He’s the Calgary urban designer who has been hired to weave his magic on the West Coast. At 36, Brent Toderian has youthful exuberance and a promising track record

Frances Bula
Sun

As Brent Toderian drives and talks his way through six hours and a circumpolar tour of Calgary to explain who he is and what he’s done, thoughts splash and spill along the way: About how cities have to be a combination of rational structure and creative chaos, about the impact of the business-rules culture of Calgary, and about the importance of the way buildings and sidewalks meet. And about how his work is invisible in a way, as it should be, because his job is not to do the detail work but to change mindsets, to create a climate of creativity and flexibility for others to do their best.

Not that he’s a rambling or incoherent gabber. It’s more like being on a river that looks smooth on the surface — no flashy whitewater or visible whirlpools — but that carries you inexorably along in its powerful current.

Toderian is the up-and-coming Calgary planner whom Vancouver has hired to replace the city’s outgoing chief planners Larry Beasley and Ann McAfee. He knows he’s the subject of considerable speculation in Vancouver.

So young. And from Calgary! What can someone from the Temple of Sprawl do for Vancouver?

Then, of course, people are wondering about the politics of his hire. Architect Bing Thom suggested in a public debate about the new planner last spring that the hiring process seemed designed to ensure that a bureaucrat, rather than a visionary, was chosen. (A head-hunting firm gathered names and shortlisted. A selection committee of four top city managers, including the head of engineering and the head of human resources, picked Toderian. Councillors were presented with him as the committee’s choice only a short time before they voted). Others murmur quietly about how much influence Beasley may have had.

Yes, he’s young, Toderian agrees. He turns 37 on Aug. 30.

But he’s been considered “too young” for most of the jobs he’s had in his life. He was the youngest adjunct lecturer ever at the University of Waterloo, where he started teaching some classes while he was working on his master’s in planning there. He took over as the head of subdivision planning in Calgary when he was 30, and became the head of centre-city planning when he was 34, both times succeeding people who had been there decades.

And, because of Calgary’s explosive growth, he’s had more experience in his six years than some planners get in a lifetime.

For sure, he sounds assured and knowledgeable, a man comfortable with performance and persuasion. The only time he’s taken aback is when he’s asked what his new salary will be when he begins his new job Sept. 14, a question he declines to answer, saying it’s not appropriate and he’s not supposed to say.

(For the record, it’s $151,192, according to the city’s communications office. That’s $14,000 more than Beasley was making, but $120,000 less than what Beasley and McAfee made together running the two departments Toderian will now head alone).

As for what a planner from Calgary can do for Vancouver, well, for one, Calgary isn’t as different from Vancouver as you might think. It’s exploding with development downtown. It has actively discouraged people from driving downtown by refusing to build road capacity for the past 10 years and by limiting parking. And it has more homeless people in its central core than Vancouver, with one shelter alone housing 700 people a night.

Toderian is frank in saying the city of Calgary hasn’t come anywhere close to Vancouver when it comes to demanding excellence in building design from local architects and developers.

“Calgary’s always had a culture that says ‘Don’t force the industry to do anything,'” says Toderian. “Vancouver has been good at using the threat of the answer ‘No’ to achieve exceptional design. Calgary has been used to saying ‘Yes’.”

Developers such as Bosa have done far superior work in Vancouver, compared to what they’ve done in Calgary, just because the city has demanded it, he notices.

In travelling with Toderian around Calgary — from the pedestrian mall that forms its downtown spine to subdivisions on the border between city and country — it’s clear he is a very urban guy of the 21st century.

He’s a fan of contemporary architecture; he spends his spare time visiting great cities.

He lives in a renovated heritage building in Inglewood, the city’s oldest neighbourhood, which is now an enclave of historic houses and ultra-hip galleries and bistros. Toderian can walk to work from there in 13 minutes, along the border of the troubled East Village, the base for the city’s homeless shelters and services.

