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.

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.

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.

Ransford’s column captures a growing gap — perhaps chasm — in perceptions about the city’s planning process, a dangerous situation for communities and developers alike.

Former NPA Park Commissioner Bill McCreery argued last week that the train is so full it would be folly to build more development near stations like Marine Drive and Oakridge.

But Translink says there’s lots of room to expand Canada Line service. In a note to the Mayor’s Council, Peggy Hunt, manager of government relations, says the line currently can handle 10,640 passengers per hour, north and south combined, using 14 of the 20, two-car gtrain sets between 6.30 a.m and 7 p.m  More trains can be added at peak periods.

In August, 2011,  time between trains in daytime service (6.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.) will be reduced to 3.33 minutes from 3.75 minutes, increasing peak service capacity to 12,020 per hour. (These calculations assume 334 passengers per car.)

With even more trains and increased trip frequency, that number could rise to 30,000 passengers per hour, north and south combined.

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.

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.

In response to his queries, forwarded to staff by Mayor Gregor Robertson and several councillors, the city’s chief financial officer Patrice Impey today circulated a memo to council. The key points:

•    Assessment and classification of real properties in BC is within the Assessment Authority’s legislative mandate.  The City does not undertake assessments; it relies on the values established by BCA in accordance with the Assessment Act and appropriate principles of valuation.  There are over 185,000 folios on the City’s assessment roll.  It is not the City’s standard practice nor within its expertise to review and challenge the valuations provided by BCA and assessment methodologies for each folio.

•    Generally speaking, BCA would not establish a property value if it does not have reasonable certainty that the value, as well as the methodology based on which the value is established, would stand in the court of law.  In fact, the percentage of successful appeals on property assessment has been low relative to the size of the assessment base.

•    With respect to the subject property (assessed value:  2009 – $192,000, 2010 – $400,000), BCA’s assessment was primarily based on its current zoning and the complex legal arrangements between the City and Concord related to the entire Concord site.  These agreements obligate Concord to deliver a park on the subject site at an estimated cost of $17M to $20M and then turn it over to the City.  From an assessment perspective, the property is highly encumbered with very limited use and development potential.  In other words, any “fair market value” for this site would have to take into consideration the $17M to $20M outstanding obligations.

•    Factoring in legal encumbrances in the valuation of a property is standard assessment practice in BC.  The same principles are applied to all property in the province.  Similar circumstances were applied to Woodward’s prior to its redevelopment.  Some examples of legal encumbrances include:  no development covenant, option to purchase by the City, developer required to donate density, restricted use as non-market housing, etc.

•    In establishing the property value, the Assessment Act and standard assessment practice do not take into consideration any temporary uses (like Cirque or the Olympics) and revenues generated from these uses on site during the year as long as the use is not predominant and does not form the highest and best use for the property.  Pursuant to the Assessment Act, the Concord property has had no commercial uses as of October 31, 2009 when “actual use” for assessment purposes is determined.

•    Despite the public perception on the value of this property, staff is not certain what legal basis the City would argue in any appeal.  In any case, the deadlines for appealing this value for 2010 have passed.

Architect Jay Hiscox leads off a review of a dozen answers to the question: Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, should they stay or should they go?

The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts: should they stay or should they go?

City hall staff are preparing a request for proposals from professional teams interested in probing the issue later this spring. (The RFP flows from a motion I presented to council earlier this year for reasons I outlined in this article for The Tyee.)

But a dozen students in the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada Syllabus program were given just three weeks to answer the question and had to present their conclusions today in Vancouver. The results ran the gamut, from demolition through repurposing and even to re-engineering viaducts as a 21st century freeway/art installation.

Thanks to program director Jay Hiscox, I was invited to attend the four-hour session at BCIT where the students presented their concepts to a supportive but critical audience of experienced architects and urban designers.

The remarkably rich and varied presentations (sorry, I simply couldn’t keep track of students’ names) included compelling advocates for keeping the roadways and many proponents for demolition. A sampling:

• a concept to keep both viaducts for traffic but to transform them, with a soaring and sculptural lattice-work, into a massive but airy monument of public art;
• several suggestions for re-engineering the viaducts to add stronger pedestrian and cycling features, including pedestrian access to parks and streets below from number of points along the sidewalks;
• more than one proposal to destroy one viaduct — one presentation eliminated Dunsmuir, another Georgia — to open up space for park and development while keeping another to retain at least some connection for traffic;
• several proposals to keep the viaducts, but close them to traffic and convert them to green space, exploiting the possibilities of a Vancouver answer to New York’s High Line; and
• several explorations of life without the viaducts, including an urban forest the mentors likened to New York’s Central Park, and another that carefully re-engineering the site to restore elements of the Creek’s original shoreline and wetlands while moving traffic along a European-style boulevard.

It would be impossible to summarize all the possibilities illuminated by the studio presentations, but it seems clear the potential is almost limitless.