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City’s Signature Roof

Pete McMartin
Sun

At the moment, the grandest and most ethically ambitious architecture in the city — the green, living roof of the new convention centre — resembles a hair plug job. There’s a lot of bald up there.

It’s sparse, but growth proceeds. They started planting it two weeks ago, and crews are working their way across the six-acre roof sewing and digging in more than 750,000 plants. A green blush appeared on the canvas of the roof’s dark-brown growing medium of pumice and organic matter.

It’s hairing up.

They aren’t plants you find in the typical urban garden. They’re not gaudy flowers, but tough, mundane survivors. There is common thrift and Hooker’s onion and chamiso sedge. There is beach strawberry and broad-leafed stonecrop and silverweed. There is bent grass and pearly everlast and quatro sheeps fescue. All of them are indigenous to B.C.

They’ve been planted about six inches apart on a predetermined grid, and the plan is that by August, they will have grown together to cover all the bare spots and form a dense green, foot-tall mat of vegetation. When it’s complete, it will be the largest green roof in Canada. For something so low-lying and organic, it’s a very big architectural statement — an enormous verdant horizontal in the midst of a vertical downtown.

More than the new convention centre itself, more than the sails of the old convention centre or the stockade of highrise condos ringing Coal Harbour, the roof will be the signature architecture of all those things Vancouver wishes itself to be — green, environmentally compatible and living. It’s the imagined future — not green like Stanley Park, but an attempt to let the rough edges of the wild leak into the urban setting. It will be a little unkempt, and an extension of that which presses up so close to the city.

“The theme of this roof,” said Bruce Hemstock, the roof’s landscape architect, “is B.C. coastal grassland. And I say that sort of loosely because it’s difficult to recreate a coastal grassland on a roof. But esthetically, that’s what we’re going after.

“Practically, did we take coastal grassland plants and put them on the roof? No, because they’re completely different ecologies. But we tried to create a roof that looks like that and functions like that.”

The template, Hemstock said, was Triangle Island, a craggy Gibraltar-like rock at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. It’s a bird colony for murres and puffins, and shawled in a blanket of tough, low-lying greenery. It’s exposed to wind and salt air and rain and hard summer sun, all the environmental challenges that the plants on the roof will face. It’s tough growing up in the wild: it might be tougher in the city.

Hemstock has no doubt the roof will be a success, though some doubts about its viability have been expressed. Nothing this big in Canada has been attempted, and if the roof greenery does fail to take — and for such a wide expanse, the harsh environmental factors of drought, wind and salt air will be all that much more difficult to address — then fixing it will be no easy matter. Or cheap. You can’t just re-tar a green roof.

But Hemstock sees no reason why it shouldn’t. All the plant types have been tested in similar conditions for hardiness. An irrigation system, using the grey water from the convention centre itself, and recycled rain water captured by drains on the roof, will be used to get the plants through periods of drought.

And at fruition, Hemstock sees an ecosystem that will help cool the building during summer, and keep it marginally warmer during the winter. It will greatly reduce the “heat island” effect that conventional roofs contribute to in urban settings. It will extend the life of the roof by shielding it from ultraviolet rays. It will produce oxygen and absorb pollutants. It will muffle the sound of float planes. It will provide a home to nesting songbirds and colonizing insects. It will also be a helluva lot less ugly to look at. If all goes well.

Maintenance?

Weeding crews and weed whackers. There is a limit to the roof’s shagginess, Hemstock said, and when the grasses reach a foot and a half or so, it’ll get a haircut.

But the one big irony of the green roof?

Few will see it. It’s 10 stories above the street. For safety and maintenance reasons, there will be no public access to it. Office workers and residents in the highrises around the convention centre will look down on it, and conventioneers will only be able to see smaller portions of it where lower levels of the roof have been planted.

For the man on the street, whose tax dollars paid for it, the roof will remain a feel-good idea, not a visible tangible. The grandest and most ambitious architectural statement in the city will be unseen.

The plants, and the birds and insects that live there, will have the place to themselves.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

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Jeff Lee
Sun

B.C.’s francophone community plans to build and operate a $4-million “French Quarter” on Granville Island during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The proposal, part of a $7-million plan to promote francophone culture around the Olympics, has received support from the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the federal government and the Senate committee on official languages.

