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Topics http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/urban-planning The taxonomy view with a depth of 0. en-cwm Ecodensity Forever? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/05/05/ecodensity-forever Experts praise Vancouver's density strategy. But where does the city go from here? Is there life beyond condos and cafes? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/05/05/ecodensity-forever#comments Top Stories BCBusiness community condo development condos ecodensity economic development roundtable Top Stories urban planning Vancouver Urbanism Wed, 05 May 2010 12:11:08 -0700 BCBusiness <div class="bcb-article-deck">Does downtown Vancouver have a future beyond condos and coffee shops?</div> The party’s over. The guests have all gone home, and after seven years of arranging the furniture and polishing the silverware, the hosts can finally sit back and breathe a sigh of relief. They liked us. Sure, we deserve some down time, a few days off to shuffle around in our slippers and field the thank-you calls. But it won’t be long before Vancouverites have to slap some cold water on their faces and confront the reality of a new day. Our shiny new downtown impressed the visitors, but where do we go from here? How long can a city sustain itself building one “livable” community of high-rise condos after another? Coal Harbour, Yaletown, False Creek: Vancouver has replicated its exemplary model of urban living over and over. But already cracks are appearing. Southeast False Creek, expected to be the crowning achievement of Ecodensity, required emergency life support to see completion, and its dreams of social diversity will be scaled back drastically, if not jettisoned altogether. We’ve busted our transportation budget with a shiny new subway line that whisks visitors downtown but does little for daily commuters, since downtown jobs are increasingly rare. For the latest insights into possible futures for downtown Vancouver, BCBusiness gathered a panel including experts in real estate, demographic trends, architecture and design. Cameron Muir is chief economist with the B.C. Real Estate Association; Andrew Ramlo is a director with Urban Futures, a population research institute; and Trevor Boddy is an architecture critic and curator of “Vancouverism,” an exhibition that travelled to London and Paris before returning to Vancouver during the Olympics. Vancouverites feel pretty smug about having one of the world’s most livable cities, but where do we go from here? Do we just keep building more condos and coffee shops? MUIR: The trend toward higher density is not going to reverse itself. Vancouver is constrained by the ocean, the mountains, the border and the agricultural land reserve, with land in finite supply. The only place we’re going to house people is through high density and by going up rather than spreading out. BODDY: Vancouver’s identity for a generation has been a place that has emphasized livability above all else. What we’re not doing well is the other half of the equation downtown, and that’s workspace. We have areas that used to house startups – software companies, architects – areas like Gastown, portions of Chinatown, Yaletown. Those have almost completely converted to housing, so we’ve lost our incubators. And we’ve built very little in terms of workspace over the last 10 to 15 years. In 1991 city council rezoned half of downtown to “residential optional.” Virtually none of that has gone as workspace. Our development and real estate industries are expert at providing housing, but we have to make some very serious public decisions about the nature of downtown and whether it will be a residential-only zone. RAMLO: You guys are talking primarily about land use, but it’s the people who live on the land that are going to have an implication. Who is living downtown? Well, it’s predominantly 20-to-30-year-olds. A much higher proportion in that age group than in the region as a whole.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="328" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-1.jpg" alt="" /> Cameron Muir</div> But how long can we continue filling downtown with condos? BODDY: That’s one of the most important things for us to talk about today: downtown Vancouver after the era of cheap money. The era when Vancouver identified itself solely in real estate terms ended during the Olympic Games. The identity that Vancouver hangs on to as one enormous and continuous development project is going to change. A certain watermark has been passed, and with an era of expensive money – and with some of the demographic forces that Andrew’s indicated – we’re going to have quite a different city emerging in 10 to 15 years, and I’m not convinced we’re planning for it. I think we’ll be reactive: a kind of panic will set in in a couple of years when we’re not booming, when the cranes aren’t visible, when prices are not going up. We’ve so identified ourselves through those markers that we’ll wonder if we’re still Vancouver without them. MUIR: Another key issue is affordable housing. If you go back 15, 18 years, the purpose-built rental stock in Greater Vancouver has actually declined about five per cent, and that’s been driven primarily by economics: it made more sense to build condominiums than it did to build rentals. So the population growth and the increase in rental demand has been satiated by private investors who have been buying a condominium or two and renting them out, as well as the many basement suites that are around the city. Purpose-built rental stock is likely not going to increase in a major way unless there’s some program or incentive out there. And as long as that supply is being constrained, then we’re going to have high housing costs. Will Vancouver ever be a head-office town? MUIR: We continue to have a small contingent of head offices here, and it’s still going to be a centre for businesses that need that connectivity, that need to have a presence in the major city. But a lot of office space activity over the next 20 years is going to move out toward the suburbs, where rents are less and there’s available space. And when we look at job growth, it’s highly correlated to where population is and where business park industrial land is, and that’s certainly strongest in areas such as Surrey and Langley, for