Frances Bula

Guest post from Frank Ducote: A stunning transformation is planned for Grandview-Woodlands. Is the community really ready for this?

Frances Bula — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:51:34 +0000

For those who haven’t guessed already, I am away from the city right now and will be away until the first week of July, as part of my annual ritual of city observation elsewhere. (Known to others as “a vacation.”) I’ll be posting some stuff of my own — been riding a lot of bike-share bikes in Paris and have some tales to tell — but I am also opening up the blog to some guest posts.

The first is from Frank Ducote on what’s been happening with city planning over on Commercial Drive. I am happy to publish other guest posts on any vaguely city-related topics that have not been beaten to death already on this blog or where you have a take on a familiar issue that really hasn’t been addressed anywhere. Those with a burning desire to propose ideas should email me (firstnamelastname AT gmail.com) and I’ll put up anything that fits the criteria. You don’t need to use your real name.

In the meantime, here is Frank’s post, where your comments are invited. For those who don’t know, Frank is a former city planner, planning consultant for other cities, and, I believe, much-praised artist.

http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/g-w-community-plan-june-2013-open-house-board-5-emerging-land-use-map.pdf

Looking at this map, it is very difficult to fully grasp the implications of such a far-reaching proposal for transformation of an existing community. As a former City of Vancouver planner who worked in the Broadway/Commercial community prior to and during the Millennium Line implementation, this vision truly boggles my mind. Circa 2000 or so some then-councillors considered this area, with its abundance of transportation investment, to be ripe for densification, up to and including towers. However, It would have suicidal to try and impose those kinds of pro -development ideas then, completely against community values.

What has happened since to so embolden staff and, presumably, the public consultation process, to bring forward such a fundamentally transformative set of ideas and policy directions now? So many questions that one has a difficult time knowing where and how to begin a rational critique and conversation.

Please look closely at this map, especially at the area immediately around Commercial Drive and Broadway. This is Transportation Oriented Development (TOD) writ very large indeed. Is this a community-based vision or one being imposed from above? A TransLink wet dream?

Your comments, please. It would be particularly interesting to hear from residents and other participants directly involved in this planning process.

Another quirky idea of housing in Vancouver: apartments build on top of working fire halls

Frances Bula — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:38:47 +0000

Let it not be said that a stone has been unturned in the City of Vancouver’s quest to find patches of ground on which to build housing.

The latest suggestion has been housing on top of a fire hall that has to be rebuilt.

The idea of building on top of city property isn’t new. It’s been done with schools and libraries. But a fire hall. I haven’t heard of this before. Has anyone?

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, May. 31 2013, 8:00 AM EDT

Last updated Friday, May. 31 2013, 8:00 AM EDT

In a city hungry to find space for new residents, Vancouver has seen apartments constructed on top of car dealerships and downtown offices, libraries and community centres.

Now, the city of Vancouver is eyeing a new possibility: Fire halls. Or at least one of them.

Fire Hall No. 5 is a tired old building in southeast Vancouver across the street from the Champlain Heights shopping centre. The small tower perched on its base is the highest structure around in the largely single-family neighbourhood.

The original plan was to tear it down, run the fire hall at a temporary site down the street, and build a new one.

But the city’s community services manager, Brenda Prosken, and her team have come up with a different idea.

“City staff are working on a new construction plan for a fire hall on the site, and it is our intention to construct an affordable housing facility above the fire hall. The site is well located across from a shopping centre and on an arterial [road] with accessible bus transportation, which makes it an optimal housing location,” she said in a memo to city council and administrators.

The city will be asking for bids on a contract to build and operate the rental part of the new facility, which would get some money from the city’s affordable-housing fund.

Staff in the provincial ministry responsible for the B.C. Building Code said there are no safety regulations prohibiting that kind of combined use, and it is up to the local government to approve such a facility.

But the spokesman, who said he could not be quoted by name, said the consensus around the office was that it would be “too noisy.”

Councillor Geoff Meggs of the ruling Vision Vancouver party said the proposal reflects the city’s intense efforts to find ways to create more low-cost housing.

“The city is looking high and low for opportunities. And we’ve had some successes with this kind of effort already.”

A previous council when Philip Owen was mayor approved a proposal to build rental housing on top of a new library in Mount Pleasant. That is rented out at market rates.

More recently, the Vision council approved building a new library for Strathcona with subsidized housing above it.

