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: In this episode, city beat for February 21st. Red Eyes Ian Mass joins me now to talk about calls for unity on the progressive left, which heated up this week. And on CityBeat, he wonders if after 19 years, will a school in Olympic Village finally be approved? Plus, World Cup soccer comes to Vancouver in June.
Speaker: Are we ready? And lots more with this CityBeat report. Good morning, Ian. Lots more, yes. Hi, Lorene. Now, one city, let's start right off with this. One city candidate for mayor, William Azeroth, was up early on City Hall steps this past Tuesday morning announcing that one city was in fact interested in being part of what's being called a progressive primary designed to have one mayoral unity candidate lead Cope, Greens, and one city into the municipal election this coming October.
Speaker: What are the details of this one city plan? Well, one the one city plan naturally favors themselves, so there's some negotiation here. But the most obvious place where that stands out is who would be eligible to vote.
Speaker: So one city is proposing, if you're a member of any of these three parties, as of last Monday, February 16th, you can vote. And this follows one city's internally contested election for mayor, which swelled their membership rules to over 2,800 members. So they have a lot of members.
Speaker: I'm told that COPE has about 1,500 members, while Vancouver Greens have only 200 to 300 members. Now, they want all parties to agree, if they agree with this, to get behind the winner and not run anyone else for mayor. So they want this primary done by the first week of April so that the campaign plans can be activated for the October election.
Speaker: So what happens now, Ian? Well, one city says they require an answer by no later than 11.30, February 20th, which is today, Lorraine, as we record this interview. So we're not really sure what's going to happen, but there has been responses. COPE responded to this quick turnaround with ah COPE co-chair Sam Smart saying, quote, we're also a bit confused about the full details in context of what's being proposed.
Speaker: Pete Fry of the Greens, who's announced he is running for mayor, says actually he's against one city's proposal, which likely kills any unity agreement, at least for right now.
Speaker: Pete Fry wants a people's primary, not a member's primary. But nobody's explained how that would work. Would that be a citywide? referendum on who runs for the left and how would they organize that? All kinds of questions. Now, the Coop and Greens have been actually talking a lot.
Speaker: They've ah ah recently agreed on a proposal to limit each other's party's candidates. for the upcoming election. They want five combined mayor council candidates for both parties, up to four school board candidates and up to four park board candidates. And ah one city at this point hasn't commented on that proposal. They're kind of left out of that at this point. So unity, as it's been for many years, is still a mess.
Speaker: And we'll have to see what can be salvaged out of this. Well, it definitely comes across as a mess. You talked last week about how Olympic Village in Southeast Falls Creek might finally get a school, something they've been asking for since residents moved into Athletes Village after the Olympic Games in 2010.
Speaker: What's happened there? Well, council did hear from everybody and from the staff and all of that and the public, a huge, huge outpouring of support for this school, but they didn't have time to make a decision. So they put it over to next Thursday, February 26th. I talked a but bit about this last week on City B. The school actually had a rezoning permit ready to go with a three-story school with less students than they're asking for now.
Speaker: So now the school board wants to increase the maximum height of the building from three stories to four stories. And they're proposing what they call a vertical campus model with an increased capacity to fit in about 630 students instead of the original student population of 350. I mean, all of the schools down in that area are beyond capacity. I'm told Mount Pleasant School is 200% over capacity. So this model yeah with this amount of people would allow additional classrooms and play spaces. And it would fit in that ah little little spot there. I think it's called Hinge Park down in South East Falls Creek.
Speaker: They'd also provide before and after school care spaces. Now, the opposition, interestingly, says they're happy with the original three-story model. It's smaller, not as big, and all of that.
Speaker: And essentially, this proposal's too big. We're going to have to wait to next Thursday. They've been waiting 19 years. they can wait another week, I guess. Now, Soccer's World Cup is coming to Vancouver in just under four months. Council has three different motions about this. They'll discuss next week. What are these all about?
Speaker: Well, the first is about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency of the United States government, ICE, who we've heard lots about. They've generated a lot of controversy as ah they've aggressively and violently carried out Donald Trump's immigration agenda.