example. RAMLO: There’s also the function of what the Lower Mainland economy is. Unlike Calgary, where you go to the streets and ask, “What’s driving our local economy?” and people are going to say, “Oil,” ask the same question of somebody in downtown Vancouver and people don’t really know. So it’s a much more diversified economy, which lends itself to diversification in terms of the workplace as well. We don’t need as much of that concentration downtown. But having said that, if you’re not going to build any offices downtown, then you’re certainly not going to reinforce those jobs downtown. BODDY: I guess I’m the worrier here because I think Vancouver has been asleep at the switch in terms of economic development. The city of Calgary spends more on economic development than every B.C. municipality put together. And they’re out there stomping on our toes. Vancouver, for the first time, will have to get over its beautiful-adolescence self-image and actually get out there and wear down some shoe leather, using things like land and quality of life to attract new business and grow the ones we have. Yes, there are lots of startups in Yaletown apartments, and lots of us work out of our homes, but what happens when you hire your third employee? When businesses get successful they migrate out, and there goes the tax base. MUIR: We can’t disconnect downtown Vancouver from the overall region. Yes, the downtown area is an innovation incubator for young entrepreneurs, and as those incubators produce companies they may in fact move out of their trendy downtown space. But the important thing is that they move out to maybe south Vancouver or to Richmond or to Surrey or Burnaby, but not out of the region or the province. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges going forward, to maintain that intellectual capital.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="296" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-2.jpg" alt="" /> Andrew Ramlo</div> How else will the shift of business from downtown to the suburbs affect Vancouver? BODDY: If they move to strip malls in Surrey, that has a huge public policy impact. The growth in office space in the last decade has been in places that are incredibly ill-served by public transit. Our whole radial system of rail-based transit makes absolutely no sense because people are going to jobs where there isn’t any bus service. That’s the other missing option: we’ve got huge potential to develop around our transit stations, but complete paralysis. Look at Broadway and Commercial: 24 years after it became the hub of our transit system, nothing has been done there. If you look at Toronto, you see that the development industry worked with politicians and overrode the objections of neighbours to make job and living hubs right at transit. We are so far behind that, and we’re behind Richmond and Burnaby, and even Surrey is doing that. Vancouver is the slow coach. RAMLO: That regional context applies to living too. The data for people with kids shows that you probably move into a condo downtown, either with a kid or you have one after you move in, but where do you put the next one? Do you put him out in the hall? Your likelihood is to transition away from that condo downtown. They’re going toward family-style housing, and the degree to which that type of housing is incorporated into downtown at a reasonable price will keep some of those people from going elsewhere. What will downtown Vancouver look like in 20 years? BODDY: Vancouverites talk about downtown because it’s our hood ornament, our symbol, our leading brand. But really, the future of downtown will ultimately be determined by what happens in the rest of the city and the region. Architecturally, Vancouver is more or less done; the cake is baked. It’ll be surprisingly undifferent in 15 to 20 years. What will really change will be things like our arterials. Kingsway, for example. Talk about huge potential: a transit corridor, and a lot of it has views. We will make a better downtown by enforcing the best qualities in the rest of the city. We can create affordability, create places where people other than extremely wealthy investors can have a niche. RAMLO: If you just look at the downtown peninsula, your cake certainly is baked. But the pancake is going to flow eastward as well. And the Downtown Eastside will certainly have an implication in terms of becoming a more integrated part of downtown. That may be on the job side because people are looking at some sites to be developed in terms of workspace. But also on the residential side, with the City of Vancouver saying they’re going to put a cap on residential development here. Well, where are the developers going to look? They’re looking to the east side.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="306" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-3.jpg" alt="" /> Trevor Boddy</div> Why haven’t developers taken advantage by building around transportation nodes? MUIR: I think the number-one reason is that we don’t see the groundwork laid by local cities and municipalities in order to have those nodes rezoned and capable of supporting taller buildings and much higher residential densities. With the SkyTrain station on Commercial Drive, you’d think, given all the time that it’s been there, there would be several office towers, residential towers, some office space, unique retail and restaurant facilities. RAMLO: And that’s not a product of the transportation system; that’s a product of planning. The planning notes say that we want to focus on jobs, in terms of that higher density stuff, in the regional town centres. Commercial and Broadway is the most accessible location within the Lower Mainland in terms of transportation, and it’s fundamentally stupid that it’s one storey all the way around. BODDY: But the planning situation is a manifestation of political will, and in Vancouver there has not been political will to develop, or even to plan around the stations. For example, I live right by the King Edward station of the Canada Line. It’s all single-storey commercial buildings and bungalows, a hundred yards away. And when the line opened, the planning process just started. Where were they seven or eight years ago when they knew exactly what the station would be? There’s a kind of terror of residents objecting. In other