And just last month, the city announced that it was going to lease four sites to a consortium of non-profits for 99 years at no cost to get more affordable housing built in Vancouver. That group contributed $6-million of its own reserves.

“I think the success with those four sites has led the city to reconsider long-term leasing. We now know we can attract partners who can bring equity to the table,” Mr. Meggs said.

But a councillor with the minority Non-Partisan Association said he had concerns about the Vision council putting tax dollars into housing.

“I’m open to us leveraging our land and looking at innovative ways of using our property,” George Affleck said, adding that he was concerned that part of the deal will require money from the affordable housing fund, which is financed by charging developers what are called “community amenity contributions.”

Mr. Affleck said those CACs should be used for real amenities, like parks, community centres and libraries.

“An amenity is not more housing.”

The fire-hall proposal is supposed to come to council later this year for approval.

Canadian politicians gathered in Vancouver to talk about both the serious stuff (solid waste, housing) and the not-so-serious (Rob Ford! The video!)

Frances Bula — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:43:38 +0000

If you were trying to get a hotel room in Vancouver from Thursday on last week, good luck. They were filled up with city councillors, mayors, city managers, and city financial officers from across the land, coming here for the annual convention.

While they were focused on garbage, sewers, housing and roads, we in the media found other worthy subjects. The Province’s story this morning is about local councillors who stayed overnight downtown in hotels. Many writers continued to focus on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, even though he was notable mainly by his absence and sniping from Toronto about how people out here were drinking martinis (martinis? in Vancouver? I think not) and not really doing city business.

Meanwhile, at the convention, most politicians I talked to had zero respect for Mr. Ford or his comments. One, from Dauphin, Manitoba, suggested wryly that Ford probably didn’t want to come out to a gathering like this because he might “get too learned-up.”

My relatively staid stories about the weekend non-festivities here and here.

As I said on CKNW this morning, there’s a kind of politics of resentment being played these days, where the most popular thing a politician can do is to attack other politicians for wasting taxpayer money. It’s easy, when everyone is a little worried about whether their job is safe or what will happen if mortgage interest rates go up, to play on everyone’s anxiety by blathering on about how some politician got a nice meal or took a taxi or stayed in a hotel room. (Strangely, none of the aforementioned ever offer to give up their salaries as part of their deep concern for the taxpayers.)

The problem is, those attacking frequently don’t distinguish between the hard-working ones, spending their convention days going on landfill tours or sitting through excrutiating discussions of cellphone-tower agreements, and those who are just taking a freebie and not putting in too much effort. It’s discouraging to those who are working hard. A little more critical analysis would be good.

FRANCES BULA, OLIVER MOORE and ELIZABETH CHURCH

The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, Jun. 02 2013, 11:11 PM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Jun. 04 2013, 9:44 AM EDT

Civic leaders gathered in Vancouver at the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities this weekend, taking time to mark their progress on securing greater financial commitments from Ottawa to battle gridlock and to set new priorities.

A federal cabinet minister and two opposition party leaders, Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, beat a path to the get-together, addressing the group that boasts it represents 91 per cent of Canadians.

One voice absent from all those discussions: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

The Toronto region is the subject of an ambitious plan by the provincial government of Premier Kathleen Wynne to raise and spend $2-billion annually on transportation – which has drawn a cool response from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

Mr. Ford has denounced the plan to tap taxpayers and insisted more government waste could be eliminated. Mr. Ford has not attended FCM meetings since becoming mayor in 2010 and on his radio show Sunday made no secret of his scorn for “the lefty caucus” and Toronto city councillors whom he accused of “having a good time” in Vancouver at taxpayer expense.

Some municipal leaders remarked that the controversy hanging over Mr. Ford, who has been besieged by questions about a video that allegedly shows him smoking crack cocaine, would have made him a “distraction” at the FCM meeting in any case. Others questioned his criticism of the body that has led the way on lobbying Ottawa to share a greater proportion of tax revenues with municipalities.

Karen Leibovici, an Edmonton councillor and FCM’s departing president, says the ground gained by the organization in areas such as infrastructure spending show how powerful local governments can be if they speak in unison.

“If you have 100 competing demands, how are you going to ask for anything?” Ms. Leibovici said.

