Gastown residents alarmed at recycling depot’s relocation plans
Gerry Bellett
Sun
Mark Wynen and Donna Whalley oppose a possible move of United We Can close to their condo building. Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver
Residents in the Alexander and Gore area will fight any attempt to move the United We Can recycling depot from Hastings Street into their neighbourhood, says Donna Whalley, strata president of The Edge, a 160-resident condo at 289 Alexander St.
“This area has been slowly improving over the years with new businesses moving in. But having United We Can right opposite us would knock it all back,” Whalley said Friday.
The recycling depot, which does $2 million worth of business a year and takes in 20 million beverage containers from downtown binners, has outgrown its premises at 39 East Hastings and needs a bigger building, said executive director Brian Dodd.
But it was too early to say where the operation might relocate as three or four sites — including one on Alexander — were being considered, he said.
“Nothing is a done deal. When we choose one we will have to go through the community consultation process and it wouldn’t be in our best interests to go where we are not wanted,” said Dodd.
Whalley said residents believe that city hall was fast tracking the proposal, but Dodd said nothing has been proposed to city hall.
“We haven’t given them a proposal because we haven’t identified a site,” he said.
Wherever they relocate, the new premises will have to be in the Downtown Eastside as that was where they were licensed to operate and that was where their clients lived, said Dodd.
“This is the area we have to serve,” he said.
The depot employs 150 full- and part-time workers.
On Monday residents and businesses in the Alexander and Gore area will be holding a Safety for All committee meeting and the United We Can item will be top of the agenda, said Whalley.
“We support what they do, but we feel it must be in an industrial zone. We don’t want what goes on outside the Hastings Street UWC to come to our area,” she said.
Coun. George Chow made a motion two years ago asking city hall staff to assist United We Can to find new premises in time for the 2010 Olympics as the current location results in crowds of binners collecting outside the facility waiting to get in.
The motion said the facility attracts drug dealers “camouflaging in the crowd and street vendors hawking goods of dubious origin . . . the result is constant chaos and an atmosphere of pending violence on the street around the UWC premises that also impact negatively on neighbouring stores . . . .”
Whalley said those were the reasons residents and businesses didn’t want the recycling depot in their area.
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