words, why make a fuss by allowing density at our nodes? We’ll just leave it fallow. And you see the results of that at Commercial and Broadway. If Vancouver’s downtown core is essentially built out, might suburbs like Surrey become the new downtown? BODDY: I’ve been doing a fair bit of work in Surrey, and I think there is a really different ethos out there. I see a kind of hustle and grit right now that’s sort of lacking from Vancouver. I see a kind of readiness and an openness; Surrey knows that it faces a very competitive landscape for talent, for new businesses, for the tax dollars, and if they don’t offer quality urban spaces, with bikeable, walkable hubs, with more amenities, they will lose to other municipalities that are doing it better. RAMLO: Vancouver’s the good-looking cousin. In Vancouver we can sit back on our laurels and say, “Gee, we can accept anything because we are the good-looking cousin.” And that has certainly shaped, to date, what is done on the land-use side and is going to in the future. BODDY: Vancouver’s problem in the urban forum and in business development is success. We’re good-looking, we’re popular; the world came for our Olympics and they loved us. But we have to understand that we cannot coast on beauty and livability forever. We have to actually deliver the goods, and delivering the goods means filling in the gaps: developing the arterials, addressing affordability, for both residents and businesses. Where do you expect to see the biggest change in Vancouver in the next 20 years? RAMLO: It’s obviously going to be a much different place than it is today. Immigration is going to drive population growth in the coming years, so it’s going to be much more culturally diverse. And the tides are turning: downtown is becoming more of a suburb, and the suburbs are becoming more like downtown. Downtown will always be downtown, but we will start to see some diversification throughout the region. MUIR: The skyline is going to get a little bit higher, but, more importantly, in 20 years the boomers – the pig in the python if you will – is moving forward and housing design over the next 20 years will have to change, as will the way we design livable communities. In terms of the economy, I think Vancouver’s ideal location and our ethnic diversity are setting the stage for tremendous success with our trading partners in Asia, and I think we’ll be astounded at the amount of trade and integration that we’re going to receive as a result of that. BODDY: I’d like to go back to the metaphor of the downtown peninsula as a cake that’s baked. What hasn’t been done, though, is that we haven’t iced it yet. And I think there are some pretty important decisions there. You can destroy a cake with icing, and by icing I mean things like public spaces, parks. And I do think that with the 10 or 20 per cent of sites that are yet to be developed, we have to get much more demanding in terms of architectural quality, both in terms of the visual quality of our buildings and their social fit and possibility. Basically the shape is there; it’s come out of the oven and it’s ready to be iced. I hope it ends well. 11981 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca The Downtown Divide http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2009/01/01/downtown-divide Residences or businesses in the downtown core? It isn't either-or. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2009/01/01/downtown-divide#comments Business Sense Bob Rennie City of Vancouver January 2009 land development office and commercial density urban planning Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:49:07 -0800 Bob Rennie The world tilted and we didn't fall off. Like a scary Disneyland ride, the market has shaken some money out of our pockets, and we're now dealing with an upset stomach and some blurred vision. But as with any ride, we know from experience that somewhere, in the not-so-distant future, the roller-coaster will end. Our legs will stop shaking and we'll find some steady ground to stand upon. As the City of Vancouver looks for that solid ground, the current priority for planners is to preserve the downtown core for office/commercial density. The problem is that, in isolation, this plays into the growing perception of Vancouver as a "rich man's city." Our number 1 challenge going forward is finding affordable homes for local incomes, and while we must continue to attract businesses to Vancouver, these new office towers will prove only part of the solution. Without housing for future workers, and not just for the CEOs, our economic prospects are in serious jeopardy. Adding to the housing strain is the fact that people are still migrating to B.C. – from across Canada and around the world – in record numbers. Urban Futures predicts that average migration to the Lower Mainland will rise from about 30,000 annually to over 45,000 annually in the next two decades. People in places like China and South Korea – who have also gone on a bit of a ride and seen money fall out of their pockets – are now re-evaluating where they want their money, as well as themselves and their families, to live. They're searching for something new and hopeful – but something that's still safe. Vancouver remains, despite all the global economic uncertainty, at the top of their list. But if we are to continue to be seen as that "safe" alternative, we need to be able to fund cultural and civic infrastructures – to build and maintain the sort of city in which people want to live. As philanthropy declines during these tough economic times, how are we going to fund major museums and cultural venues? How will we fix another tear in the BC Place roof? Governments can't take on debt as they did before because the revenue is not there to offset the enormous costs. Look at what happened to Ballet B.C. just before Christmas. As office and residential developers continue to sit on their chequebooks, where are we going to recoup all those lost property taxes and development-cost dollars that help run our city and province? I estimate that over $100 million in anticipated development-cost levies has been put on hold in southeast False Creek alone since mid-2008. This is revenue that our city was counting on, and now they'll have to either raise taxes or cut funding to deliver today what was promised yesterday. As much as the rest of