The high-powered weekend crowd at the FCM included federal Transportation Minister Denis Lebel. He reiterated Ottawa’s pledge for $53-billion in infrastructure spending over 10 years, money included in the past federal budget. Substantial portions of it is a continuation of long-standing federal funding for municipalities, including transfers of a portion of the gas tax and GST rebates. It also includes a $14-billion federal fund for new buildings, and a $1.25-billion fund for private-public partnerships.

Mr. Nenshi said conversations over the weekend focused on what more can be done. “We are talking about a dedicated fund nationally for transit and how that would look for big cities and for smaller towns,” he said.

He believes that the one-on-one meetings that city politicians had with federal ministers last year helped pave the way for the new Building Canada Fund announced in the budget, as well as new agreements on getting gas-tax revenue for cities.

This year’s meeting came amid growing alarm about the state of infrastructure across the country.

In Toronto, there is rising concern that gridlock is hurting the city’s future. On Sunday, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa called for a meeting with his federal counterpart to urgently discuss public transit funding in the province as part of its bid to fund new projects across the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

As mayor of Toronto, Mr. Ford has denounced the plan to tap taxpayers to pay for transit expansion.

Of the 18 Toronto councillors who went to the FCM meeting, Mr. Ford and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, argued that only four had any business being there.

“Even four’s a little high,” he told listeners of the radio show the two men co-host. “But then 18 councillors, 18 councillors flew out Thursday. You know, the same councillors said ‘aw, you know, the city’s falling apart.’ Well where were they Thursday? Where were they Friday? You could shoot a cannon off at city hall.”

Councillor Paula Fletcher, one of the group singled out for attack by the mayor, called the conference a “learning opportunity,” for municipalities and a chance to see “heavy hitters from the Hill.”

“I don’t apologize for trying to learn more so I can do more for my constituents,” Ms. Fletcher said, questioning why the mayor and his brother think it was fine to go on a trip to Chicago last year with business leaders, but not to a meeting where they can discuss best practices with other civic leaders.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, a former member of Mr. Ford’s cabinet-like executive committee, was one of the four given a pass by the mayor and his brother. But he also challenged the radio criticism. “Anyone who says this is a junket doesn’t understand the work that goes on here,” he said.

Cornerbrook Mayor Neville Greeley was one of four to come from his Newfoundland community’s seven-member council. “Maybe the mess [Mr. Ford’s] in is because he hasn’t taken the opportunity he’s had to learn how to be a more effective mayor,” he said.

After Mr. Ford spoke Sunday, some of those attending the FCM shot back that the meeting was far more important than he appears to think.

“It’s nine hours of meetings a day … we get a lot of work done,” said Surrey Mayor Diane Watts. “The meetings I have with other mayors across the country are valuable. I don’t know how one would connect like that by e-mail. For the smaller communities, especially, they have an opportunity to tap into a network.”

Mr. Ford is not the first Toronto leader to take a pass on the annual FCM meetings. While former mayor David Miller was an active member of the federation, taking a lead role in the group’s efforts to secure municipal funding from Ottawa through gas taxes, another former mayor, Mel Lastman, was in the habit of letting a young city councillor speak in his place – Jack Layton.

With reports from Campbell Clark

SECOND STORY

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, May. 30 2013, 9:16 PM EDT

Last updated Thursday, May. 30 2013, 11:34 PM EDT

Canada’s big-city mayors are taking on a new battle: low-cost housing.

And they have kicked off a campaign to persuade the federal government to continue a decades-old form of support for subsidized housing that is used to reduce the rent for 600,000 households.

“There’s $500-million a year in housing investments expiring in 2014. That’s the big bombshell that’s landing,” Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention in the city on Thursday.

Mr. Robertson is the chair of the Big City Mayors’ Caucus, which represents the country’s 22 largest municipalities.

“Until now, we’ve been focused on infrastructure. That work culminated in the last federal budget. Our next priority now is housing. It’s a big complex challenge.”

The problem for many social-housing units is that they were built under agreements with the federal government that they would get subsidies for the term of their mortgages.

When those mortgages expired, 30 or 40 years later, it was expected that the apartments could still be rented out at low rates because the loan payments would have ended.

But many of those buildings require substantial renovations now.

So, without ongoing subsidies from the federal government, operators – non-profits, co-ops and local governments – will have to forgo maintenance or start charging more rent to pay the bills.

Many non-profits and co-ops operate on a model in which some renters pay full market rent, some get a small subsidy and others get a much larger subsidy. Having one-third of each type of renter has been seen as the norm.

