by John Streit

Towers and cranes in everywhere you look in today’s West End. *(John Streit Photos)*

THE WEST END COMMUNITY PLAN
Part II of A Two-Part Series
Find Part I Here

(Click on any image to enlarge)

by John Streit
Unless you are a municipal government nerd, civic politics wonk, or truly and deeply engaged in neighborhood issues, there is a pretty good chance you’ve never heard of the West End Public Benefits Strategy. It’s a key component of the City of Vancouver’s official West End Community Plan, with both being enacted in 2013.

The PBS (nobody really calls it by this acronym, but I will to reduce typing) is meant to combine millions in developer community amenity contributions (CACs) with city and often provincial/federal and non-profit money to construct or upgrade new public buildings, places, and affordable housing for many years to come.

A 2021 progress report from the City of Vancouver lays out many of the amenities you may have seen pop up around the neighborhood.

This includes ten new childcare spaces, seven to fourteen new family childcare spaces (5 percent of the City’s target). Increased housing options include over 1,500 units of secured rental housing (80 percent of target) and 308 units of social housing (19 percent of target).

Upgrades have been made to Gordon Neighbourhood House and new spaces have been created for people to gather, including Jim Deva Plaza, three other plazas, street and sidewalk patios, and public space improvements at Robson-Alberni.

In terms of getting around, PBS money has gone towards a new mini-ferry dock at Sunset Beach, new traffic signals, and over a kilometer of pedestrian and cycling improvements including most recently Haro Street. Seawall restoration (pre-recent winter storm damage) and water main replacement are also counted as partly PBS-funded upgrades.

So with development seemingly exploding in our neighborhood (particularly on Robson, Alberni, and Davie), are we getting enough from our PBS and CACs bucks?

A planning department staff memo to Vancouver City Council from 2021 reads in part “Generally, the PBS is on track and has delivered significant amenities (early successes in housing delivery and transportation/public realm improvements), with more substantial projects now in planning (such as the West End Community Centre.)”

But the planning department cautions, “We see the long-term delivery of the Public Benefits Strategy is challenged by both the volume of renewal obligations in the West End and availability of renewal funding city-wide.”

The memo goes on to say, “To successfully deliver these projects, the City will need to coordinate, prioritize and align the delivery of large-scale projects across all public benefits strategies in the city over the next ten to twenty years, including the allocation of limited City funding.“ In terms of costs, “the current estimated costs to deliver the Public Benefits Strategy have increased, from the $620 million estimated in 2013, when the West End Community Plan was adopted, to approximately $1.5 billion.”

Randy Helten is a founder and director with West End Neighbours and spoke with The West End Journal about the community plan in our March issue. He has many concerns about the PBS.

“The plan was adopted, staff were removed from overseeing implementation and community engagement, developers had a field day building towers and making profits, an unknown but significant number of long-term renters have been forced to move out of affordable rental accommodations, the character and feel of some parts of the West End have been changed dramatically, the population has already increased significantly, none (not one) of the planners originally involved in the West End Community Plan planning process are involved anymore and only one member of council at the time remains there today. The municipal government as an institution has had a lack of accountability to West End residents. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in profits have been made by developers, and no major improvements have yet been made in amenities, while the projected costs of doing so have skyrocketed, and the West End now has to stand in line with other neighborhoods in the City to get funding for the promised amenity improvements,” Helten says.

West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert says West Enders were told things would happen to improve our community because of the West End Community Plan.

“Major construction has happened but we are still waiting for the benefits. The West End Community Centre Renewal and expansion, with a Joe Fortes Library expansion, art center and senior’s space with an expanded and integrated King George Secondary is overdue and so needed. I’m actively on the hunt for more spaces to site needed childcare, and am looking for new opportunities for housing for folks with lower incomes and affordable rentals in the West End and across Vancouver as our geography is so tight. We’ve seen childcare and supportive housing started in the West End in the last five years. But the demand is so high, much more work is needed,” Chandra Herbert says.

There are several Public Benefits Strategy projects in the pipeline. The public engagement process continues for the ‘West End Community Hub’ which will include a new community center, secondary school, ice rink, public library, fire hall and childcare facilities. Currently, City staff are planning how people will use the community hub spaces, through research, survey and workshops. A final plan is expected in the Winter of 2023.

Then there’s the recently launched ‘Imagine West End Waterfront’, a 30-year plan to redesign parks, beaches, facilities, and transportation at English Bay, Sunset Beach, Alexandra Park, and Morton Park. It’s in phase three of a five-part City process, which means initial concepts and ideas are being developed after input was gathered from the community. Meanwhile, construction is underway at Davie and Burrard of the new Qmunity building. This will be a new purpose-built center to support LGBTQ people with social housing on the floors above.

And if you want to flex your muscles, a new outdoor West End Calisthenics Park has opened at Barclay Heritage Square. This was one of the $50,000 winners of the community WEChoo$e participatory budgeting pilot program. It includes an incline bench, a Swedish ladder, and a push-up bar. On the City’s website, the parks’ proponents say “outdoor equipment can provide both physical and social benefits by facilitating interactions and community building between neighbors who may not regularly have an opportunity to interact with one another. It is available to anyone regardless of their financial situation.”

Andy Yan is the director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. He says other cities have Public Benefits Strategies, but it all goes into how you fund them.

“There are different ways of funding amenities packages such as this. One is taxation and another is capital borrowing. The Vancouver model, which gained popularity in the 1990s, is where you attach an additional charge to additional density to new development. That type of charge, mainly on the provision of a new amenity, is part of the clawback in the additional density given to a project. CACs can be delivered on-site or in fees. For example, it can be used when you're putting up a building in Downtown South to include a daycare or an art gallery. An onsite amenity. What's curious is how much of this is now shifting to city coffers? When it enters the city coffers, what is the transparency to see what happens to that contribution from that particular building? Does that get redistributed into that project or neighborhood? Or, does it get distributed elsewhere in the city as general revenue?” Yan wonders.

The recent collapse of a portion of the façade of the 1974 Vancouver Aquatic Centre is an example of an obviously aging public amenity with plans for a new facility still many years away.

“Those amenities are from the good ol’ days of capital borrowing or taxation and how much of this shifts towards the expectation that funding can be achieved through new development. Well, what motivates a housing development? Is approval based solely on the merit of the project or is it now connected to the delivery of the amenities?” Yan asks.

So is the right type of housing (almost all contributing CACs to the Public Benefits Strategy) being built in the West End? Yan says this issue touches upon displacement due to lack of affordability. “For all that new development coming into the West End, is that replacement? Is that displacement? It may add to the housing stock but is it for the demographics already in the West End or is it for a new demographic? Then you also think about the health of the city. The West End is such a critical stock of workforce rental housing. That incredible housing ecosystem of St Paul's Hospital and the West End will also be disrupted by the move to False Creek Flats,” he says.

Yan offered testimony last week to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. “What's happening is the decoupling of rental from local incomes. You could count on the fact that rentals wouldn't increase much because they're inherently tied to local incomes. Now you have Short Term Rentals fully coming into play and you can make so much more money than renting to a local worker. So rents are no longer reflective of local wages,” Yan says.

Yan believes more people should get to know and discuss their local PBS. “You're really touching upon a really critical point towards city operations. This is how cities work and the connections between new developments and the delivery or renewal of amenities. Having a lack of citizen oversight in terms of fulfilling public benefits strategies is kind of how we ended up with the city we have.”