Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Ian Mass with CityBeat for May 2nd. This coming week, Vancouver City Council is going to consider more developments on the sports scene, Hastings Park, robots delivering food, tiny homes, and a lots more. Ian Mass joins me today with his City Beat Report to let us know what's going on there. Hi, Ian.
Speaker: Hi, Jean. How are you doing? I'm good. Now, last week, Mayor Sim and the ABC Council passed a motion to open an expression of interest process to identify a qualified proponent and potential ownership group for a major league baseball team in Vancouver.
Speaker: Details leaked out this week about who that is and what they want. So what did we find out? Well, council wants to hear, and we're looking to tell the public in 60 days if they've got a real interest here. But because the mayor said he'd been approached by serious and money people talking about a major league team here, but the mayor was silent on these folks were so.
Speaker: Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail dug around and identified all kinds of companies and people, including Vancouverite Ryan Reynolds, who apparently are interested. Now, a franchise and a stadium are about a $5 to $6 billion dollars endeavor, so lots of deep pockets need to be recruited.
Speaker: The other thing he reported was that the site of a future stadium could be on the property owned by the city on the southeast shore of Falls Creek, right next to the Canby Street Bridge.
Speaker: to That lot, it's ah it's a big lot, ah of about 15 acres. It's been used as a police parking lot and storage area for dozens of years there, just sitting there waiting to be developed.
Speaker: But the catch might be that the stadium also attracts a big entertainment district around the stadium, something I think would be met with a significant opposition by well-organized residents of the Southeast Falls Creek community.
Speaker: So we'll hear more about all of this in June. Okay, sticking with sports, we heard about developments concerning soccer's Vancouver Whitecaps. We did. You know, it's amazing how these sports are dominate the front page. And here we got the Whitecaps. Yes, the city signed a memorandum of understanding with the Whitecaps back late last year to explore a new stadium and an entertainment district at Hastings Park.
Speaker: Although negotiations are confidential, they seem to have stalled, with Mayor Sim implying that the province is at fault for not negotiating a deal with the Whitecaps to essentially have them take over all the game revenue from BC Place while a new stadium is built.
Speaker: But the minister in charge, Ravi Callan, who apparently himself is a season's ticket holder to the Whitecaps, says the Whitecaps are getting a good deal, but he's willing to talk a lot more with them.
Speaker: The problem is buyers won't commit to keeping the Whitecaps in Vancouver while all of this gets sorted out. So Major League Soccer is saying they have lots of interest from buyers, but only if they can move the team to a different city with apparently Las Vegas leading the pack.
Speaker: In the meantime, as an afterthought, lots of Eastside residents are trying to remind council that they're committed to greening Hastings Park. And this stadium proposal will undoubtedly come with lots of entertainment style development and only a little bit of green space.
Speaker: Hastings Park is getting a lot of attention this coming week, with two other motions being considered by council. What are they? Well, the first one is from ABC Councillor Klaassen. It's concerning the skateboard park tucked into a corner of the park.
Speaker: Counselor Klassen, who seems to know a lot about skateboarding, says users range from local youth to professional and competition-level skateboarders. He says the facility functions as one of the primary training venues in the region for high-performance skateboarding, including athletes preparing for national and international competition.
Speaker: Who knew? But apparently it's in bad shape and needs an expensive facelift costing up to a half a million dollars. So he wants a city to include that half a million dollars in the next capital plan and give the retrofit early priority.
Speaker: and And so what's his second motion about? It's about a lot of money. Late last year, the province announced that horse racing was finished at Hastings Park. The problem is that there's a casino there with close to 600 slot machines, and it can only operate if horse racing's going on.
Speaker: So the province gets $8 to $10 million dollars a year in revenue from that, from the slots. The city gets another $1.1 million and another close million dollars goes to the p and e and local services,
Speaker: including two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year for the kowasa neighborhood childcare facility So what is the city going to do? Well, in a novel approach, the city's suggesting it just ignores its own bylaw for the next three years as this whole thing gets sorted out.
Speaker: And, you know, complicating that, there's a purchase agreement between the great Canadian entertainment industry. company that owns the casino, and Tsleil-Waututh Nation, which announced just before the cancellation of horse racing that they were going to buy the casino.
Speaker: And I asked ah the Tsleil-Waututh Nation if that purchase agreement, which was subject to standard closing conditions, was still valid since it wasn't even referenced in the report.