B.C. and Canada hate to hear it, Vancouver is special. That is why we can't say, "Let's have office towers," and "Be less reliant on the car," then ignore affordable housing for those who want to live close to work. We can't say, "Create cultural experiences," "Solve homelessness" and "Entice the world to move here" and then complain when the world actually shows interest in coming. As our stomachs settle and eyes clear, we are left counting and recounting what's left in our pockets. But we're also left with some hard choices. Do we build offices in the hopes of attracting new business without building nearby homes for workers? Do we continue to rely on investors to be our primary source of rental stock? Can we build cultural venues and fund arts institutions without property-related tax dollars? This time, when the dust clears, we cannot complain about the state of Vancouver unless we resolve to be part of the solution. Nothing can be looked at in isolation. As my ex-wife used to say, paraphrasing a well-known quote: "A man who adheres to a position previously stated when times change is an idiot." It's a guiding philosophy for my business and an enduring hope for my city. 4002 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Hometown showdown http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2007/08/01/hometown-showdown http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2007/08/01/hometown-showdown#comments Top Stories activism consultations Cumberland development hometown showdown planning Trilogy Properties Corp. urban planning Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:05:42 -0700 By Andrew Findlay "I was the first one to put up a sign like this. I wanted everyone to see it as they drove into town," she explains as a trickle of traffic rolls past on Cumberland Road. Cumberland was once a town with a plan worth the paper it was written on. At the time of its creation, Cumberland's official community plan (OCP) was a model of participatory democracy, the result of hundreds of kitchen and town-hall meetings that enjoyed remarkable public involvement from this Vancouver Island town of around 2,800. When the process was complete and the OCP was adopted by village council in 2004, the consultants had produced an impressive document that specified where and how Cumberland would grow; what land would be zoned commercial, industrial and residential; and how the buildings would appear aesthetically – all in the interest of preserving the unique heritage feel of this old coal-mining town while diversifying its meager tax base. Sure, there was plenty of debate and some people only grudgingly accepted the outcome; however, it seemed the impossible had been achieved: a general consensus on managing growth and development. It's no laughing matter achieving consensus in a place like Cumberland, affectionately referred to as "Dodge." Except for the main drag, Dunsmuir Avenue, gravel back lanes abut potholed streets without sidewalks, and laundry flutters on clotheslines in front of heritage homes in varying degrees of restoration or dilapidation. It's a place founded on the fortunes of coal baron Lord Robert Dunsmuir back in 1888, and although the last mine shut four decades ago, a company-knows-best mentality still persists in some circles. It's not uncommon for a third- or fourth-generation Cumberlander, whose father, uncles and grandfather worked in Dunsmuir's mines, to half-jokingly refer to a 20-year resident as a "goddamn newcomer." Recently a youthful mix of artists, musicians and professionals have flocked to Cumberland from "the city" for the affordable housing and the intimate, authentic heritage feel of the village. The town has the kind of aesthetic charm over which planners lose sleep trying to conjure or contrive elsewhere. Getting these two solitudes – old mining families and newcomers – to sit down in a room, agree on the nature and form of development and hammer out an OCP was a major coup. However, three years after the ink dried on this weighty tome and one municipal election later, Kate Greening and scores of other citizens belonging to the Cumberland Residents' Association will tell you the plan has the punch of a librarian. Where did this marvel of democracy go off the rails? Some blame their own council and the arrival of Trilogy Properties Corp., the renowned Vancouver-based developer behind the chic Opus Hotel in Yaletown and the award-winning University Marketplace at UBC. Founded in 1990 by former Intrawest developer John Evans, Trilogy has since left its mark on the cityscapes of Vancouver and Whistler. In 2005, after property prices had spiked considerably in Vancouver Island's Comox Valley, Evans cast his gaze toward cash-poor but land-rich Cumberland – specifically at a massive 309-hectare chunk of land within village boundaries surrounding the strategic Cumberland exit from the Inland Island Highway. It's no surprise that Trilogy saw gold. From the ancient Roman Empire to the modern-day Fraser Valley, highway crossroads have always been nodes of commerce. That's why, back in the mid-1990s when the asphalt was being laid for this four-lane expressway, Cumberland's astute political minders refused to join other Island communities in signing an MOU prohibiting development at highway interchanges. In 2002 Cumberland cemented its designs on this coveted chunk of turf when it annexed the land as part of a village expansion that tripled its land base. In 2005 Trilogy took out an option to buy the property, the company's first play on Vancouver Island. Why? It's simple, says Evans: "The Comox Valley is the most amenity-rich place in British Columbia right now." The attentions of a respected Vancouver development firm immediately caused a buzz in Cumberland pubs and coffee shops. However, it soon became clear that something was amiss. The problem for some locals was that Trilogy's emerging vision for the property barely resembled the vision Cumberland citizens had spent six months and thousands of volunteer hours forging into a road map for future development. Trilogy would soon ask for major amendments to the OCP to allow for residential housing on land zoned as commercial or working forest. Last February Trilogy had its wish granted by council, in spite of an obstreperous public hearing on October 28 of last year, during which 91 per cent of the