Speaker: Councilors Fry and Orr have a motion that they call ICE out of the beautiful game in Vancouver's World Cup. This was prompted, actually, by yeah U.S. officials announcing that they'd be sending ICE agents to the Milan Olympics, which are on right now.
Speaker: So they make the case, or and fry, that ICE agents in Vancouver ah for the World Cup could and likely will generate potentially massive protests like in in Minneapolis and other cities in the United States. This could lead to all kinds of things, violence especially, bringing in a relatively undertrained ICE agents, which has been one of the problems down south.
Speaker: So they want the mayor to write to the federal government The FIFA, the FIFA is the Federation Internationale de Football Association. It's the sports global governing body, which runs the World Cup. And they also want the letter to go to the Vancouver police telling them that Vancouver City Council formally opposes any deployment of ICE agents to Vancouver. for FIFA-related security operations.
Speaker: And they also want to send a copy of this to Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and her city council since they're hosting games too. So we'll see how that goes. That comes on Tuesday.
Speaker: What's the next motion, Ian? Well, the both of these next two and three motions have some element of surprise to me. This second one's called Meeting the Moment to FIFA Public Safety and Local Readiness Working Group. And it's ah submitted by Counselor Bly and Counselor Orr.
Speaker: And primarily, they want to bring together a wide range of community business reps, indigenous leaders, folks like that, to develop what they call an integrated readiness strategy for World Cup.
Speaker: This strategy apparently would include neighborhood safety, gender based violence prevention, and how they'd respond to that, bar watch, all kinds of those kind of safety issues.
Speaker: My first mild surprise was that with less than four months to go before this whole thing starts, the city doesn't doesn't have a local readiness plan, at least none that Bly and Orno, and you know do they need this motion to set this thing up?
Speaker: The second surprise is more political. It's that former ABC Councillor Bly, who's running for mayor, and Sean Orr of COPE are partnering up on this motion. The progressive unity, as Orr talks about, and they all talk about it on the left,
Speaker: probably doesn't extend that far across the political spectrum to Councillor Blay, but they cooperated on this one. So finally, FIFA wants us to let them use our bus and bike lanes, not the little bike lanes, but the ones we share sometimes with buses and high occupancy vehicles.
Speaker: So naturally, the city is going to go ahead with this, but it's interesting. They signed a contract with ah FIFA contractual obligation to do this ah probably a year ago or so. But in this bureaucratic ah world where things seem to go sometimes in circles, the staff needs to write a report to the city council. City council needs to pass a resolution supporting this and then send it on to the provincial minister of transportation who also needs to approve this. So We're going around in circles a bit here. I'm sure our bike lanes, or at least some of them, will be blocked in time.
Speaker: Well, there are a few surprising things in there. Including our bike lanes. Yeah. Maybe I'm not surprised. Am I surprised? i don't know.
Speaker: Now, I understand that council will consider a renewed plan focused on the equity, safety and well-being of two-spirit transgender ah and gender diverse people in Vancouver.
Speaker: What's the report saying? Well, they've had this for a couple of years and they've actually developed a plan. They want to refresh this. They want an overarching approach for the city of Vancouver. Vancouver's work to advance equity, safety, and well-being of this two-spirited transgender and gender diverse communities.
Speaker: And I want a particular focus on recognizing and addressing systemic barriers in access to services and and inclusion for these these communities. So they've got five priority areas ah for their annual plan. um They've developed this, they say, through community engagement. I don't doubt it.
Speaker: They want to have improved housing and homelessness, community safety and spaces for people, programs and services, engagement visibility. and human resources and staff experience at City Hall. Now, those are wide-ranging goals, and they are broken down into more precise actions in the report that you can read on the city's website. So, we'll see what the council thinks about this plan this coming Tuesday.
Speaker: So Ian, you've been talking about the incredible number of redevelopment applications that council has had to deal with this winter. The next two weeks aren't any different. What's council seeing in this next while?
Speaker: Sure. Lots of redevelopment and public hearings and all of that kind of stuff. The first one I just wanted to talk a little bit about is the new St. Paul's Hospital in Strathcona.