The concept, which has been submitted to the federal government’s Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as the owner of Granville Island, was discussed at a recent Senate hearing on official languages where Josee Verner, the new minister of Canadian Heritage, also endorsed the idea without committing any money.

At the hearing Vanoc CEO John Furlong briefed senators on significant efforts the organizing committee has made to improve on its official language commitments.

The improvements come after the Senate committee severely criticized Vanoc two years ago, saying it didn’t believe the organizer would meet its promises to fully support Canada’s two official languages.

In an interview Wednesday, Senator Maria Chaput, chairwoman of the Senate committee, said Vanoc has made significant strides, including hiring a large percentage of French-speaking staff, and committing to fully bilingual signage.

Of Vanoc’s roughly 900 staff, 25 per cent are able to communicate in French — more than triple the B.C. average of eight per cent, and near the national average of 31 per cent.

The concept for the French Quarter is being promoted by La Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique and the Fondation canadienne pour le dialogue des cultures. Stephane Audet, executive director of the federation, said Wednesday the concept is for the village, called La Place du Francophonie, is to celebrate B.C. and Canada‘s rich francophone culture.

B.C. has 63,000 residents whose first language is French. But it also has 300,000 residents for whom French is a second language, including many who are Asian and South Asian. B.C.’s francophone culture is significantly different from the traditional Quebecois culture in eastern Canada, he said.

“What we want to do is create a French Quarter during the Games,” Audet said. “What we want to accomplish there is to concentrate a francophone presence there where all B.C., Canadian and international visitors can experience every facet of what makes Canada special.”

Audet said the site will focus on francophone arts and culture, and promote tourism.

The $4 million cost is expected to largely come from the federal government, he said, with the remainder from food and beverage sales.

The concept includes two pavilions, a French bistro and pub, stage for concerts and an “artists’ alley” like Rue Sainte-Anne in Quebec City.

The idea is part of a larger, $7 million Olympic-related national “action plan” the francophone community has for 2010, including recruiting and supporting bilingual volunteers from across the country, particularly in the medical and security fields.

However, the Department of Canadian Heritage says it has not yet received the proposal, which Audet said includes a request for $3.5 million in direct funding.

Audet said although his federation constantly struggles with Ottawa for support of francophone programs in the west, he’s been told by federal officials that Ottawa supports the French Quarter plan.

Canadian Heritage announced earlier this year it was giving the federation $160,000 to help create a liaison with Vanoc in order to promote French-Canadian issues, and to help find enough French-speaking volunteers for the Games.

But two weeks ago the federation, which represents 35 non-profit groups in B.C., discovered half of the money was going to be siphoned from existing francophone community programs in B.C., including summer camps and civic festivals.

“It was a pretty nasty discovery. We weren’t too pleased,” he said. “I find it exceedingly hard to get money out of Ottawa into the regions,” he said.

Chaput and the Senate committee were also shocked by the discovery that support for Vanoc would come at a cost to francophone community groups, and they told Verner of their displeasure during the hearing.

“I told her this was not acceptable and that the group, which is being asked to help find volunteers for Vanoc, shouldn’t then discover that the money will come from festivals and program Canadian Heritage has already committed to,” Chaput said.

Under questioning, Verner told the Senate she has asked her staff to review the case.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Ian Austin
Province

The price of widening Vancouver‘s Burrard Street Bridge has quadrupled — and not a shovelful of dirt has been moved.

As endless debates over the heritage structure’s future have raged over the years at city hall, spiralling construction costs have taken the project’s estimated 2002 cost of $14.5 million to $63 million.

“Construction costs are increasing at 10 per cent a year,” said Tom Timm, the city’s general manager of engineering services.

Timm outlined the cost increase in a memo for yesterday’s Vancouver City Council meeting, where council debated whether the bridge widening should be part of a capital referendum in this fall’s civic election.

The city had set aside $13 million for the upgrade, but now is being asked to come up with another $44 million to ensure the budget will be large enough to cover the costs of the long-delayed plan.

And Timm warned in his memo that, by the time the Winter Olympics arrive in 2010, costs are likely to be higher still.

“If construction costs continue to escalate at the rate that they have over the past few years, the estimate could rise by an addition $6 million by that time — bringing the total to $63 million,” wrote Timm.

Timm outlined the goals of the increasingly expensive project:

– To improve the bridge for bicyclists and pedestrians to meet increased demand and to increase safety.

– To repair the crumbling concrete railings.

