Category — Development

The new Memorandum of Understanding signed in May between Mayor Gregor Robertson and Chief Gibby Jacob, of the Squamish First Nation, will be tested in action in the coming months as the Squamish accelerate plans to develop land they own at the south end of the Burrard Bridge.

The land, part of the original site of a Squamish village named Senauq, was recovered by the Squamish more than a decade ago after lengthy litigation. It had been expropriated before the First World War. Squamish villagers were loaded onto a barge and shipped to Burrard Inlet, their homes burned behind them.

But council has learned that the odd-shaped parcel, which once provided a “wye” where trains crossing False Creek could be turned around, will be developed in phases, with the first parcel moving through a planning process in the coming months. That process will be directed by the Squamish First Nation but parallel the city’s usual procedures, a unique arrangement the SFN has already used for projects as complex as Park Royal in West Vancouver.

With city finance officials already beginning the 2011 budget preparations, these end-of-June building permit stats will be good news: residential construction has nearly doubled this year over the same period last year to $437 million.

A new category this year is laneway housing. Eighty have been issued permits, 17 in the last month alone.  Total value of that construction is $7.7 million.

Bob Ransford, a Sun columnist  and a knowledgeable observer of Vancouver’s development scene, today expresses a view gaining increasing prominence among developers. The city’s public consultation processes, some argue, are now so tilted to loud local voices that any development is subject to potentially terminal delays.

Ransford points to one possible solution, now making the rounds in development circles, proposed by U.S. urbanist Andres Duany, who sees development strangled by “an orgy of public process.” Duany would create a sort of jury system, in which more or less randomly-selected residents would provide feedback on proposed developments.

At the other end of the spectrum, as Ransford notes, are many Vancouver community and neighbourhood activists, who see the city drowning in a developer-driven tsunami of new towers. Their anxiety was triggered by EcoDensity, but has not abated under the new Vision Vancouver council. They agree the process is terrible, but for the opposite reasons. They feel it is too fast and ignores community interests.

So we have two polar opposite views of the same public processes.

At next week’s council meeting, Mayor Gregor Robertson and Councillor Andrea Reimer will propose this resolution in an effort to calm the troubled waters in the West End, where West End Neighbours have garnered thousands of names on a petition demanding an entirely new community plan before any further rezonings. [Read more →]

The staff report seeking authorization to study the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, which I requested last year, goes to council’s Planning and Environment Committee for decision June 24.