speakers, 781 signatures on a petition and 195 letters objected to the OCP amendment. So much for grassroots democracy. For many locals who poured heart and soul into the OCP, it has become exactly what they feared – not worth the paper it's written on. There's nothing illegal or even untoward about what Trilogy is asking for; OCPs are amended and changed as casually as people change shirts. Trilogy says it needs to sell house lots along with commercial space to pay for up-front servicing costs, whereas the vision laid out by citizens in the OCP explicitly targeted the interchange for commercial and retail, while directing residential development toward the existing village core. That way, Cumberland's central historical core would be maintained, the tax base would be boosted by lucrative commercial ratepayers situated at the strategic highway intersection and Cumberland wouldn't be saddled in the future with suburban sprawl that eventually becomes a municipal tax burden when infrastructure needs to be upgraded. Now the homemade signs have gone up on the front porches and lawns of Cumberland: "Impeach Cumberland Council," and "OCP Not For Sale." Citizens who either took part in creating the OCP or supported the final result are crying foul, saying the spirit of public participation and democracy has been compromised, and accusing village council of folding like a pup tent to the whims of a flashy big-city developer. To the outside observer, however, Cumberland's is a story of what happens when lofty dreams of public participation in civic planning get dashed upon the cold, hard pragmatic realities of town politics and urban development. To understand this all-too-familiar battle between small-town citizens and a savvy developer, it's best to pop the cork on the politics that brought Cumberland to this crossroads. A good place to start is with planning consultant Dale Bishop, who can only shake his head when he looks at what has become of the OCP he was hired to help create. "I saw an opportunity to do an OCP the way it was meant to be, with a large amount of public participation. The scale of Cumberland presented a unique opportunity for a planning approach that we had talked about for years," says the former Vancouverite. Ever since his idealistic days as a student at the University of Michigan back in the 1960s, Bishop had dreamed about a planning exercise that would be guided by the people and for the people, a process in which planners would play the role of facilitators instead of ivory-tower professionals dispensing wisdom to the citizenry. Cumberland was an ideal place to put his vision into practice. Not only was the village manageably small in population, but voters had just recently elected a council that was all female, except for mayor Fred Bates, and particularly progressive and green-minded. Bishop and his colleague Lou Varela scored the planning contract and got started in 2003. Counterintuitively, for the first six months they did no actual planning. Instead they facilitated the formation of three task forces to deal with economic, social and environmental issues. "We wanted to first build a common knowledge base about the community," Bishop explains. Rather than use the dry jargon of academic planning, the "knowledge" would be documented in the folksy language of locals. For example, volunteers sitting on the economics task force wanted to find out where the money came from in town, how much the village collected in taxes and where it was spent. So they sent a questionnaire around to residences, local businesses and the village office entitled "Where's the money, honey?" When the task force published the results of its work, it was written in equally homespun vernacular. For example: "In 2002 the Village's take-home pay was just over $1.7 million and, just like home, we spent it," it states. "We had 45 very intelligent people sitting on these task forces. People were reluctant about the process at first, but, when they realized that we weren't trying to use anybody, they got excited about it. They took ownership of the process," Bishop says. After the task forces published their respective tabloids, the community engaged in what Bishop calls "a conversation about character." During 55 kitchen meetings, attended by anywhere from four to a dozen people and including everyone from third-generation Cumberlanders to so-called "newcomers," citizens discussed form and function. From these casual, informal and potentially divisive meetings, citizens started to distill consensus. For example, someone would say, "I don't want another Nanaimo out there at the interchange." After further discussion, it would emerge that what the person actually objected to was not so much the concentration of auto dealerships and large retailers but rather their appearance – the kilometre after square kilometre of asphalt and generic construction with little or no green space. Slowly a coherent vision started to emerge. Generally people wanted to preserve Cumberland's small-town ambiance and prevent sprawl, while also expanding and diversifying the town's tax base. Roughly speaking, residential development would be contained within a boundary that would preserve the quaint central feel of Cumberland's historical centre, while commercial and light industrial development would be restricted to lands within village boundaries and adjacent to the Inland Island Highway. After the meetings were concluded, Bishop and Varela went to work condensing the results into a concise one-and-a-half-page document gloriously entitled "The Voice of the People." "We held three public meetings and asked the people, 'Did we get it right?' It was supported unanimously," Bishop says confidently. Finally it was time to use technical planning skills to translate the "voice" into hard lines on a map, which became the OCP. In June 2004 it was adopted by council and became law under the Municipal Act. The hard cost of the OCP was roughly $150,000, mostly for consultant, administrative and office fees. The real cost in terms of time and emotional investment was much greater: some 2,000 volunteer hours involving 300 residents in more than 200 meetings. Kate Greening is a Cumberland "newcomer," meaning she's owned a house there for 20 years. With her business background and legal mind, she naturally gravitated toward the OCP and