ABOUT THAT WEST END COMMUNITY PLAN?
Is The City Following Its Own Guidelines?

(click on images to enlarge)

In November of 2013 Vancouver City Council adopted the West End Community Plan (WECP) after a 20-month process the City launched in response to neighbourhood concerns about rezonings for towers, and a petition of over 13,000 signatures by residents demanding a comprehensive plan through meaningful consultation. The WECP was intended to manage change in the neighbourhood for thirty years and accommodate 7,000 to 10,000 new residents and the same number of new jobs.

We are now in the eighth year of implementation. How has it worked out for the community so far? Let us look back at the first seven years and then ahead at issues for the future.

The 139-page WECP is available on the City's website here.

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

The City decided to launch three parallel community plan processes in 2011 (Grandview-Woodland, Marpole and the West End) and each followed a different path, but the WECP was the first one completed.

A consortium of community groups has met from time to time to share information and discuss matters, including Denman and West Neighbours (DAWN), West End Act Now, West End Arts, the West End Business Improvement Association, West End Families in Action, West End Neighbours, and the West End Seniors Network. We encourage readers of The West End Journal to support them. In the past year they have been in contact with the City to seek some follow-up on the WECP, and the City has admitted it owes the neighbourhood an update.

While the community itself endures and continues to change, staff turnover at City Hall has nearly wiped out any continuity in communication with the neighbourhood on planning issues. WECP “implementation newsletters” were e-mailed to subscribers beginning in 2015, but slowed to a trickle, and stopped cold in 2019. COVID-19 may have thrown a wrench into things, but community residents deserve a resumption of reporting from the City.

The stated objectives of the WECP covered housing, transportation, parks and open space, heritage, arts and culture, and more. Most notably, the plan stated that “Deepening housing affordability and meeting the needs of a growing community are a priority,” although no definition of “deep” affordability was ever provided. Many voices in 2013 stressed that the final draft plan was full of surprises and items that had not been sufficiently presented or discussed with the community, and many asked for more time. But Council decided to go ahead and approve the plan, listening to those whose support was gained by promises to protect neighbourhood character in certain areas, new facilities for specified groups, and the big carrot of a Public Benefits Strategy of up to $630 million to fund the replacement of ageing facilities to serve the increasing and changing population.

A City press release quoted then-Mayor Gregor Robertson, “Many of the facilities in the West End are either out-of-date or at capacity. Whether it is upgrades to the community centre and library, the aquatic centre or the ice rink, we heard clearly from the public that their favourite recreation facilities are in need of renewal. The new Community Plan reflects what we heard and will make that happen.”

Vancouver Park Board report tallies up major developments in West End.

EIGHT YEARS IN, HOW ARE WE DOING?

So, how are we doing now, in the eighth year of the thirty-year plan?

As of March 2021, the City has yet to report on many things, including how much money it has collected toward the targets of the Public Benefits Strategy, public consultation has yet to begin on the community center and King George High School redevelopment, and even the future of the Aquatic Centre, which was slated for major upgrades or renewal, is uncertain.

A West End Parking Strategy has been adopted, reducing parking spots and significantly increasing the cost of permits for street parking. The Jim Deva Plaza in Davie Village, a major feature of the WECP, was built with a million-dollar construction budget but is currently in serious need of clean up, event programming, and care. The community group Qmunity featured in the WECP is now slated to get some space in a proposed 17-storey tower at Davie and Burrard (on a corner site that happens to be just outside the West End), but the rezoning application (here) has yet to go to a public hearing, and completion is still years ahead.

Meanwhile, the site of St. Paul’s Hospital has been sold and will result in years of demolition and new tower construction on the site, not to mention the loss of the medical services “ecosystem” around the hospital, and the addition of many new towers.

No new artist or cultural space has yet been created. So in general, in terms of benefits, it would be an understatement to say that much work remains.

Shadows cast on lower Davie Street on an otherwise sunny Saturday morning.

One thing is clear, though.

Tower projects have been approved and constructed at a phenomenal pace. Developers moved immediately once the WECP was adopted, making a flurry of property deals and moving at an aggressive pace with applications, with the predictable crescendo of increased property values. The City has yet to report to West End residents with cumulative development information such as numbers and types of units approved and built, demolitions, human displacement, and losses of existing rental and condo housing.

Though the City has not yet reported, insights came tangentially from a surprising source, a Vancouver Park Board staff report to commissioners in September 2020 about a consulting contract for the waterfront parks and Beach Avenue master plan. CityHallWatch tallied up the 40-plus towers listed, and found that within the WECP boundary, over 10,000 units (which could mean around 20,000 new residents) were already approved, in process, or expected. In other words, by the seventh year of the thirty-year plan, new developments may have already reached more than double the population target.

IS THE PLAN BEING FOLLOWED?

So, is the City adhering to its own policies and guidelines under the WECP? A community plan is a social contract between the municipal government and the community, with the City as the gatekeeper in dealing with developers. The WECP, in its 139 pages, presents seven general principles, and over 200 policies for the several “distinct character areas” of the West End. Other key documentation includes the district schedule, zoning and design guidelines, a rezoning policy, and a Laneway 2.0 “toolkit” for infill housing. Every rezoning and development application is a separate case, making it a bit of a task to write a comprehensive view of compliance or consistency with the plan from the community perspective. Thus, we focus here on some selected themes.