Speaker: It's not that. Their building now that apparently is going to be up in 2027, but it continues to attract redevelopment. This time it's a proposal for a 20-story residential tower with 321 rental housing units and another 17-story office tower just on prior there, right when you come off the east end of the Georgia Viaduct. And council actually heard this one this week and ah unanimously passed it.
Speaker: There's an ambitious rezoning application on East Hastings near Clark, where they've got a lot of development recently. Not a lot of services down there, Clark and East Hastings, but they're building like crazy. So this one is really pretty interesting. It's an application to rezone three different properties and build buildings.
Speaker: a lot of rental units, 767 rental units and 157 social housing units. The social housing is particularly interesting because it's going to consist entirely of studio and one-bedroom units, which will be targeted primarily to seniors and also people with special needs.
Speaker: And apparently one of the conditions of this three buildings is that the social housing will be built before the rentals. Another unusual condition of this whole application, it's an all or nothing package, which means that council needs to approve all three or they don't get any of them. So, council will hear all about this this coming Tuesday.
Speaker: And the old Molson Brewery site, lots of us know that. It's been around for a long time. Down at the south end of the Burrard Street Bridge at First Avenue, council's being told, really, it's it's zoned for industrial, but it's no longer suitable for standalone industrial uses. There's no access anymore, no railroad access. The streets are residential. So they are recommending changing the zoning from industrial to mixed-use high-rise. So This rezoning will likely mirror the development across the street, which is Sunaquay development developed by the Squamish Nation. It has those three towers there. If you've been by recently, it's got about 1,600 rental apartments ready for occupancy by the end of this year in what's only phase one of four stages of development around this thin strip of land around the south end of the Burrard Bridge.
Speaker: So those four phases have over 6,000 rental homes, along with neighborhoods serving retail and dining spots. Now, Concord Pacific used to own much of the north shore of Falls Creek and still owns a wide path there around ah the Georgia Vidak. They bought this Molson's property in 2016 for $185 million. dollars They're the owners.
Speaker: And certainly this rezoning will increase that land value to a lot more than $185 million. So we'll see what they have in mind. But this is a complicated process around changing industrial to residential and all of that. So it's going to be a while before we hear that.
Speaker: And finally, last night, we also saw that the 2030 Barclay proposal, which I talked about last time, it's for a 25-story luxury hotel deep in the West End overlooking the Stanley Park.
Speaker: I just looked it up this morning to see how far they got. They only got six speakers into, ah I think, a fairly large speakers list because of much of the West End was mobilized against this. So they're going to come back, I think, sometime next week and try to finish this off.
Speaker: Just to finish off, there are three new motions ah for council to consider next week. What have we got there? Yeah, and all three of them need a lot more than what I'm going to say about them, but we only have so much time, don't we?
Speaker: So the first one is COPE Councillor Orr wants to a recommitment by the city to a $10 a day childcare, especially on public lands. He's concerned that these childcare facilities are going more private now than public, and he wants that, at least when the city's involved, to only be public lands.
Speaker: Councillor Bly has a motion called reversing the costly ban on supportive housing. And that ban was applied by Mayor Sim and his ABC colleagues back in February. They were thinking that Vancouver is taking too much of the supportive housing load. and they want the region to take more. So they just said no more in Vancouver. So she wants it reversed. Fat chance that'll happen with this council. And retired Vancouver cop and ABC councillor Montague wants the city to establish an indoor Vancouver Police Department recruit training academy. He wants that down at the Woodwards building to replace London Drugs who moved out of that building. So they want training academy down there.
Speaker: The Vancouver police say they can do it for $4 million, dollars which Councillor Montag says can just come from that old faithful funder of of governments when they don't have any money, the contingency reserve. And so we'll see how that one goes. That's probably a pass there. And there go. As I catch my breath, that's all that fits, Lorraine.
Speaker: Thanks so much, Ian. that's That's a lot this week and ah a lot for us to chew on. You got it. I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass. He was here with the City Beat Report.
Speaker: You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be great if you left a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people to find us.
Speaker: Also, please consider sharing this episode with a friend or telling someone about our podcast. To keep up with the show, you can subscribe to Red Eye wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can follow us on Blue Sky at Red Eye Radio.
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