specifically the economics task force. "It was fairly intense," she recalls. "We met every Monday for months. In the end, I thought the OCP was a good process. Sure, some people accepted it under protest, but in general the town arrived at some sort of consensus." That the same mayor who, Greening says, quite enthusiastically endorsed the OCP process, along with the current council, should sell out the OCP to the first big developer to come along is, in her view, unconscionable. She isn't one to mince words. "Council hasn't honoured the goal of public participation. Our councillors are used to running the village like their own little fiefdom. Cumberland was always a company town and that mentality still exists," Greening says. She knows she'll get her chance to pass judgment. When Cumberlanders hit the polls again in 2008, they'll have the opportunity to judge the current council's performance. Grace Doherty is a late-in-life but nonetheless passionate community activist. She has only lived in Cumberland for two years but didn't waste any time jumping into the political fray. "Political activism was never part of my retirement plan," says the former public-health nurse while preparing for the annual plant sale that raises money for the Cumberland Community Forest Society. "I see this as a real reaction against the concerns of citizens. Any opposition is seen as people being against progress, and there's been a constant minimizing and marginalizing of our views. It's like council had already made up its mind." As for Bishop, he doesn't fault Trilogy for its plan. In fact, at face value, he says Evans could probably confidently put it forward for scrutiny in a graduate-school planning class. However, he says it belongs in a Surrey suburb, not in Cumberland. "What does this plan have to do with Cumberland?" he asks. Although he expected more from Trilogy in terms of respecting a community plan, he says responsibility for upholding it ultimately lies on the shoulders of village council. "Cumberland citizens have every right to feel betrayed by their council," Bishop says. "Council has really abdicated their responsibility in the context of a plan that was created by the people." It wasn't always that way. In fact, when Trilogy first publicized its intentions to develop in Cumberland, Mayor Bates was quoted in an August 2005 Vancouver Sun article saying that Trilogy had assured Cumberland that it respects the OCP. "As long as their proposal reflects that, we'll be fine," Bates said. In the same news article, Trilogy's Evans told the reporter he was happy with what he saw in the OCP. So what changed in the last two years? Well, if you ask Evans today, he says market conditions and a greater understanding of the OCP have rendered the plan largely obsolete and in need of refreshing. Reached over the phone at his office in downtown Vancouver, Evans says that some Cumberland locals have unfairly demonized his company. If anything, he says, Trilogy has bent over backward to meet its critics in an open and public manner. Evans estimates that the firm has already sunk more than $1 million into planning and consultant fees, even though it has yet to purchase the property. The goal of putting the first lots on the market this summer has been postponed to spring of 2008 at the earliest. In the meantime, Trilogy continues to jump through planning hoops. "I anticipated that there would be some resistance, but I have been surprised by the reaction. It's like people have been saying, 'We don't want any new people in our town,'" Evans says. The fact is, he says, the OCP was flawed. He believes that, if the proper financial feasibility studies had been done with respect to the 2004 OCP, residents would have realized that it just wasn't realistic to zone most of the developable land in the 309-hectare piece of property as commercial. The economics simply don't support it, Evans argues. Up-front servicing costs for such things as water, sewers, electricity and roads are estimated at $20 million for the property, and Trilogy needs residential zoning to pay for them. Evans makes no apologies for asking council to oblige. And that's exactly what Trilogy got when village council gave fourth and final reading to OCP amendments on February 19 of this year. The amendment changes zoning on 121 hectares (known in planning documents as Lots 2 through 8), allowing for 225 residential units on land formerly dedicated commercial. If some residents are angry now, there may soon be more fuel to further stoke the flames of discontent. If Trilogy gets another OCP amendment for a chunk of land known as Lot 9, the total number of housing units at build-out would be 825, adding an estimated 1,600 to 2,000 residents to Cumberland's population. Evans is a smartly dressed, urbane and articulate man who clearly enjoys his work and doesn't mind rolling up his sleeves when the road gets rocky. There's no doubt Trilogy has done its homework. In glowing language, Evans told a hall full of Cumberland residents last fall that Trilogy plans to build Vancouver Island's first "lifestyle community." A bold statement, considering he was speaking to a crowd of people including many who had moved to Cumberland for its uncontrived lifestyle, potholed streets and all. A socio-economic impact study of the development paid for by Trilogy paints a rosy picture: the development would bring anywhere from $4 million to $18 million in additional local tourist spending, as much as 595 person-years in construction employment, $75 million in construction spending, up to $1.8 million in development cost charges that will find their way into the village's empty coffers and $660,000 in additional annual tax revenue. When asked what he means by a lifestyle community, Evans presses all the correct smart-growth buttons. It's something that eschews strip-style big-box development in favour of a pedestrian-oriented, mixed commercial-residential strategy, he says, a plan that favours density over sprawl. A place where you park your car and walk into a vibrant mix of boutique stores, mid-sized to large retailers, theatres and hotels, interspersed with above-shop residential neighbourhoods and planned green space. In effect, a livable residential and commercial development, unlike the soulless and barren retail strips that are a blight on many Canadian communities. It's a