Speaker: And they told me that, quote, our status with the casino portion of the business hasn't changed. Now, ABC, Councillor Klassen is busy this week. He's got another motion about robotic food delivery. What on earth is that?
Speaker: Well, he wants the city to partner with a company called Serve Robotics to deploy a fleet of food delivery robots in downtown Vancouver and Kitsilano starting this fall, actually, 2026.
Speaker: Apparently, it's been successful in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. So with all the tech companies in Vancouver, he says, why not give it a try for six months? See how it goes. Now, there's lots of bylaws to amend and the province has to agree, but he thinks it's doable despite cuts to city staff.
Speaker: Now, that's in the face of the city manager a couple of meetings ago, taking all kinds of things off of the staff work plan, including Mayor Sim's pet project, cryptocurrency.
Speaker: The city manager was setting a lack of capacity. Despite that, if it passes, it'll be fun to watch these food delivery robots roll out. Just last month on CityBeat, we talked about a 12% increase since 2023 in the unhoused population. 2,715 people in Vancouver, with nearly half of those people actually unsheltered.
Speaker: Green Councillor Pete Fry thinks he has part of the solution. Tell us about that. Well, Councillor Frye has been a champion of these tiny villages for a long time.
Speaker: In 2020, Council actually adopted his motion calling for a closer look at tiny homes and shelters as a timely, scalable and low cost response to street homelessness.
Speaker: And he included references to intentional villages such as Dignity Village in Portland and Opportunity Village in Eugene, Oregon, which had been quite successful.
Speaker: And even B.C. examples in Duncan and Kelowna are also cited. And just a little dig at FIFA, he cited Seattle's advancing hundreds of small shelter units ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a matter of, they called it urgency and public responsibility, but not in Vancouver.
Speaker: So what does he want Vancouver to do? Well, he's got a very thick four-page motion that goes through a lot of stuff, including a review of of Vancouver's tiny village on terminal with just 10 units and says that 10 unit tiny village wasn't at all timely.
Speaker: It took three years to put this pilot together. And so he says the city needs to use that learning to scale this up and do it a lot quicker. He says there's money to do this within existing funding sources.
Speaker: And ah the federal government just announced $125 million dollars of new additional funding for what they call the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampment Initiatives.
Speaker: So he wants to focus on standard prefab units for sites of 20 to 40 units with communal facilities, put them in underutilized parking lots or unused city property, cut the regulations, get the money, build them fast and save lives and money.
Speaker: Counselor Frye has another motion, and this one is advocating for increased support in the music community. What does he want to see done? his motion is called Sound Investment, Reinstating the Vancouver Music Fund.
Speaker: He makes the case that this fund, with its small grants, made a significant difference, especially with emerging artists. But the fund was the victim of the city's zero-mean-zero 2026 budget. They had to cut a lot. That was one of the things they cut.
Speaker: But he wants to see this fund reinstated 2027. which may be a tough sell given another 0% tax increase resulting in more significant cuts.
Speaker: But that's only if ABC and Mayor Sim win the October 17th election. So we'll see how this one goes. Any more updates on the election front? Well, team for a livable Vancouver, kind of a right-wing, left-wing party, it's hard to figure out where they are.
Speaker: ah But they, as expected, chose Colleen Hardwick, who ran for mayor last time, as their candidate for mayor. And they've got three city council candidates. In June, apparently, they'll choose more council candidates, as well as candidates for the school and park board. So they look like they're going all in.
Speaker: So with ah Colleen Hardwick announcing that makes six candidates for mayor from six credible parties. so And we're still waiting for COPE to decide if they're going to put anybody forward.
Speaker: And in a Georgia Straight interview I read just yesterday, Former Mayor Kennedy Stewart said he hasn't ruled out running again. Apparently, he says people from Mark Carney's office have been calling him about running. And he this is his quote. I think it's because Vancouver's current municipal administration can't work with the federal government.
Speaker: He says that about Ken Sims ruling ABC party. And so it'll be fun to watch how all of this will play out. And anyways, there you go. All the news that fits.
Speaker: Well, that's great, Ian. Thanks so much. And this is your last City Beat of our season. Until ah back in September when we're hot, hot in the municipal election mode.
Speaker: Right. Thanks so much. Thanks, Jane. I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass, who's here with his City Beat Report. You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver.
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Speaker: Thanks for listening.