But as operators get squeezed to meet new expenses, they are forced to rent more of their units to those who can pay market prices and provide fewer subsidized units.

Some organizations will be able to continue without too much change, either because they built up reserves or are not facing serious maintenance issues.

But about a third of the units will likely be at risk, according to a national study by Ottawa-based housing expert Steve Pomeroy.

Mr. Robertson said he will talk to federal ministers James Moore and Denis Lebel during the FCM convention.

He will also meet with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.

“The outreach is to all the stakeholders to get the conversation rolling,” he said. “We will need changes in the 2014 budget. And, with a federal election in 2015, we need all the parties to recognize the urgency of this.”

Retired from city hall but not gone: The woman who made all us of see the homeless as people

Frances Bula — Fri, 31 May 2013 22:35:44 +0000

Vancouver’s official advocate for the homeless had her last day at city hall Thursday, along with her birthday.

My story about her in the Globe is here but I wanted to add a few words.

I started covering city hall for the Vancouver Sun in the fall of 1994 (when I was a toddler, of course). There wasn’t a huge amount of coverage about homelessness in Vancouver back then. An occasional story about an individual fallen on hard times. But most of the stories about homelessness in local papers in the 1980s and early 1990s were about the problem in Toronto or the U.S. or the rest of the world.

But I did start to hear concern about people starting to sleep on the street and crowded shelters throughout the mid-1990s. In 1998, I got a fellowship to study homelessness in Canada and elsewhere. Sometime around then, I went on my first walkabout with Judy Graves, then called a tenant relocation officer or some such thing. We went out near midnight, walking through various alleys and, I remember, into Cathedral Park on Dunsmuir. It had a canopy at the back end in those days, which made it a favoured spot for those sleeping out but an unnerving place to go for people like me. The square was dark and isolated-feeling. (The city later removed the canopy to discourage the campers.)

The thing about Judy was that she just wanted to know about these people. She wanted to know why they were there, how they were surviving, why they couldn’t get housing. She didn’t make assumptions. She asked questions.

Judy wasn’t the only person who alerted me to the increasing problems with homelessness. Many took up the torch. But she became a touchpoint for all kinds of people because of those middle-of-the-night walks. Frank Giustra went out with her twice. Gregor Robertson started going out on walks with her when he was still an MLA and has done others since then.

As Alice Sundberg says in my story, Judy made everyone think about “the homeless” as people, not just numbers or a social problem.

Another thing about Judy — she could do that because she started her little private research project at a time when reporters like me could call city staffers like her, people down the hierarchy but who were still allowed to speak to the media. She was always careful about what she had to say (as were almost all city staffers) but her ability to show people the reality of the issue did more than all the city manager reports in the world.

I personally regret her retirement from city hall not just because of what she did for homelessness, but because she represents a vanishing generation at the city — the knowledgeable mid-level staffer who is passionate about his or her special area of expertise, who has the detailed level of knowledge that those higher up the food chain just can’t have, and who is free to impart that to reporters in order to tell a better story about the city.

The new old corner store: Little shops in the middle of neighbourhoods see a revival

Frances Bula — Thu, 30 May 2013 20:17:08 +0000

Sometimes as a journalist, you write about things because you have to. Other times, you get to write about what you love. This is my story about the new old corner store. Many thanks to Andy Yan for generating the map and data on their locations.

(BTW, a piece of information I didn’t squeeze in here is that apparently anything that existed before 1980 as a corner store retains the right to be used for commercial uses. So potentially there are many more of these. But there are also some “except in the case of” restrictions. Would love to hear about anyone’s experience who tried to convert back to commercial and wasn’t allowed.)

A reincarnation of the corner market in Vancouver

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, May. 24 2013, 9:10 PM EDT

Last updated Friday, May. 24 2013, 9:20 PM EDT

Marla Styles and her daughter Layla come through the door of The Mighty Oak with big smiles.

“A latte today,” she says to the man behind the marble countertop. “Say hi to John, Layla.” Ms. Styles, who’s taking four-year-old Layla to a mid-morning gymnastics class nearby, spends a couple of minutes talking to owner John McClelland about what she is making later that day – broccoli soup – and which loaf of bread she should buy.

On the sidewalk patio just outside, a couple of women are having coffee at an outdoor table in the bright sunshine. A dad with a toddler in tow on a plastic wagon lines up for his caffeine hit.

