Category — Development

Who is responsible for ensuring the economic well-being of the 22 municipalities that make up Metro Vancouver?

According to BC Business Council economist Jock Finlayson, it’s Metro Vancouver itself, the regional body that oversees water, liquid waste, garbage and overall land use.

Finlayson is the latest business leader to slam the Regional Growth Strategy in the Vancouver Sun, blaming  hapless Metro Vancouver planners for a scheme he says will maintain the region’s low median incomes.

Metro planners have been accused of many things, but this is the first time they have been called out for perpetuating poverty.

“The RGS is essentially a land use plan,” Finlayson complains, “dressed up as a strategy for managing growth.” [Read more →]

Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy, now stalled because of a single municipality’s refusal to sign on, would force intolerable housing prices even higher, according to Maureen Enser, executive director of the Urban Development Institute.

In a lengthy op-ed piece in today’s Sun, Enser uses the crisis in affordability to buttress a position which is really about who decides the direction of regional growth. Is it individual municipalities or should Metro itself have an oversight role?

The UDI, the voice of the province’s major developers, has been conducting a quiet campaign against the RGS which has grown much louder since Coquitlam denied Metro the unanimous support required to make the strategy law.

It’s fair to say the UDI has a number of members who believe industrial land, even agricultural land, should be converted to residential, a shift the RGS virtually rules out. Would that mean more affordable housing? In the absence of other measures, I don’t think so. [Read more →]

Canada Post today advised its 1,200 Vancouver employees it has decided to build a new main sorting plant at YVR, opening the door to a new future for the downtown post office building.

The decision reverses a 2009 declaration that the post offie would remain downtown in a refurbished plant in one of the most distinctive buildings in the city core.

When Canada Post designated Vancouver  for renewal under its postal transformation strategy, Mayor Gregor Robertson asked the Vancouver Economic Development Commission to work hard to find an alternative location for these 1,200 well-paid jobs. Nothing was available that met Canada Post’s requirements within city limits.

That means Richmond and YVR will be the recipients of a major new investment, strategically located next to a key air transport hub.

Ironically, the existing Canada Post building includes a tunnel to the Canadian Pacific railway station — intended to link with transcontinental express trains — that was never used because of the development of air mail.

Could the post office building become a new art gallery? Many have raised the possibliity, but that would require involvement both by VAG, now looking at the old bus depot site nearby, and Ottawa, which must also reckon with the claims of the Musqueam and Squamish First Nations.

There are no doubt many new uses for the existing building that will generate jobs and economic activity, but whether a new direction can be plotted by 2015, when Canada Post wants to move, remains to be seen.

When the City of Coquitlam declared itself the lone hold-out against approval of Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy, Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan worried that the decision could see the long-awaited plan delayed and perhaps destroyed. His fears appear to be well-founded.

First, Community Services Minister Ida Chong rejected Metro’s appeal for a binding arbitration process, requiring Metro instead to go through an open-ended voluntary process. Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart and Metro officials are exchanging letters on how that might work, but it won’t work quickly.

Now the Vancouver Sun, responding to pressure from a business lobby worried about goods movements,  has slammed the RGS, claiming it “ignores economy [and] lacks coherence.” The entire project should be withdrawn for review, says the Sun. Columnist Daphne Bramham seconds the motion, condemning Metro’s “unelected board” and hailing “Coquitlam’s brave stand.”

(I would be interested to see if the Sun has previously editorialized on the plan, for or against.)

But the RGS is not the product of a dictatorship. It was produced after exhaustive consultation and then approved by a vote of every single Metro council except Coquitlam. Now, however, as Corrigan warned, it appears this multi-year project is in serious trouble. With municipal elections just months away, that is not good news.