Dan Fumano: At key Kits corner, condos rejected and social housing pitched
Dan Fumano
The Province
Serena Eagland in front of lot at West 8th and Arbutus in Vancouver. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG
Social housing, market condo development, the terminus of multi-billion dollar rapid transit line: There’s a lot of city-building conversations right now centred on the intersection of West Broadway and Arbutus.
City hall recently rejected an 11-storey condo building proposed for one corner of the intersection, a case many knowledgeable observers described as highly unusual. Meanwhile, just across Arbutus, the city is looking to partner with the province on a 12-storey supportive housing building.
Between those two sites, on the intersection’s northeast corner, work recently began on the planned end of the line for the $2.8 billion Broadway subway.
The condo building proposed for the northwest corner, currently home to a gas station, was refused last month by Vancouver’s development permit board after board members cited concerns about the project’s height.
Such rejections are rare. This was only the second application in almost 15 years, out of more than 100, to reach that stage in the process with city staff’s recommendation, and then get turned down at the last minute.
Not every potential real estate project gets to that stage: Generally by the time a project comes to the development permit board, the proponent has been working with city staff for years to refine the project, so that when staff tell the board it complies with zoning rules and recommend approval, the board usually approves.
In fact, the board’s only other project refusal in the last decade-plus led to litigation. After the board refused a controversial 2017 proposal for 105 Keefer St. in Chinatown, the developer Beedie sued the city, a case that, coincidentally, was in court this week.
But the recently rejected proposal from Bastion Development for Broadway and Arbutus is quite different from Beedie’s 2017 Chinatown project. The Beedie project was hugely controversial, the subject of fierce protests and council debates.
Bastion’s Broadway project, however, was not controversial.
It was not even widely known, as development board meetings do not tend to be high-profile events. City Duo, a Vancouver blog that keeps a close eye on urban growth, first reported the board’s rejection, calling it “stunning news.”
Among those aware of the project, it actually appears to have been popular: Out of 119 comments the city received through community engagement, 87 were in favour of the project, 18 were opposed, and 14 had mixed views, an unusually high level of support for such a project.
The development board’s three senior city staffers all voted against the Bastion project. One of them was Theresa O’Donnell, who was the city’s deputy director of planning at the time, but was earlier week appointed acting chief planner after Gil Kelley’s departure was announced.
When O’Donnell cast her vote against Bastion’s proposal at last month’s board meeting, she noted concerns about the project’s height, as did one of her colleagues.
In early March, she explained she and her colleagues on the board were “constrained by the existing regulations in place today, which prevented us from getting to where this applicant wanted to be.”
When asked if she believed that meant her staff had made a mistake by recommending approval, she said she did not believe staff had erred.
The proposed building’s height exceeded the guidelines for the area — but the zoning allows for taller buildings to be approved there, subject to the city’s discretion.
Asked about the rejection, O’Donnell acknowledged: “It is subjective. Had they (the proponents) come in with a superior application, we might have been able to get there.”
Arbutus is planned to be the line’s westernmost end, unless it extends to UBC, as city council, the university, and the local First Nations’ development corporation want.
O’Donnell understands, she said, confusion from some observers that this kind of density wouldn’t be supported across the street from a transit station.
“We do want to see development at the station that’s commensurate with being at this significant public investment, we’ve committed to TransLink that we are going to densify around these stations, we want to be able to do that,” she said.
“We acknowledge those existing regulations are out of date, and that’s why the Broadway Plan is in progress,” O’Donnell said, adding that if the application had come in after the Broadway Plan was in place, expected to be later this year, it might have seen a different result.
“We anticipate the Broadway Plan will allow additional considerations, so it’s really more of a timing thing. Timing is everything.”
Charles Montgomery, the urbanist and author of Happy City, wrote on Twitter that the Bastion decision — an 11-storey residential development across from a subway station rejected for being too tall — represented “so much of what is wrong with Vancouver.”
But “the bigger issue,” Montgomery said when reached by phone, was what that rejection could mean for the 12 storeys of social housing proposed across the street.
Charles Montgomery, editor of book, Happy Cities in Vancouver Photo by Nick Procaylo /PNG
The public comment period for that supportive housing project, which would provide 140 homes for local adults, seniors and people with disabilities at risk of homelessness, runs until the end of March.
O’Donnell said the Bastion project’s rejection means “nothing either way” for the supportive housing’s prospects.
The strata president of the townhouse complex across the alley from the Bastion site, Diana McMeekin, a retired real estate development consultant, supported Bastion’s condo proposal and was very surprised it “was rejected.”
But she opposes the B.C. Housing building. McMeekin says she and her neighbours have concerns about the supportive housing building’s design — which she called “colossally out of scale” — as well as its location across the street from an elementary school and a playground.
Not every neighbour agrees.
Serena Eagland, a 30-year-old nurse, is part of a group of Kits residents banding together to support the supportive housing project. Eagland’s group, which includes homeowners, renters, landlords, co-op residents, young families and seniors — “every demographic you can think of,” she says — feels so lucky to enjoy such a great neighbourhood that they feel an obligation to speak up for the less fortunate. She thinks the city needs more market housing so she has no objections to Bastion’s 11-storey condo proposal, but she cares a lot more about seeing the supportive housing built.
“As people who typically have good access to employment, health care, and housing, we just strongly feel everybody deserves the same sort of access,” Eagland said. “As a community member of Kits, it’s kind of my responsibility to support that happening.”
The Arbutus subway station will be located at Broadway and Arbutus. PNG
As another sure sign of the big changes coming to Broadway and Arbutus, the days are numbered for the intersection’s most prominent landmark: the massive retro Fletchers Fabricare sign that’s been rotating above the southeast corner for half a century.
After TransLink bought the property from Fletchers in 2018, the dry cleaner has remained as a client, but they know their lease will end eventually, said managing partner Cameron Bastien. They’ve already opened a second Fletchers a few blocks further west on Broadway.
“It’s going to be a tear-jerker” the day the original Fletchers closes and that sign stops spinning, said Bastien. “But we need to embrace change.”
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