All sort of normal for a Vancouver morning. Except that this particular coffee shop/grocery sits by itself among the leafy streets and elegant houses between Cambie and Main streets.

The Mighty Oak is one of an emerging wave of nouveau grocery-cafés that are taking over spaces left behind from Vancouver’s quirky history – the small convenience stores set amid houses that used to populate the older city.

“I watched too much Sesame Street and I always liked Mr. Hooper. I like that concept of having a place in the neighbourhood,” said Mr. McClelland, a former carpenter who bought the store and the house behind it several years ago, and opened the café-grocery last summer. (He had rented it previously to an organic grocery.)

In the days before zoning laws rigorously separated stores from homes, small grocery stores were regular fixtures on the corners of residential blocks. Often run by immigrant families working long hours, they attracted local kids and their parents who would buy everything from penny candy to the makings of dinner. The ethnic clusters of the day could find Italian or Portuguese specialties.

Now, places like Marche St. Georges near The Mighty Oak, Finch’s and the Wilder Snail in Strathcona, and the Cardero Bottega in the West End are upscale editions of that old idea. They are the latest version of places like Benny’s or the Union Market near Chinatown, which slowly added coffee, pizza and sandwiches to their regular grocery offerings.

They are also drawing dedicated fans.

“We love this place,” says Ms. Styles, who drops by a couple of times a week. “It’s like a little hidden gem.”

For architect Bruce Haden in Strathcona, who admires the pedal-powered bar stool for charging cellphones at the Snail across from his house, the nouveau grocers act as “social hubs” for their neighbourhoods.

City historian John Atkin says they have become centres of the community.

“If I head down to the Union Market for a coffee and sit outside, within the space of an hour, I’ve seen everybody.”

Former Vancouver director of planning Brent Toderian likes the way they draw mainly from people within walking and cycling distance, rather than car commuters, so they create a truly local meeting place.

But all three say the city’s zoning laws make it difficult to encourage those kinds of spaces.

The neighbourhood grocery stores in residential zones – which still exist in about three dozen sites in Vancouver’s older neighbourhoods – came into being at a time with no zoning regulations.

(In the early days of the city, planners tried to create small retail hubs at some intersections inside residential swaths – the remnants of those can be seen, for example, at 33rd Avenue and Mackenzie Street, in the heart of Dunbar, and at Nanaimo and Charles, on the east side.)

But in the 1950s and 1960s, two forces worked against the little neighbourhood stores.

Cars and malls encouraged people to do bigger shopping trips outside their immediate surroundings. And planners, believing it was their role to separate different activities and thinking that the small neighbourhood stores were dying, created zoning schedules that pushed all businesses onto main streets. Vancouver, with its British heritage, was even more inclined than other cities to favour the idea of the high street for all retail, said Andrew Yan, a demographer with Bing Thom Architects.

Little neighbourhood stores became “non-conforming uses.” As long as they continued operating, they were allowed to stay. But if one closed and nothing replaced it within six months, the right to run a business there was lost.

The city has dozens of odd buildings that used to be stores attached to houses behind or beside in which the shop is now residential space.

The city’s general manager of planning, Brian Jackson, says the city would like to encourage the neighbourhood stores.

“We’re all for it.”

But he also sees challenges.

“It’s more and more difficult to sustain them. When Vancouver neighbourhoods were much denser, when there were five, six, eight people in every house, then they could support this kind of store.”

And, he says, some residents are not charmed by them and do not like the smell of coffee wafting over their backyards.

But to others, that’s a misread of what is possible.

Mr. Toderian says the city is being repopulated to former densities, with laneway houses and basement suites adding new people to neighbourhoods. And, if the city puts in the right conditions for those businesses – such as no parking, so they will not draw a big, annoying commuter crowd – they can be real local assets.

“It’s just a choice that cities have. You can make sure it plays the role you think it should play.”

Mr. McClelland says businesses, not the city, should decide if they can make it.

He doubts that he could succeed with groceries alone, but the combination of café and grocery works. He had hoped for a 50/50 split. In reality, about 60 per cent of his revenue comes from the café, and the rest from sales of the limited selection of specialty pastas, sauces, cheeses and ice creams in his tastefully designed shop.

Mr. McClelland also says he has not heard a word of complaint from anyone.

“We tried to design in as many elements as possible in the store to allow people to connect. I’ve had nothing but great feedback.”