Timm identified construction costs as a huge factor in the increases, along with structural design and heritage components, and the need to provide a traffic barrier that meets current bridge-design codes.

“We’re hoping to work on the project after the Olympics,” said Timm.

“But there will be a lot of other large public projects going on at the airport, with the Port Mann Bridge expansion, and with the Evergreen SkyTrain line.”

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Frances Bula

Sun

The bill for renovating the Burrard Bridge to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians has risen to $63 million, four times what it was six years ago.

That has forced Vancouver‘s engineering department to ask for more money in the capital plan being set for the next three years — something that city voters will get to approve in the November election — at a time when the city is facing unprecedented demands already on its capital budget.

“We are in a real crunch,” said city manager Judy Rogers, who is facing requests for new firehalls, community centres, and police buildings, along with the enormous Burrard Bridge bill and rising costs for routine sewer, water and street maintenance.

Community-centre advocates have already started raising the alarm about the need to include spending on new community centres in the plan, especially the 50-year-old Marpole centre.

The city’s head of engineering, Tom Timm, said construction-cost increases are running at 10 to 12 per cent a year for projects.

“We’ve seen unusual inflation rates in all areas,” he said.

It’s all coming at the same time that the finance director is warning the city needs to set a limit on its capital-plan spending for the next three years if it doesn’t want to provoke significant tax increases.

The revised Burrard Bridge bill, however, is the biggest problem. The cost increase isn’t just because of construction inflation. Almost $8 million of the increase comes because it turns out that some parts of the redesign will be more expensive than originally thought.

Timm said the original estimate of $14.5 million was based on a conceptual design for the improved bridge, which will see the sidewalks expanded to the side of the bridge. Once engineers got into the details, they realized that they would have to spend more because the bridge can’t have any weight added to it, which requires coming up with lightweight railings and additions. As well, it will require a vehicle-crash barrier on the road.

Timm said it’s not a project the city can forgo.

The bridge is old and “chunks of concrete are falling off,” he said.

It’s the most heavily used bridge in the city for pedestrians and cyclists and they need more room. As well, there have been some serious accidents in the past as cyclists were pushed off the sidewalk into traffic because of crowded conditions.

The previous COPE council had suggested the city try an experimental shutdown of two lanes of the six-lane bridge for cyclists to see whether that might be a less-expensive solution than renovation, as well as requiring no visible changes to the bridge, which the city’s heritage advocates have fought to keep as is.

But there was a lot of controversy over that idea and the current Non-Partisan Association council killed the proposal in one of its first sessions after being elected in 2005.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Ex-mayor Larry Campbell to seek feds’ support

Damian Inwood
Province

Vancouver Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi is welcoming an offer by Sen. Larry Campbell to play striker in stalled talks over a proposed waterfront soccer stadium.

“We’d welcome anything that he can do to get it to a quicker resolution,” said Lenarduzzi yesterday. “We are more than happy to get him involved.”

Plans for the 15,000-seat, open-air stadium near the SeaBus terminal have stalled over a proposed land swap between the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and ‘Caps owner Greg Kerfoot.

According to Lenarduzzi, the United Soccer League team is offering three hectares for one hectare owned by the port authority.

“Someone like Larry Campbell, who can ask the questions and get the answers, might be able to connect the feds back to the Vancouver Port Authority. And if that helps to get us toward a conclusion, then that’s good news,” said Lenarduzzi.

He said the club was caught off-guard by a decision last week to go public with details of the negotiations by Patrick McLaughlin, the port authority’s director of planning and development.

The stadium proposal was first raised three years ago when Campbell was mayor of Vancouver.

“I’m not lobbying for it,” Campbell said.

“I’m just suggesting there may be a role for an honest broker here. I certainly support it. I supported it from the start.”

Campbell said the project seemed to have momentum, but has since “dropped off the radar.”

Campbell said he’d talk to International Trade Minister David Emerson and Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, both from B.C.

McLaughlin couldn’t be reached for comment.

He said last week part of the disagreement revolved around the value of the port-owned land.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Province

Name: Belle Allen

Business:

AutoLeaseBreakers .com,

Vancouver

Contact: same website

Number of employees: Two (me and my husband)

Time in business: Three years

What is your business? We have a website that helps people who are stuck in an auto lease connect with people who are looking for a lease. We provide an online marketplace tailored to Canada and the U.S. where people wanting to get out of their lease can find people looking to take over a lease for a short-term period.