The new tower at 1075 Nelson will cast a long shadow over Nelson Park.

SHADOW IMPACTS: One provision of the WECP sets out the objective to avoid shadowing areas of public use, such as shopping streets and parks. However, shadow impacts of recently-approved developments will reduce sun exposure for well-used neighbourhood spaces, such as Nelson Park and the playing field of Lord Nelson Elementary School (both the main school and the annex). These impacts are permanent and will result in the loss of sunshine to these areas for generations ahead.

The West End Community Plan calls for “greener, more walkable laneways, which help contribute to community pride and social interaction” but this is a high concrete wall hundreds of feet long.

TOWER SEPARATION: Likewise, the WECP sets a guideline stating that new towers need to be a minimum of 24.4 meters (80 feet) from other towers. This was already a significant change from the previous West End guidelines which required a 400-foot spacing between towers and essentially limited tower developments to not more than one tower per block. But recent development approvals by the City have relaxed even the 80-foot tower separation objective, or finessed the guidelines to shoehorn the tower into place.

SOCIAL HOUSING: In November 2020, responding to pleas from developers, the City decided to change the WECP requirement for some “social housing” in the Thurlow corridor and instead permit “all market rental” development. The change would significantly reduce the Community Amenity Contributions for the West End, as well as the provision of housing for those most in need.

The fact that projects “stalled” due to the WECP requirement of social housing suggests that prices developers paid for land were too high (inflated by the WECP) and the economics of these projects did not work. This is a serious flaw in the community plan and shows that in its rush to approve the plan, the City failed to take the time for proper economic testing.

The tragic thing is that many residents were evicted on the basis of development plans and who knows when or if the new housing will ever get built.

TOWER DESIGN: One concept embedded into the WECP is to reflect the historical form of high-rise development from the earlier phase of densification in the 1960s. The tall, slim tower design helped preserve a sense of openness and allow light and air into the neighbourhood, and has often been praised as part of the West End character. Thus, the WECP set an objective for maximum floor plate size (the area of each floor of a building) not to exceed a particular maximum, which varied in different parts of the neighbourhood. But the City has since then approved many exceptions to this guideline by injecting the concept of “averaging” floor areas, to accommodate larger lower floors and smaller upper floors, using the rationale that the “average” floorplate complies with the maximum.

This ruse is not consistent with the spirit of the plan and the objective of the floorplate provisions.

This tower under construction at 1550 Alberni abuts directly on the back lane. There may be no other building in the West End sited this way on its property. Trying to squeeze a much as possible onto this site, the developer created challenges for d… — This tower under construction at 1550 Alberni abuts directly on the back lane. There may be no other building in the West End sited this way on its property. Trying to squeeze a much as possible onto this site, the developer created challenges for design of the building on Robson that once housed "Chocolate Mousse" store. This is also an example of construction impacts spilling out into surrounding public areas and created noise, dirt, and traffic challenges for neighbours.

A CASE STUDY
Alberni-Georgia corridor and
Lower Robson

Each of the several distinct character areas in the WECP is a story unto itself, some with more change and some with less since 2013, so let’s look briefly at just one area.

West End Neighbours tallied a total of 17 towers proposed as of August 2019 within the area bounded by West Georgia, Broughton, Robson, and Denman. Together, these towers if stacked up comprise a staggering 618 storeys of development with over 3,130 units and 3,965 vehicle parking spaces. Once built, these developments alone would boost the population by as much as 6,000 new residents, or 60 to 85 percent of the total population growth anticipated by the thirty-year plan. Just over 80 percent of the units are market strata.

The current developments include 291 proposed market rental units as “one-to-one replacements” for currently existing rental units, which are to be demolished and the tenants displaced. Along Robson Street, 238 rental and/or social housing units are proposed.

Apart from the huge numbers of projects and units proceeding in this area, local residents have spoken out about many cases of the basic guidelines of the WECP being relaxed or ignored, not to mention the displacement of current residents, increased traffic congestion due to construction, and noise, dust and other disruptions. The same concerns affect many other parts of the West End.

THE ISSUES, LOOKING FORWARD
The City Needs To Improve Its Communications

The City’s adoption of the West End Community Plan in 2013 unleashed a flurry of changes. The pace of demolition and construction has been dramatic, but most of the promised benefits for the community have yet to appear. We need to see more effort by the City to manage construction impacts, and more resources provided for residents to gain information about how their day-to-day lives will be affected and who they can turn to for assistance.

We can expect to see major consultation, planning and infrastructure projects occurring in parallel in the coming months and years, like the master plan for the West End waterfront, the upheaval of Nelson Park to build electrical infrastructure underground, the demolition and replacement of the West End Community Centre, rink and high school, the demolition of St. Paul’s Hospital and site redevelopment, “participatory budgeting” to utilize a portion of the considerable funds now being collected from West End parking permits, promised laneway improvements, and more.

One of the biggest questions is how are we doing on the much vaunted Public Benefits Strategy to be funded by revenues from all this development in the West End.

Going forward, West Enders need to stay alert to new developments and initiatives and provide feedback to the City about compliance with and implementation of the WECP. But the onus should not all be on residents.

The City needs to do a better job of communicating about what is going on.

This “West End Voices” editorial was prepared by Randy Helten of West End Neighbours (WEN), with input from Mike Redmond of Denman and West Neighbours (DAWN) and Ginny Richards and Ann Robson also of WEN.