"Overbuilding everywhere!"
Three Safeway redevelopments face vocal opposition
A tale of three Safeways: What their very different redevelopment plans say about Vancouver. Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, February 5.
Three Vancouver Safeway developments: 'Overbuilding everywhere!' Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, February 11.
Why is housing in Vancouver so scarce and expensive?
We have people who want to live and work here, and other people who want to build housing for them.
Projects face vocal opposition from neighbours who like their neighbourhood the way it is. “It’s easier to elect a pope.”
The opposition is particularly maddening because these projects have zero displacement. When projects like this are blocked or downsized, people who would have lived there don't vanish into thin air - they find somewhere else to live, resulting in displacement elsewhere. It’s like pushing down on a balloon.
The three proposals:
West Point Grey: 4545 West 10th Avenue. 450 market rental apartments and 115 non-market. The site has been a vacant lot for six years. Reddit thread. It’s going to a public hearing on February 25. Agenda.
Kitsilano: 2315 West 4th Avenue. 390 market rental apartments. This is in a C-2B zone, so it doesn’t require rezoning. Daily Hive article by Kenneth Chan, November 2024.
Broadway and Commercial: 1780 East Broadway. 940 market rental apartments and 100 non-market. Reddit thread, with links to previous threads. Kenneth Chan on the history of the Grandview-Woodlands area plan, June 2022. “No Megatowers at Safeway!”
Some comments on the West Point Grey project:
“A big, brutal impenetrable fortress. It looks like a structure put up by people expecting a war.”
“A village could not possibly look like that. Was Putin on the design committee? It sure reeks of Soviet-era attitude to density.”
“1960s public housing project.”
The article notes that the project has greater height and density because it includes 115 non-market rentals, cross-subsidized by the market rentals. The stream of future rental income from the project needs to cover the cost of building it. So including the cross-subsidized rentals means that you need more density (“Vitamin D”) to increase the total rental income.
The West Point Grey project:
The Kitsilano project:
The Broadway and Commercial project, on top of the busiest SkyTrain station in the system:
More
Current approval process - why is it so broken?
Russil, have you analyzed the social infrastructure capacity around these developments?
I am talking about school spaces!
DYK:
The Vancouver School Board has two forecasts?
1. Long Range Facilities Planning: Created in 2020 and last updated in May 2022 and it forecasts a decline of kids in Vancouver - 5,000 fewer kids by 2031. Meanwhile, the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care forecasts 10,000 more kids in Vancouver by 2031.
2. Financially, since funding is based on per student numbers, the Vancouver School Board is forecasting an increase of kids in the next 3 years.
What an epic laggard mindset in the VSB leadership team; these are shenanigans that affect our children.