Posts from — May 2010

Despite the relative calm as council approved segregated bike lanes for Dunsmuir St., today’s decision may prove more significant than last year’s Burrard Bridge trial.

For the first time, council is testing segregated lanes in the heart of the city in an effort to break the logjam that has kept cycling mode share at a fraction of the longstanding goal.

The Burrard trial attracted “end of civilization” media coverage, a barrage of e-mails on both sides of the issue and platoons of intervenors at council.

Dunsmuir saw a small flurry of e-mails and about four intervenors, including three representing busineses in the 600 block. The whole discussion took about three hours, with general agreement the project looks sound between Richards and Beatty.

West of Richards the road narrows, raising serious concerns from the Downtown Vancouver BIA, which opposes the impending ban on right turns at Seymour and Hornby. It also will affect transit, taxi zones and the drop-off zone at the front door of the St. Regis Hotel.

Unlike the Burrard trial, the Dunsmuir project carries more uncertainties, particularly for the dense residential, commercial and retail project built around the Dunsmuir entrance to the Skytrain. [Read more →]

Apart from the brewing controversy in the West End over the direction of community development, the debates over the new Vancouver Art Gallery site and the BC Place Casino promise to dominate council in the coming months. Yesterday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal tells the story of the woman leading Paragon Gaming, the firm behind the BC Place project.

It was standing room only — more than 200 residents by my count — in the Empire Landmark ballroom on Robson last night to hear city staff walk through the facts about Vancouver’s rental housing crisis and the reasons for the Short Term Incentives for Rental program that is a key part of a proposed new rental tower at 1401 Comox.

While a new high rise rental tower might not seem out of character in the West End, that’s not how many residents see it. A major campaign has unfolded under the direction of a new organization called West End Neighbours to impose a moratorium on development until a new community plan is in place.

The issue was aptly summarized earlier this week on CTV by reporter David Kincaid.

After hearing the residents last night, and visiting the site with some of those who have gathered 4,700 signatures on a petition against the project at 1401 Comox, I became even more convinced that the issue is much more about development in general than it is about the STIR program.

By contrast, next week’s council meeting will consider another STIR project at 1142 Granville St. that will produce more than 100 new rental units if approved at public hearing. A mailing of 3,000 advisory letters produced a total of four replies on both sides of the question.

The University of BC says the province’s decision to take over the development affairs of UBC, set out in a bill now before the Legislature, will make the campus a “living lab for sustainability” as population at Point Grey surges as high as 50,000 in the coming years.

But Metro Vancouver directors yesterday told Dale Wall, deputy minister of municipal affairs, that the new plan is more like a “benevolent dictatorship” that leaves a huge area of the region without public oversight of development.

Wall told directors the new legislation was designed to end conflict between Metro and UBC over land use on the University Endowment Lands by putting the province in the driver’s seat with the “democratically elected” minister the final authority on zoning.

Since there is no local government at UBC, not a single resident will have voted for the effective mayor. But the province, always slow to respond to Metro concerns, executed its takeover just months after a recent warning to UBC from Metro that the University would have to bring its plans into alignment with regional objectives.

That triggered a charge from UBC president Stephen Toope that Metro’s attitude was an assault on academic freedom, a bizarre claim that found a receptive audience in Victoria.

So from hereon in, Metro planning processes will have the province as a rogue element, with the Minister as land use authority and developer at the same time. Will development revenues flow to improve regional infrastructure? Or will they pay for post-secondary education? Or will they go somewhere else altogether? There will be no elections, so local ratepayers will just have to hope for the best.

Wall did confirm that the minister, effective “Mayor of UBC,” will not sit on the Translink Council of Mayors, despite UBC’s interest in a Skytrain connection to Point Grey. Why bother? He’ll have all the access to information and power he or she needs at the cabinet table.