His condo is a tiny 700 square feet. He doesn’t need more space, because he spends his weeks at work and his weekends making tracks to the outdoors in his Subaru Outback so he can hike, bike, and ski. But then, what else would you expect of a boy who grew up in small-town Ontario, the son of parents in a country-music band where he played the drums and sang, but someone who longs for the big city?

Although he admits suburbs aren’t his natural habitat, he takes pride in what he did in Calgary’s. He shows off MacKenzie Towne and Garrison Woods, two subdivision projects that have achieved some fame for their design on New Urbanist principles: main streets that bring people together, alleys, a mix of housing forms, suites over garages, central squares, and roads narrowed from the usual highway-sized suburban roads.

Toderian is careful to emphasize, as he does throughout the day whenever he shows off something in the city, that he can’t take credit for the original work. It takes 10 years for planners’ work to start showing itself in city fabric.

But he does take pride in his work negotiating with other departments to allow small and creative adjustments: narrowed roads that create an intimate feel; the preservation of houses that don’t have a street front; insistence on not allowing developers to build houses that turn their backs on a street or green space.

Look at this, he says, jumping out of the car to stand in a narrow boulevard that’s been turned into a small park in what looks like an English square. It took months of wrangling with the parks department to get that irregular space classified as a park and treated like one, with benches and a walkway.

“In most city halls, conventional is easier than innovative,” he says. He sees his job as making it as easy to be creative as it is to follow the rules.

There is no doubt he is a protege of Beasley’s, albeit using the language of his generation. (Ugly buildings are “harsh” and a lacklustre stretch of the Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall is “deadass”).

Toderian first contacted Beasley six years ago to get advice about planning and his career future.

They hit it off and have spoken frequently since then. Beasley says he has been a “general mentor” to him.

Both men are part of a small circle of Canadian planners with similar world views — Toderian jokingly called the group the mutual-admiration society — and are forming a Canadian urban design council.

When it came time to choose a new planner for Vancouver, Beasley gave the head-hunting firm three recommendations: Andrew Altman, the former head planner for Washington, D.C.; Alicia Berg, the head of planning and development for Chicago, and Toderian.

“I work in lots of Canadian cities and I don’t see much talent out there,” Beasley said in an interview recently. “He is as sophisticated as anyone I’ve seen his age in the country.”

Unsurprisingly, neither Altman or Berg were available. That left Toderian.

“The most important characteristic, I said, is not facility within the bureaucracy. The most important is that the person had to be a sophisticated urbanist, had to have a very high quality of urbanistic principle.”

Toderian fitted that bill, Beasley said, “because he understands how cities work. He understands that it’s not just esthetics.” Like several others, Beasley dismisses the concern that Toderian is young for the job.

He points out that he himself was 39 when he took over the downtown; the city planner who originally set the direction for Vancouver’s downtown development, Ray Spaxman, was also 39 when he was hired.

“I think his age is an advantage. It gives a chance for continuity.”

There will certainly be continuity from Beasley’s era.

As Toderian drives around central Calgary, where he has been in charge for two years, he has an assessment of every building with the same kind of focus on detail and urban fit that Beasley has. This one is horrible, with its blank, reflective windows. That one is great — it’s the first Vancouver-style building, with a podium of townhouses at the base.

But he also says he won’t be another Beasley. His focus will be on the Vancouver beyond the downtown peninsula.

And, although he understands the reason for the “cult of Larry” that sprang up in Vancouver, he feels his job is not to be another cult, but to make it possible for many others to create a great city.

“It’s not enough to be a voice for urban design if you don’t have a community of people supporting you. My job is to empower groups rather than control anything from city hall.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

PANELS TESTED: Test hut allows close examination of designs

Susan Lazaruk
Province

Years after B.C.’s estimated $2 billion leaky-condo crisis peaked and well into the province’s enduring housing boom, the housing industry is still trying to create a better building envelope.

“The walls do a heck of a lot more than hold the roof up,” says contractor Mark Gauvin, who has been in construction for more than three decades.

“I don’t believe that we yet really understand what goes on behind the walls of these buildings.

“A contractor is always looking for a better way to build walls.”

