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 joins us with his City Beat Report for March 8th. Here's Lorraine Chisholm. Next week, Vancouver City Council will get its first look at the full plan for the massive redevelopment of the Jericho lands.
Speaker: The park board will try to make biking in Stanley Park safer and more accessible. And the Vancouver school trustees will consider restoring democracy at their meetings and lots more.
Speaker: Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass is here with a City Beat report. Good morning, Ian. Good morning, Lorraine. So Vancouver Council and the public will get their first look at the proposed final plan for the Jericho lands up on the hill in West Point Great. What does this plan tell us?
Speaker: Well, it is a massive densification plan. It was developed by the MST Development Corporation, which is a partnership of the Musqueam Indian Band, the Squamish Nation, and the Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Speaker: ah Now, the Jericho Lands Plan follows Council's overall Vancouver plan, which they passed a whole number of years ago, and that's a strategy to guide the long-term growth of the city over the next 30 years.
Speaker: And this Vancouver plan, it identifies the area around Jericho lands as a rapid transit area. So the planners are certainly counting on that UBC SkyTrain extension being built with a station serving the Jericho lands. And apparently that's the plan if they ever get enough money to do it.
Speaker: But the plan itself, the Jericho lands at full build out, they're looking at about 13,000 new homes there for about 24,000 residents and 3,000 jobs. So it's a little village up there, a little town up there that they're going to build.
Speaker: A minimum of 20% is going to be used for social housing, 10% for rental, and a fair amount for what's called leasehold stratas. The public amenities, lots of parks, a 50,000 square foot community center, child care spaces, 15,000 square feet of cultural facilities, and a non-traditional library called the House of Learning.
Speaker: And they're also going to set land aside for a new elementary school up there for about 550 students. Now, other than the school, that that whole community amenities has has a $550 million dollars price tag.
Speaker: And apparently the development is going to pay for all of it. But it's going to take a while. It's about 25 years to build out in about four phases. That's quite a long time.
Speaker: So what happens next? Well, as long as council is fine with the plan when they see it on Tuesday, this whole plan will go to a public hearing relatively quickly for comment. And that'll be the last chance for the public to talk about this plan.
Speaker: One of the groups waiting to talk about this development and actually the overall densification of much of Vancouver is a group called the Jericho Coalition, and they're demanding a halt, a total halt to this Jericho lands plan, claiming it lets the developer drop social and below market affordable housing. If ah the money's not there from senior governments, they object to what they estimate is 60 luxury high-rise towers.
Speaker: up to 49 stories high on this development. And just for good measure, they described the SkyTrain extension to UBC as unnecessary and super costly at $8 to $10 billion. dollars So, Ian, who is this Jericho Coalition?
Speaker: Well, they describe themselves as a group of engaged and concerned volunteer citizens, but they're very closely aligned with Colleen Hardwick and her team for a livable Vancouver.
Speaker: Now, Colleen is the former NPA counselor and 2022 mayoral candidate. mayoral candidate And she's running for a council seat in the April 5th by-election.
Speaker: That's the one to fill the two council seats vacated by Christine Boyle and Adrian Carr. And this group is behind also much of the opposition to the rezoning of the old Safeway site up on West 10th and West Point Grey. That's been vacant since 2019. We talked about that a couple of city beats ago.
Speaker: Council heard a proposal about this Safeway site to rezone it. They want to build 19 and 21-story towers there and two six-story towers and containing over 571 rental unit.
Speaker: Council ran out of time and had to postpone that decision until this coming Tuesday. So between Jericho and Safeway, a sleepy old West Point Grey is getting a wake-up call it doesn't like a lot.
Speaker: Now, Councillor Rebecca Bly has two motions before council next week. yeah Can you give us a preview of that? Sure. ah The first one, she wants staff to study an all-electric passenger ferry linking downtown Vancouver, Bowen Island, and the Sunshine Coast.
Speaker: She says the hello ferry that was just established that goes from downtown Vancouver to Nanaimo and carried apparently 400,000 passengers last year is a good example of how people will bypass traffic and waits at Horseshoe Bay if a fast and reliable alternative is available. So she's asking staff for a study of that.
Speaker: The second motion she brought forward talks about how the city collects quite a substantial amount of money from developers to pay for new or expanded infrastructure. to service their rezonings, their their developments.
Speaker: That money, it's called developmental cost levies or DCLs, is paid up front when the building permit is issued. Councillor Bly wants the staff to look at options of the developers paying these ah fees at some later date.
Speaker: She believes that this could support new housing by reducing developers' charges. at the front end of the development. And developers naturally think this is a great idea, although there's no evidence that this would actually stimulate development or that the money they saved from interest would be reflected in the final price of the development.