How did you get started? A couple of years ago while I was in college, I had a couple friends who were trying to get out of car leases. They had tried ads, but couldn’t find anyone. You get to a certain age and you want to buy a nice car, but you can’t afford one so you lease. Then with the cost of rent and just living, you can’t afford the payments, but you can’t get out of the lease without it being really expensive. I talked to my husband and we came up with the idea of making it easy and affordable for people to get out of their leases while benefitting people who are interested in leasing. By taking over a lease, they don’t have to make a down payment on the vehicle and they have a shorter commitment term.

What do you like about your business? I’m a stay-at-home mom and I can manage the business while also being at home with my daughter. I also get to meet people all across North America every day.

What is the biggest challenge? Building a website that was fully functional with all the bells and whistles to separate my business from any competitors. When I first started, it took a while for the traffic to pick up, but I’ve had thousands of people register in the last year.

Where do your buyers and sellers come from? We have a lot of U.S. clients, but we have people registered from all different cities across North America — some of them places I’ve never even heard of, all across the continent.

Future plans? We’re definitely trying to grow the business. We try to focus on what people want and need, and try to make them happy. Right now we’re also working on using a similar website model (www.bamja.com) to bring buyers and sellers of Whistler accommodation together as we head toward 2010.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

Documents outline industry’s worries

Jack Branswell and Mike Reid
Sun

OTTAWA — Canadians could pay more for light bulbs and may not even have access to certain types of lights because of a worldwide shortage when new national light bulb efficiency standards come into effect in 2012.

In documents obtained through the Access to Information Act, those issues were raised by the lighting industry with the government because of Canada‘s push to phase out inefficient light bulbs by 2012.

The government and the lighting industry had a summit in Toronto last June and documents out of that meeting and follow up ones show there is still concern about some of the details of how inefficient light bulbs — typically incandescents — will be replaced and at what cost.

In one document, government consultants said they assume price and supply will not be effected, but a government notation in the margin says “manufacturers are telling us that with the global push to go to CFLs (compact fluorescent lights), there would be a shortage of material and final products so prices may go up.”

Wayne Edwards, the vice-president of Electrical Equipment Manufacturer Association of Canada, said it is likely prices will increase after 2012. “For sure. Electronics that go into the ballast (the base) in CFLs can be and are in short supply. Some lamps may be in very short supply and may not be available.”

In government notes from the lighting summit it also has comments from industry participants: “There is a shortage of raw material to produce CFLs today.”

Another part of the document states that “global supply may be an issue if many jurisdictions attempt to implement similar standards at the same time. This problem could be compounded if (due to longer lifetimes for bulbs) the long-term demand is lower than initial demand.”

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the department leading the phase out program, is aware that since not just Canada, but the U.S., EU and other countries are all trying to phrase out inefficient bulbs all around the same time frame, that it may have an impact on product availability and prices.

“We’ve heard it and we’re concerned enough to try to get enough international work on it to see if it is going to be an issue,” said John Cockburn, senior chief of energy efficiency standards with NRCan. But Cockburn noted that TCP, a company that makes about 70 per cent of CFLs for the U.S. market, said it doesn’t foresee problems in meeting increased demand.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Province

Vancouver likes to boast it is a world-class city. But in the negotiations to build a new waterfront soccer stadium it is proving to be a minor-league player indeed.

Five years ago, Vancouver Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot first proposed building the stadium, at his own expense. However, he has had to fight a long and lonely battle to keep his dream alive.

In the meantime, soccer franchises in Toronto and Montreal have planned and built new stadiums with generous support from the public purse.

Early on, Kerfoot was backed by then-mayor Larry Campbell. But even though the city has since given preliminary approval for the $75-million project, political support has been woefully lacking. For the past 18 months, the scheme has been tied up in talks with the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.

Kerfoot wants to swap a 30,000-square-metre parcel of waterfront land he owns for 10,000 square metres of federally-owned port lands. But last week, the port authority broke a long silence on the talks to suggest Kerfoot was asking it to “give the land away.”

Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi says the authority is being “misleading” and welcomes the suggestion of a mediator to decide the issue. But even if the land issue can be resolved, it would still take another eight months for rezoning and development processes.

We say too much time has been wasted already.

It’s not just a mediator that’s required. We need someone to bang heads together until this stadium finally gets built.

© The Vancouver Province 2008