So through his company, Gauvin 2000 Construction, he volunteered to participate in a project designed as an outdoor lab to see how various building-envelope designs withstand the West Coast climate over several seasons.

Gauvin constructed a 900-sq.-ft. building above his two-storey office building on Austin Avenue in Coquitlam with 28 wall panels, each with a different wall construction. There are seven on each side, plus six roof panels.

The study will compare the standard, old-fashioned face-sealed stucco construction popular years ago with rainscreen technology, which includes an air space, and a newer design. The panels are used with and without polyethylene to test how the air barrier may affect the wall’s drying ability.

The test hut, built last fall and modelled after similar designs in other parts of Canada, the U.S. and Europe, is monitored by the building science department of Ontario’s University of Waterloo.

Electronic sensors collect hourly data on temperatures, moisture levels and humidity to see how the panels hold up to rain, sleet, wind, sun and snow.

In the second year of the test, they’ll introduce moisture to the panels to see how the different constructions dry, if they do leak.

“That’s one question we’re hoping to zero in on, whether polyethylene is suitable for the West Coast,” says Prof. John Straube of the University of Waterloo. “We haven’t seen much difference between poly and no-poly walls over one winter.

“We may provide evidence for one side or the other.”

The experiment will also focus on the building’s energy efficiency capabilities and will collect data on interior conditions.

Straube says the study is not going to produce the smoking gun for B.C.’s widespread leaky-condo crisis.

“It’s unfortunate that it can’t be answered because so many people want that question answered.”

Still, the data may contribute to building the “ultimate wall.”

“What I call the ultimate wall is not what the developers may think is the ultimate wall,” Straube says.

Rainscreen walls, because they are complicated to construct and require a number of layers and, therefore, a number of different tradespeople, are “very expensive,” he says.

It’s important to invest in research and development for building science, considering the housing industry is bigger than the auto, computer and airline industries put together “yet it spends a fraction” of what the other industries do on research, he says.

“The industry affects a lot of people really personally,” he says.

The University of B.C. has tested different rainscreens in the past and the B.C. Institute of Technology is launching a similar test hut this summer, Gauvin says.

Allan Dobie, senior research consultant for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., says these types of studies can eventually contribute to CMHC’s best-practices guide.

“This is the kind of thing the industry has been looking for and needing. It is long overdue,” Dobie says.

But Greg Johnson, an architect with Marceau Evans Johnson Architects who teaches building science at UBC, says these studies are “very research-oriented.”

“It’s trying to address only the technical issues but it [building science] is definitely an applied field,” he says.

“Every building has its own peculiarities and, oftentimes, failures are the result of problems during construction,” Johnson says, adding leaks are common at interfaces or in other details.

He says that no matter how good the design, it’s only as good as the construction, and during busy building times, quality can be affected by a shortage of skilled labour.

Johnson says he wouldn’t be surprised if B.C. has “some other issues” with buildings, even if they don’t result in full-scale envelope failure.

“There are downsides to building booms,” he says. “I’m hoping that won’t be the case this time, but what I’m seeing, it probably is, so prepare yourself.”

COSTLY CRISIS

Number of income-tested reconstruction loans approved by B.C.’s

Homeowner Protection Office: 15,000.

Value of total loans approved: $576 million

Average cost of repairs per unit: $32,000

Estimated total cost of repairs: $1 billion.

Estimated cost of the leaky condo crisis: $2 billion.

Sources: HPO, Concordia University.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Province

NEW YORK — U.S. recessions often start in the industrial heartland, but this time around a housing market slowdown on the East and West Coasts could break the pattern.

Economists fear a housing bust might spark a recession, partly by making consumers feel poorer and thus depressing their spending.

“There’s the potential for a domino effect as housing prices decline rapidly, real estate markets quickly stall, all the construction workers get laid off [and] the people who write mortgages get laid off. That can ripple through the economy,” said Robert Dye, a senior economist with Moody’s Economy.com.

California, Nevada, Florida, and some Mid-Atlantic and New England states have seen the fattest gains in home prices, and many economists say a correction looms.

“I actually think probably the most likely places to blow up in the next year are places where there has been a lot of wretched excess in the housing market,” said William Wheaton, professor of economics, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, citing speculative buying.

Any weakness in over-heated Southern housing markets could spread. “The housing thing is really going to spill from the South to the North. Most of the places with a lot of speculative and investment home buying are south of the Mason-Dixon line,” Wheaton said.

But a recession also might spread accordion-style, pushing into the midwest from the east and west coasts, as their home markets slip, economists said.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Rebecca Osler
Sun

SAKURA

Presentation centre address: 2911 Granville, Vancouver

Hours: Noon – 6 p.m. Sat – Thu

Telephone: 604-738-8713

Web: polyhomes.com

Project size: 64 apartments, 12-storey highrise

Residence size: 770 sq. ft. – 1,486 sq. ft.

Prices: $518,000 – $1.858 million

Developer: Polygon

Architect: Nigel Baldwin

Tentative occupancy: July 2008

In spirit, the Sakura highrise in Vancouver’s South Granville neighbourhood can be summed up by a single piece of artwork. It’s a large square photograph by local artist Karin Bubas, in which a young woman in a gauzy pink gown sits under a canopy of cherry blossoms (sakura, in Japanese). Her dress is formal — hinting at places to go and small talk to be had — yet the moment is serene and otherworldly.

It is a metaphor that sums up the neighbourhood: Peace with the promise of excitement; contemplation verging on extroversion. The brass at Polygon were so impressed with the photo, they hung it in Sakura’s presentation centre and intend to transfer it to a prominent position in the tower’s lobby.

The site of Sakura, at 11th and Birch, locates the new-home project just a few minutes from the bustling South Granville retail strip.

“There are all these fine restaurants here; it’s art gallery row; it’s the centre of fashion of the City of Vancouver … it’s a very sophisticated location,” Polygon’s Ralph Archibald reports.

The Sakura site is currently occupied by three lowrise apartment buildings and one house. They will go, but a cluster of trees will be preserved, to maintain the integrity of an established neighbourhood. The trees will complement one of the primary design features of Sakura: two courtyards flanking the tower.

(And yes, the landscaped common areas will include a generous sprinkling of cherry trees.)

“Often you’ll find a tower is offset to one side, but this is more in the middle,” says Archibald. “From street level, it’s a really welcoming entry and you get this big, oversized green-space area.”

The green space also features a shared barbecue area where residents can convene.

With only 64 residences, all of them two-bedroom, Sakura is exclusive for a highrise.

However, Archibald notes, there is a range of options because the sizes vary quite a bit. Many of the smaller units are located on the south-facing side, offering a more affordable choice for buyers who are moving from other apartments.

“A lot of those people are moving here for the South Granville location, but they realize that the view side may be a little out of reach,” says Archibald.

Archibald says he was pleased to see a flurry of repeat customers at Sakura’s launch earlier this summer.

“It is really gratifying for us as a company … when the first people that come to us are people who have either bought from us before or are somehow related to people who have done that.

“It says two things: They believe in the location, and obviously they believe in what we do and the product we can deliver,” he says.

The overall look in the interior is contemporary and spare. For example, refrigerators and dishwashers are concealed by wood panelling that matches the cabinetry.

Extra touches in the kitchen include custom wine towers (in most homes) and oversized, undermounted sinks.

“Most people really like that,” Archibald reports. ”They love the look of it and because it’s a deeper bowl it does bigger pots and stuff like that.”

The 18-by-18 porcelain tiles in the kitchen also make an appearance in the bathrooms, where marble is the material of choice on countertops, bath tub surrounds and shower backsplashes.

Most units also have solariums, perfect for gazing out at the neighbourhood (in a pink dress, perhaps).

“It truly is about living in a very peaceful environment, yet really in the centre of an awful lot,” concludes Archibald.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Fewer, smaller government fees for development would also help

Bob Ransford
Sun

Don’t expect local government to suddenly come to the rescue of those who can’t afford to own a home, but want to.

Do, however, expect local government across the province to make knee-jerk decisions to intervene in the marketplace. Politicians can’t resist jumping on a bandwagon, especially when that wagon is decorated with banners that talk of “crisis” and “hardship.” After all, they can spend your tax dollars, feeling good responding to the top news story of the month.

Unfortunately, this kind of political response focuses not on the long-term supply of housing — the only factor that promises to have any significant impact on the large group of middle-income people in search of a home.

Instead, short-term interventions, like local government subsidies for non-market housing or mandatory requirements for developers to build subsidized housing, may in fact exacerbate the affordability challenge.

Why do policy-makers and politicians make decisions that promise no real rewards?

These kinds of decisions are usually made because the decision-makers have little understanding of the marketplace. Most politicians have always operated in the public environment where supply and demand have little relevance.

Governments have always responded with taxpayer resources to provide subsidized housing for those who have no other means of providing shelter. Even in periods where there is considerable housing supply and prices are tempered, demand for housing by those in the lowest income groups can not be effectively met. People with the lowest of incomes don’t experience a housing affordability challenge. They experience, instead, an income challenge.

Governments have been effective responding to this need. But when decision-makers hear the words “housing affordability crisis” and it applies to the masses instead of a small group of those most in need, the response has to be different.

The challenge of providing more affordable living for those earning average incomes is a different one. Different responses are needed–market-based responses that address supply and demand.

Government doesn’t need to intervene. In fact, it needs to back off.

Backing off means removing some of the restrictions that inhibit supply. Often these are zoning restrictions that favour low density housing and encourage sprawl.

When government does intervene, it risks disrupting the marketplace and adding to the problem.

Take for example, taxing the developer to pay for subsidized housing. The City of Vancouver charges $2 per square foot for all new multi-family development to raise funds for subsidized housing. The City of Richmond recently implemented a similar but lower fee.

The consultant Richmond hired to formulate its affordable housing strategy recommended the levy but warned City officials:

“…it is important to recognize that, in some ways, the different fees and levies that are associated with the development of new housing construction can potentially contribute to a higher cost profile for new housing supply –a result which can affect the general level of affordability. Consequently there is a limit to how much the development process can fund affordability initiatives.”

In other words, governments can push the price of housing even further by adding new taxes on development. Government-imposed costs can also make land less economical to develop. For example, if a tract of land is more valuable for a use other than housing simply because the returns from developing housing are eaten away with government charges, that housing won’t get built and less supply will be on the market.

It is all too easy to provide that supply by allowing growth to sprawl at low densities, far from jobs, services and amenities. It is also easy to throw government subsidies at housing, hoping that we will address affordability, when we are barely making a dent and only partially assisting those most in need.

Housing affordability should not be an end in itself. A more sensible goal is more affordable living. To achieve more affordable living, we need a supply of housing sufficient to meet demand. That housing needs to be built in compact neighbourhoods, where densities are sufficient to make it possible to provide jobs, services and amenities close by, keeping total household expenditures in control, making living more affordable.

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. Email: [email protected]

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Downtown Vancouver, particularly east False Creek, hottest market

Derrick Penner
Sun

Property developers flush with cash went on a spending spree in the first half of 2006 spurring a 58-per-cent increase in the commercial real estate market compared with 2005, the real estate services firm Colliers International reported Wednesday.

Investors spent $2.2 billion in the first half of the year, compared with $1.4 billion a year ago. Kirk Kuester, Colliers’ managing director in Vancouver, said land purchases — primarily by developers banking property for future use — drove that figure.

Kuester said transactions to buy land in Greater Vancouver totalled $800 million in the first half of 2006 compared with $300 million for the same period a year ago.

“The reason for that is that the economic fundamentals for Vancouver are really strong,” Kuester said.

“Demand [for property] is strong and the development community today is three [to] four years into a very profitable cycle. So they are all extremely well capitalized and able to aggressively acquire and land-bank for developments one, two, three years down the road.”

Kuester added that the downtown Vancouver market, particularly east False Creek, was the hottest market for land sales.

