Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan
Planning for more housing on the east side
Draft Rupert Renfrew Station Area Plan - June 2024. ShapeYourCity page. The city survey is open until July 31.
Rupert and Renfrew stations are about 20 minutes east of downtown on the Millennium line. The next stations further out are Gilmore and Brentwood, where Burnaby’s been adding a lot of high-rises.
The area is divided north/south by the train tracks running parallel to the SkyTrain line, with crossings at Renfrew Station and at Rupert Station. Where there’s high groundwater levels, projects may need to build parking above-ground instead of below-ground, and construction costs may be higher, so greater height and density is allowed.
Also, there’s land reserved for employment (e.g. light industry), shown in purple above, where no housing will be allowed.
Less opposition on the east side
At a typical public consultation on the west side, most homeowners tend to be apprehensive about change. At Saturday’s launch event for the Rupert Renfrew plan, at Renfrew Community Centre, there were a lot of homeowners with the opposite concern: they wanted to know why the plan didn’t allow more density (which would increase the value of their property). Why is the plan restricted to six storeys one side of a street, while 20 storeys is allowed on the other side?
Prices and rents are higher on the west side, because more people want to live there, and so that’s where more housing should be built. The fact that local opposition is stronger on the west side, limiting the height of new development, is like pushing down on a balloon: people don’t disappear, they end up moving further out, to the east side, or to Burnaby, Surrey, or Langley.
Nonetheless, planning for a lot more housing is definitely a good thing.
Amenities as an in-kind tax on new housing
The Tier 1 sites (shown in brown), closest to the two stations, will allow for the most height and density. A project can add more height by including 20% below-market rental (at 80% of average city-wide rents) or childcare.
My understanding is that in the Broadway Plan area, where market rents are high, adding one floor of non-market rentals and one floor of market rentals roughly cancel each other out: the value of the resulting floor space, minus the cost of constructing it, is roughly zero.
So a 25-storey building with five storeys of below-market rentals would be worth roughly the same as a 15-storey market rental building.
This suggests that if there’s a choice between a 25-storey project with 20% below-market rentals, or a 20-storey market rental project, the 20-storey option will be chosen.
Tier 2 (lighter brown on the map) has similar options.
Tier 3 (even lighter) doesn’t have the below-market rental and childcare options:
Local shopping areas (“villages”)
There’s two local shopping areas identified, at 1st and Renfrew, and on 22nd between Renfrew and Rupert.
The plan here is for up to six-storey rental projects with 20% below-market rentals.
This seems even less likely to be economically viable. A Coriolis analysis from May 2022 found that there’s not much land lift in a six-storey market rental project.
Missing middle areas
Outside the station areas and “villages,” the plan is to allow six-storey buildings and multiplexes. There’s no mention of below-market rentals being required for the six-storey buildings, but it seems unlikely that they’d be required in the villages but not elsewhere.
After subtracting construction costs and inclusionary-zoning requirements (below-market rentals), six-storey buildings have a hard time outcompeting multiplexes.
An exchange:
Yeah, I noticed the same when reading a paper about inclusionary zoning in California. Some of it was fees, but even when fees were removed, duplexes frequently had higher land value than low-rise apartments.
And:
Costs to build an apartment are very high. It's just a lot more money, and a lot more complicated, to build an apartment than a duplex. And duplex revenues, per square foot are high. Higher than rental apartments even at $5 per square foot monthly rents.
More
Up to 40 storey towers for SkyTrain's Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan in East Vancouver. Kenneth Chan, Daily Hive, June 25.
On the opposition side: What Does the Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan
Say to All of Vancouver? Jeanette Jones and Joseph Jones, Eye on Norquay, June 29.
This is great. Hopefully create some very livable centres. The child care amenity is much needed.