laudable goal. The property includes sensitive wetlands and the headwaters of a salmon-bearing stream, and Trilogy claims to be pegging as much as 50 per cent of the land as green space. On paper it presents a reasonably attractive package. In his one major public-relations faux pas during a public meeting last fall, Evans suggested the possibility of a casino hotel at the crossroads. The statement helped further typecast the big-city developer as villain. Casino notwithstanding, in order to execute Evans's vision of a live-and-work, retail-lifestyle community, Trilogy says it needs housing to pay for services and drive the development. "If I wanted something easy, we wouldn't have come into Cumberland. I know it's a hot-button issue because people didn't envision residential development, but I'm convinced that people will look back on this development and see it as a great thing for the community," Evans says. Mayor Fred Bates and a majority of the current council certainly see it as a great thing. And Cumberland, well, to put it mildly, is in a bit of a financial bind. Like a lot of cash-strapped and aging towns, Cumberland, with a budget of just $1.7 million, is currently facing a woeful mountain of sewer, water, road and other public-works upgrades with an estimated price tag of $26 million. Recently, an independent engineering firm conducted an analysis of the village's waterworks. It concluded an estimated $5 million will be needed to bring existing pipes, valves and water mains up to standards. Evans is on record as saying Trilogy is prepared to make a substantial but undisclosed contribution to much-needed upgrades. The developer has the kind of deep pockets that makes some Cumberlanders salivate. William "Bronco" Moncrief was mayor of "Dodge" for more than 30 years and returned as a councillor in the 2005 municipal elections. He's made it no secret that he fully supports Trilogy's proposal; it's the sort of development and cash injection he's been waiting to see in Cumberland for ages. And given Cumberland's untenable financial position, perhaps it's not surprising that Mayor Bates and council are prepared to roll out the red carpet for Trilogy. Today Bates is lockstep with Evans and singing a somewhat different tune on the OCP. Sure the OCP was a good starting point, but instead of being etched in stone it should be considered something more organic – a work in progress, so to speak. Born and raised in the village, Bates is entrenched in the old Cumberland. His bloodline links him to the village's heady days as the coal-mining capital of B.C. His father, uncles and grandfather all toiled in the mines. In 1969 Bates left Cumberland to pursue a career in emergency services and then returned in 1990 before being elected to his first term as mayor in 2002. He isn't fazed by the signs sprouting up like weeds around town calling, somewhat facetiously, for the impeachment of council. He dismisses it as the work of a vocal, but not necessarily representative, faction of residents. He agrees the OCP was a positive experience for the village, however he now sides with Evans in saying it was a pipe dream to think little old Cumberland could attract that much commercial development on the highway. "In order to attract commercial, you have to have rooftops, you have to have customers," Bates says during an interview at his Cumberland village office. And in spite of the visceral opposition that has erupted over Trilogy's proposal at public hearings and in the form of petitions and letters to council, Bates says there's another kind of feedback he listens to as a politician: the casual conversations on the street corner, on a barstool at the Waverley Pub, at a table in Miner's Deli – those unrecorded chats that don't show up in council or public-hearing minutes, between people who aren't prone to going to meetings and signing petitions. "I don't like to use the words 'silent majority,' but there are a lot of people who say this is the right thing for Cumberland," Bates says. Bates characterizes some of the tactics and public comments of those opposed to the Trilogy proposal as downright rude. So does Evans, although he admits that by necessity developers tend to grow a thick and leathery skin. "It's been very personal, it's been rude at times and it's shown that some people don't want to listen," Evans says. Cry me a river, say Kate Greening, Grace Doherty and other members of the residents' association. As far as they're concerned, Cumberland taxpayers have been sold out by their council. Furthermore, they argue that what Trilogy is proposing is the antithesis of smart growth in that it promotes suburban sprawl, in effect building an entirely distinct community within the village boundaries that will only detract from historic Cumberland. The result, they say, is that future residents will be left holding the bag for maintaining sprawling sewers, waterworks and roads long after Trilogy is gone. But perhaps what irks them most is that what the Vancouver developer is proposing barely resembles what volunteers spent many afternoons and evenings envisioning during the OCP process. Penny Gurstein is a professor at UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning. She says public participation, or at least lip service to the notion, is de rigueur nowadays in official community planning processes. In fact the Municipal Act requires villages, towns and cities to update their community plans every five years, although many communities don't bother keeping to this schedule. Undergoing an exhaustively public OCP process every five years would likely sap the volunteer drive and energy of even the most engaged citizenry. However, some communities have won awards for their efforts, as was the case with Ucluelet, which earned a 2006 UN award for environmental sustainability in its resident-driven OCP. More often than not, however, OCPs fail to meet anybody's expectations and instead become watered-down compromises that please nobody save for a few influential interests, quite often developers and realtors. Furthermore, in most communities many people wouldn't know an OCP from an IOU, let alone care whether elected officials tinker with it. That's what perhaps sets Cumberland apart. Its population is small enough that public involvement transcended the subtle social barriers between newcomers and