Rising prices also contributed to the value of transactions. Kuester said that land downtown typically sold from $125 to $130 per buildable square foot over the first half of 2006. That compared with the $75 to $80 per-buildable square foot it would have cost a year ago.

Vancouver was second only to Calgary in the Colliers International report, which tracked commercial real estate transactions in excess of $1 million in 13 major Canadian markets.

The Colliers research showed that investors in Calgary spent $1.7 billion on commercial real estate in the first half of 2006, a 178-per-cent increase over the same period in 2005.

Nationally, the report tracked a near record $10.7 billion in commercial real estate sales across all 13 markets, a 16-per-cent increase over 2005.

“Activity was fuelled in large part by the strength of western Canada along with strong economic fundamentals, low interest rates, abundant debt capital and improved leasing markets,” Keith Reading, Colliers’ vice-president, research, said in a release.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Slowdown expected as cost squeezes out buyers

Derrick Penner
Sun

Lower Mainland real estate markets experienced a dramatic drop in sales in July, which is a possible sign that they’ve hit their limit for overall growth, an analyst says.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported its July Multiple-Listing Service sales declined 25.2 per cent to 2,732 units compared with July 2005, although the average “benchmark” price for a single family home hit $644,461, a 19.4-per-cent increase from the previous year. The benchmark represents the average price of a typical home in the area.

However, the housing inventory in Greater Vancouver also dropped 20 per cent from June to 4,352 houses, townhouses and apartments available for sale.

In the Fraser Valley, MLS sales fell 20 per cent to 1,635 compared with July a year ago and the average price for a family home hit $489,547, a 22-per-cent increase. Listings in the Valley increased a slim percentage-point to 6,200.

Tsur Somerville, director of the Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, noted that Greater Vancouver’s MLS sales for the year to the end of July are down compared with 2005. And in the Fraser Valley, July’s drop in sales was not accompanied by a drop in home listings.

“[The statistics] are certainly suggestive of a market that has stopped its rate of excessive growth of transactions,” Somerville said.

But, he added, that “that doesn’t mean prices will follow, [although] one can’t imagine prices continuing to increase at 28-per-cent-plus [per year], especially with sales drying up.”

Still, he is hesitant to call the development “a turning point.”

“If you’re holding your breath waiting for a market crash, you should probably take another breath,” Somerville said.

Somerville said there are other factors that could potentially trigger a a slowdown in housing, such as the decline in United States housing markets that is dampening demand for Canadian lumber.

Lower Mainland real estate markets can expect to experience a slowdown as prices keep squeezing buyers out, said Cameron Muir, a market analyst with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., but he doesn’t see that happening just yet.

“I don’t think [the July sales drop] is the turning point we’re expecting,” Muir said. “Fewer listings [in Vancouver] are at least partly responsible for fewer sales.

“The ratios [of sales to listings] are still high, it’s still a seller’s market out there, and that won’t change until we see more listings,” Muir said.

Rick Valouche, president of the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board, noted that 2006’s drop in sales is in comparison with the biggest year in the board’s history.

And with 23,223 transactions recorded to the end of July, Valouche added that the board is still on pace to record the third-highest number of sales in a year.

Valouche said he doesn’t believe the Greater Vancouver market has seen its limit for growth, because “houses that are listed properly” sell within a week, usually with multiple offers.

“We’re not seeing the frenzy we saw last year … [but] there is still too much demand and not enough listings.”

The drop in Fraser Valley sales is also compared with an abnormally high month a year earlier, said Jim McCaughan, vice-president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board.

McCaughan added that while Fraser Valley housing inventories might be higher in a relative sense, “they’re probably not as high as we would like to see.”

“From all reports out there, there is still a lot of market activity and a lot of interest [in real estate],” he added.

AT THE LIMIT?

The Greater Vancouver real estate market experienced declining sales in July.

– Single family homes:

1,031, -28.3%

Price: $644,461*, +19.4

– Townhouses: 513, -20.7%

Price: $404,537*, +20.3%

– Condos: 1,188, -24.2%

Price: $328,966*, +22.8%

* Benchmark prices for typical

properties as determined by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver

© The Vancouver Sun 2006