Speaker: ah Now, Counselor Bligh is kind of a side story here is in the bad books with Ken Simm. in his ABC party, and she was kicked out of the caucus just a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker: So it'd be interesting to see how ABC majority handles this these particular motions. Now, Ian, one city Vancouver school board trustee, Jennifer Reddy, has a motion before council on Monday called Democracy, Accountability and Public Participation at the VSB board and committee meetings.
Speaker: What's that about? Well, Trustee Reddy calls it a motion to restore democracy at the Vancouver School Board. She says that, and I quote, over the last six years, she's heard from parents, students, and members of the public about the barriers they face when trying to access their elected trustees.
Speaker: So the motion goes on to outline a whole number of actions Reddy wants the trustees to take to improve the opportunities for public engagement, and participation in decision-making. And you can check there, it's a long list. You can check those actions out on the school board website.
Speaker: There's a whole number of speakers lined up for the Monday meeting to support the motion, including ah Stephen Von Sychosky. He's the president of the Vancouver and District Labor Council.
Speaker: So we'll see what the trustees do with this. Okay, let's turn to the park board. They're going to be considering a report on Monday designed to make bike riding around Stanley Park a bit safer and more accessible.
Speaker: How are they proposing to do that? Well, the commissioners will be seeing a report that's designed to get rid of what's called maze gates or speed gates at Lumberman's Arch, Prospect Point, and Third Beach in Stanley Park.
Speaker: ah No matter what they call it, people who ride around Stanley Park know you have to get off your bikes and walk through these bikes through this through the pedestrian zone. The problem is that it's difficult and impossible in some cases for users such as adaptive bicycles, hand cyclists, trailers, or longer bikes.
Speaker: They can't get through these things. They can't maneuver through this maze. So apparently everybody agrees that these gates have to go, and they need to be replaced with a whole variety of new techniques to get cyclists to slow down, especially in those cycles.
Speaker: high pedestrian areas. The problem with that solution is that it costs $830,000 to do it, and the park board doesn't have the money. So if they agree with this plan, they're going to have to ask the voters to give them the money in the next capital plan, which doesn't come up for a vote until 2026. So it looks like the maze gates won't be gone until at least 2027.
Speaker: Keep getting off your bikes, folks. ah Well, I'm sure you and I have both experienced that there. Yes, yes. I think it's important to slow down, but those things are a bit ah a little bit difficult to handle sometimes. Yeah, they're they're gone, maybe in 2027. Okay.
Speaker: As always, there's lots of rezoning applications that council will hear from the public about next week. You've got three of them to highlight. Yeah, the first is right next to the Mount St. Joseph's Hospital and on Kingsway there at 13th.
Speaker: Right now, the land you you would barely recognize, it's got an inconspicuous dog park and a parking lot on it. It's kind of a weird kind of lot there. But it's built big enough. Apparently, the developer's asking to build two very tall towers. They're 32 and 25 stories, 542 rental units, 37 space child care facility, and ground for a commercial.
Speaker: And that'll really dominate that corner of Kingsway. The Broadway plan says that's what we need here in town. So the staff is recommending yes. And this goes to a public hearing next Thursday.
Speaker: The next one we talked about before, it's the old City Center Motel at 6th and Main. It's been functioning as the City Center Artist Lodge with 75 artist studios.
Speaker: They're wonderfully painted on the outside by artists. who were supported by the recently defunct Vancouver Mural Festival. The owner, who to their credit, supported these artist studios, wants to tear the whole thing down and build 22 and 24 story building containing four hundred and forty six rental units But they do want to replace these temporary studios ah with a new, quote, long-term, affordable, shared, light industrial production space for visual artists, which will be owned by the city and operated by a nonprofit.
Speaker: It's a lot smaller than the 18,000 square feet artist space they have now. That new proposal takes it down to about 5,800 square feet. And if you're interested, you'll have a chance to tell Council What do you think about that plan next Thursday?
Speaker: The final one is a redevelopment and expansion of Maison de la Francophone Cultural Center at 1551 West That's just west of Granville Street there.
Speaker: The price tag for this redevelopment and expansion of the Cultural Center is allowing the site to be rezoned to build 125 strata title, high-priced residential units.
Speaker: And... There we go. These are the density trade-offs we make in Vancouver to build childcare, artist studios, and cultural centers. And that's all that fits.
Speaker: Well, thanks so much, Ian. I always love to get your City Beat report. Thanks. Thanks, Lorraine. It's a pleasure to do it. That was Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass with his City Beat report.
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