the established residents, young and old, that often diminish meaningful dialogue over community issues. After suspicion was replaced by enthusiasm, the community arrived at a hard-won consensus around the idea of how Cumberland should embrace the future while preserving the subtle qualities that make it what it is today. As planner Dale Bishop recalls with a chuckle, public ownership of the community plan became so widespread that even apathetic citizens who played no part in its creation were also taking credit for it in the end. Although Gurstein says it's wrong to characterize the Cumberland story as a battle between "good" and "bad" people, she admits it doesn't do much to bolster faith in public participation and transparency. "OCPs are very important documents, so this doesn't say much about the democratic process. It's a real problem, and that's why people get very cynical about public participation," Gurstein says. As for glowing economic impact studies bankrolled by developers, take those with the proverbial grain of salt, is Gurstein's advice. Villages need to look beyond the analyses of hired guns to the experience of other communities to discern possible impacts. And in the current booming economy and hot real-estate market, examples abound of B.C. towns grappling with the nature, form and character of growth. Four years ago, the creation of an official community plan, brick by brick, bridged social divides and brought Cumberland together. Today its dismemberment at the hands of Trilogy and a malleable council threatens to polarize the village. Back on Cumberland Road, Kate Greening reflects on what may be in store for her town. "I love this town and I've always fought hard for it," she says. Developers are more than welcome, if they want to play by the rules laid out by residents. If not, as far as Greening is concerned, they can stay out of Dodge. 576 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Space invaders http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2007/07/01/space-invaders http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2007/07/01/space-invaders#comments Business Sense affordable housing Agricultural Land Reserve agriculture ALR development green zone gvrd high housing costs industrial industrial land lands provincial land commission act real estate residential urban planning Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:24:00 -0700 by Philip Hochstein Limited land supply is a common contributing factor to both problems. Yet the Greater Vancouver Regional District's (GVRD) 1996 Livable Region Strategic Plan designates about 70 per cent of the region as a Green Zone, to be protected from urban growth. And a large chunk of that is accounted for by the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), which covers some 20 per cent of the GVRD. While parts of the ALR contribute to food production, more than one quarter of GVRD ALR does not. In Richmond alone, 39 per cent of land in the ALR is not being used for farming. The time has come to reclassify all ALR land that is not being used for food production for residential, commercial and industrial use. The GVRD estimates that one-third of all Greater Vancouver households have problems finding and remaining in affordable housing. A recent federal government study identified Greater Vancouver as having the greatest incidence of working poor of any major city in Canada – and cited high housing costs as the reason. A recent preliminary GVRD report concluded that we can build enough new housing to accommodate anticipated regional population growth to 2031 while still leaving the majority of the regional land base in green zones. But that theory is based on the shaky premise of aggressive densification in existing neighbourhoods. No one is arguing the wisdom of densification, but the costs of development in our current residential areas, when compared with greenfield sites, could actually make new units less affordable. And getting land out of the ALR is next to impossible. Consider the application last year for development of the Garden City lands in Richmond. The rejected proposal – which had federal, municipal and Musqueam backing – would have resulted in a combination of density-friendly residential zoning, parkland and other public amenities. Instead, these lands remain locked up within the ALR, despite the strong likelihood that they will never be farmed. This only increases pressure on newly developing and future-growth areas – where the GVRD report says one-fifth of the increase in housing demand will have to be met. The Garden City lands are centrally located and will soon be served by rapid transit. That's not true of new-growth areas stretching ever farther into the valley. An alarming trend is also occurring with Greater Vancouver's industrial land base, which supports jobs for the region. Between 1996 and 2005, the GVRD's population grew by 13 per cent, while the industrial land base shrank by the same percentage, leaving a total of only about 10,600 hectares, or less than four per cent of the regional land base. Today, more than 30 years after the ALR was established to combat the erosion of the farming land base in B.C., it is about time that we question whether the rationale for creating it is still valid. Without question, however, we must make better public use of land trapped in the ALR that is not serving an agricultural purpose. Greater Vancouver continues to be one of Canada's urban jewels. But we need affordable housing and places to work to continue to grow. It's time to change our thinking on land-use policy and embrace progress instead of the status quo. What is the ALR? The Agricultural Land Reserve was created by the provincial Land Commission Act of 1973. It includes private and public lands that may be farmed, forested or vacant, on which agriculture is recognized as the priority use. Though the boundaries have shifted over the years, the total area has remained relatively constant at approximately 4.7 million hectares, or about five per cent of the entire province. Approximately 53,760 hectares, or 16 per cent of the land within the 21 municipalities and one electoral area comprising the Greater Vancouver Regional District fall within the ALR. Source: Agricultural Land Commission (alc.gov.bc.ca) 12 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca