Beasley sees success in putting people first
John Bermingham
Province
Larry Beasley mingles at yesterday’s Urban Development Institute meeting. Photograph by : Wayne Leidenfrost, The Province
Vancouver‘s planning guru Larry Beasley said the successful developer of tomorrow will put people first.
In his farewell address to the Urban Development Institute yesterday, the outgoing director of current planning at the City of Vancouver laid out his broad-scope vision for the city.
With more build-out, Beasley predicts infill projects that will depend on citizen input — from design all the way to construction.
“The opportunities are amazing for the right kind of developer,” Beasley told a packed ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver.
“Fewer and fewer projects will be straightforward,” he said. “Public and private objectives must be balanced.”
The new reality, he said, is that city planners, developers and citizens are becoming partners in building communities.
“The days of fighting one another have, generally, I think, come to an end. The days of being up against the community have to come to an end,” said Beasley.
The new developer will handle more complex issues, and offer creative solutions to communities who want greater input.
“I’m talking about the ability to piece together many project components, many of them public offerings, into a coherent result,” he said. “Looking at projects holistically — that takes a lot of lateral thinking.”
Beasley’s new breed is led by Gastown heritage developers Robert Fung and Jon Stovell.
He also singled out Ian Gillespie at Westbank, who has taken on the local community at Woodward’s as a partner. “He’s offered a solution to every community problem that’s been thrown at him.”
Beasley said he’s pleased that developers are returning to office and commercial projects, due to better market conditions.
He figures there are 15 neighbourhood centres around the city that will embrace higher-density projects, beginning with rezoning around Kingsway and Knight Street area.
Beasley, who retires from the city in September, said his successor will have to revive the Downtown Eastside, open up affordable housing and find new growth in the city’s metropolitan core.
“It’s time for some big thinking again, the kind of thinking that we were doing back in the 1980s, when we re-thought the whole city,” said Beasley.
“We need to do that again.”
© The Vancouver Province 2006