What we talk about when we talk about politics: Vision Vancouver aims to connect the city to its residents

Frances Bula — Mon, 27 May 2013 06:41:08 +0000

Last week, the Vision council brought out the first recommendations from its Engaged City Task Force, with more heavyweight ones to come later on.

The report with their recommendations is here and my story, one of several done on the day, is here.

A few of the quick starts here inspire me with a certain nostalgia. Participatory budgeting (allowing community groups to decide how they want to spend a set amount of money on local projects) was much loved by the COPE council of 2002 but disappeared shortly after they were elected, lost in the dust as that council had to grapple with one daunting issue after another, from the Canada Line to Wal-Mart.

But, as good or as long-standing as some of these ideas are, there are residents who are going to wonder why they are coming forward now and how much they’ll really change the culture at the city. Many people have had the experience of participating in a city process only to walk away and wonder, “Did anything I said really matter?”

Obviously, not everyone can get 100 per cent of what they want from the city all the time. Not only a logistical impossibility (since there is always one person who wants exactly the opposite of another), but not good planning. But I do believe there is a longing by many to feel that they are more than just the window-dressing, brought in towards the end of a development proposal or a new bylaw, to spout their little “concerns” and be over-ruled.

As my story in Vancouver magazine this month showed, there’s a critical mass of changes going on in the city that is making the city hall-citizen conversation very tense. The task force is one attempt to address that.

Whenever I’m asked at panels/workshops/conventions what the problem with public dialogue is in Vancouver, my usual answer is: Regular people have no idea what part their opinions should play in the process. Not really. Too many of them believe that if they just line up enough delegates at the microphone, they should get to prevent anything from coming into the city.

So if they don’t get their way exactly, then council and planners are “bulldozing ahead” or “in the pockets of developers.” Which I know the more thoughtful readers of this blog will understand is too simplistic an explanation.

But there is a tendency for those at city halls to assume they know what’s best, bring people in too late in the process for their opinions to have any real impact and then dismiss them as NIMBYs when they go berserk.

There are some recommendations in here, and to come, that I think could have an impact on all of that. But it will take real faith on the part of the city that its citizens aren’t just knee-jerk Opponents of Everything and some effort on the part of citizens to understand the how and why of planning.

Will any of the quick steps help? They’re a tiny start. I await the bigger news.

(Advance warning: I won’t be posting the boring old name-calling comments. People who’ve been through city processes or observed them and have thoughtful things to say about how that went are welcome, as always.)

FRANCES BULA

Vancouver — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May. 22 2013, 9:00 PM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, May. 22 2013, 9:23 PM EDT

Vancouver, whose council has been accused of not listening to the public and whose residents say they are lonely and alienated, launched the first steps on Wednesday of a plan to make people who live there more connected. “Vancouver is a dynamic city undergoing a great deal of change,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said. “The connection between city hall and citizens is tenuous at the best of times. I felt a real need to invest more in engagement.” Some of the ideas from his Engaged City Task Force:

THE PLAN: Vancouver will declare a city-wide neighbourhood block party day each year – date for 2013 still to be decided – so residents can block off the street to hold an outdoor get-together. The proposal specifies that it is not just for single-family neighbourhoods, where residents already frequently organize impromptu street parties, but also its many districts dominated by condo towers and small apartment buildings. The hoped-for results, according to the official plan? “To empower neighbourhoods.”

REACTION: “We think it’s a great initiative. When you bring people together, they get to know each others’ names and you have a more engaged, involved and safer city.” – Martin Livingston, vice-president of the Vancouver Foundation, which last year released the results of a survey showing that a significant number of Vancouverites feel alienated and lonely.

ADVANCE VOTER REGISTRATION ONLINE

THE PLAN: Turnout in civic elections is abysmal, with typically fewer than a third of registered voters bothering to show up. “People who register to vote in advance are much more likely to cast a vote than those who don’t,” says the city report on the task-force initiatives. The idea is to ensure that residents can register to vote any day of the year at any time before the election, using a form on the city website.

REACTION: “This might help. I’m not sure it’s the best. I’m a fan of people going out and knocking on the door to enumerate. But anything that can improve turnout helps.” – Max Cameron, director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions, University of B.C.

MORE INFORMATION ON DEVELOPMENT

THE PLAN: A requirement for developers to hold public open houses before submitting a design proposal to the city. Improved signs on lots where developments are proposed, with plans explained in plain language. More notice to the public about development decisions coming before council. “Vancouver has always had reactions to development,” Mr. Robertson said. “There’s no doubt the pressure has increased and it’s shifted right into neighbourhoods.”

