to include is way less than the reality on the ground.1
Those 25 projects will involve demoviction of 13 existing mature rental buildings—that’s one affordable “mature” rental building gone for each pair of new projects.
The 25 projects total 3,821 homes2. At the city’s (and others’) standard of 2.2 persons per home on average, that means more than 8,400 new residents in East Kits—admittedly that excludes the populations demovicted from the 13 mature rental buildings, unknown because the city does not track that number (why not? you may ask).
“Only” four projects have had their rezoning approved to date, for a total of 795 housing units, 20% of which (159 units) are supposed to be “below market” rentals. The good news is that of these four, only one, 1960 West 7th Ave, involves destruction of an existing mature rental building. One down, 12 to go.
There are still no plans for additional schools, community centres or park space.
Stephen’s latest Broadway Plan model rendering looking east from Vine Street looks like this:
Latest Broadway Plan Model by Stephen Bohus—Connaught Park is centre bottom.
In Stephen’s model, the lighter towers (for example, centre left clustered around Broadway and Arbutus) are those already “in the pipeline.” The darker buildings are those permitted by the Broadway Plan3. Already, several of the current 25 proposals are way outside the transit oriented hubs along Broadway.
At the current rate of one new proposal per month, every remaining East Kits site shown in the model above may be “in the pipeline” within six years4 and the number of projects in the pipeline by the next election may be 40-505. Thus a six year buildout for the Broadway Plan that was supposed to have a 30 year buildout.
At this moment in time, 10% of proposed East Kits Broadway Plan projects have already been rezoned with the imminent loss of one mature rental—12 more mature rentals are currently threatened. By the next election the destruction of many more mature rental buildings in East Kits will have been guaranteed by rezonings.
What can you do?
Clearly, if you think this is all good, you need do nothing. However, if you think this is not the direction our city should be going in, the upcoming by-election offers a clear choice. OneCity and Greens Councillors voted in favour of the Broadway Plan—vote for their candidates at your peril. COPE’s then-Councillor Jean Swanson voted against, but is not running again. The only Councillor running this time around and committed against the Broadway Plan is TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick. Running mate Theodore Abbott shares her sentiment. Vote for TEAM if you want new directions.
There are two Council seats on offer. If you vote for Colleen and Theodore, then under the rules governing Council one of them may bring forward a motion (say, to pause the Broadway Plan, to turn down a specific rezoning proposal, etc.) and the other can second it. In this way there must be debate and even if a TEAM motion is defeated, debate will shine a light on what’s at stake in Kitsilano and, well, throughout this entire city where we love to live.
This post is 800 words, 50% longer than the three minutes citizens are allowed when they speak to the current City Council.
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Brian Palmquist writes on the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of the Musqueam people. He is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is a member of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. 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 50-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.” A glutton for punishment, he recently started writing a book about how we can Embrace, Enhance and Evolve the places where we love to live.
Some of the ways we identify rezoning sites in addition to the city’s: “sold” signs on existing mature rental buildings; survey markers on the sidewalk or lane; applications for engineering building grades, which only occur when redevelopment is proposed.
Five of the 25 projects in East Kitsilano as yet have no numbers for new homes.
These additional towers are notional in the sense that there are as yet no active proposals for those sites that we are aware of. However, the Broadway Plan “guidelines” permit what we show. So far, our model’s placement of proposals has been more than 90% accurate—actual proposals are arriving at the exact locations and heights our model predicted.
The East Kits portion of the model shows about 75 potential development sites—at one per month that’s a six year supply.
The current 25 plus 18 or more additional in the time period before the next election.
Has anyone factored in the costs of the impending trade war foisted upon us by the Trump presidency? Has anyone factored in the impending decline of income caused by job loss? Has anyone factored in the growing unnaffordability of our housing, despite the mad dash for ever higher densities?
The Broadway subway will now top $4 billion; the completion of the subway to UBC will top $8 billion.
Who is going to pay? TransLink is in the gutter of affordability, yet the bureaucracy churns out more and more "pie in the sky" planning.
To put into perspective, the additional $600 million and change over 10 years offered by the federal government, will barely cover the $40 million annual operating costs of the present subway if and when completed and will not cover fully the additional $40 million annual operating costs of the Expo Line extension to Langley if and when completed.
As the subway doesn't service downtown Vancouver and or Richmond/YVR it will be more of a customer iratertant, than a complement to our regional transit system.
The future ills, combined with future costs have been deliberately ignored by the entrenched ignorance of the bureaucracy and the deliberate ignorance by elected officials, which is far more damning.
A requiem for Broadway you say, I think "last rites" for Broadway is a better expression.