REACTION: “They already tell us what they’re going to do and that works fine. It’s how they deal with the feedback that’s more important. And there’s nothing about that yet.” – Mike Andruff, organizer of Dunbar Re-Vision, a community group formed in opposition to several projects in the west-side neighbourhood.

MOBILE KIOSKS

THE PLAN: Rather than force every person needing to buy a dog licence, pick up a recycling bag or pay their taxes to travel to city hall, the municipality will create a mobile kiosk that provides services in city buildings in every neighbourhood. The proposal says that areas poorly served by transit should get priority.

REACTION: “I’ve been wanting that for a long time. I’m delighted. A lot of people just don’t know how to access city hall, and 311” – the simplified phone system introduced five years ago to make it easy for people to access city services – “didn’t have the push I thought it would.” – Eileen Mosca, long-time community volunteer in the Commercial Drive area.

PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING

THE PLAN: The city will set aside some money in its capital budgets and neighbourhood committees will propose ways to spend it. “Winning projects could be used for … park enhancements, new playground equipment, amenities for seniors, street upgrades or new green space.”

REACTION: “People are always talking here about community gardens, but there’s a limited amount of space. If there was a certain amount of money put aside for things like that, it would be a worthwhile conversation to have.” – Brent Granby, long-time community volunteer in the city’s West End.

No, the black helicopters are nothing to worry about. Really.

Frances Bula — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:07:56 +0000

This just out from the city’s communications people:

The City of Vancouver wishes to advise residents near the lower Fraser River that on Friday, May 24 there will be several planned and authorized helicopter low altitude fly overs. The flights are all part of two filming projects underway around the city. The pilots are not in distress.

The helicopter will fly at an altitude of approximately 300 feet over the Fraser River, Kent Ave SE and Boundary Road. The flight is planned between 6 p.m. and midnight. If poor weather doesn’t permit the flight, it will take place either Saturday 25 or Sunday 26, again between 6 p.m. and midnight.

On Friday, May 24 a second helicopter will fly at an altitude of approximately 500 feet over the downtown core, Kitsilano and North/South False Creek, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., and again between 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. If the flights must be cancelled due to weather, they will be permitted to try again from Saturday the 25 to Thursday 30, during the same time blocks.

Final approvals from Transport Canada are pending, and dependent on weather and other conditions.

Changes to popular bike route provoke anxiety among small, indie, green businesses

Frances Bula — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:45:29 +0000

I post this story with trepidation, having observed already on a few Twitter exchanges that the cycling crowd immediately jumped into trashing these businesses for not being progressive enough while the predictable anti-bike crowd weighed in.

Can I just reiterate one more time. These businesses ALREADY HAVE 4,000 bikes a day going past them, so the argument that they will discover that having a bike lane on their street will produce increased business seems not very relevant.

They are also not arguing that the street needs to be made safer. There’s no quibble with the plan to shut down Union west of Main, which will discourage some traffic from using Union east of Main as a shortcut to downtown. There’s also strong support for improving the signage, signals at the Main/Union intersection, where, as it so happens, pedestrians are much more likely to be killed or injured than cyclists.

Hoping against hope here that there can be a civil discussion about how to make streets safer while respecting businesses that, whether you like it or not, are still dependent on customer getting there by car. As several of them noted, the area that they have sprouted up in is not one that everyone is comfortable walking long distances in. Those of us who know the city well feel perfectly safe, but not everyone does. These businesses are going to contribute to this area, one day, being seen as comfortable to walk around in for many more people, but that’s not the case now.

Green businesses balk at Vancouver bike lane

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, May. 20 2013, 9:56 PM EDT

Last updated Monday, May. 20 2013, 9:59 PM EDT

Vancouver’s push to create more and better protected bike lanes dismayed a lot of downtown businesses over the last several years.

But this time, a proposal to create a separated lane on the edge of Chinatown has generated anxiety among the kinds of green, local businesses that Mayor Gregor Robertson frequently touts as the future of the city.

Among them, a grocery store that sells and delivers locally grown produce, a vegan restaurant, and a series of independent stores run by young entrepreneurs.

All of them moved into the block of Union Street just east of Main in the last two years, seeing the somewhat out-of-the-way street as a place to start fledgling businesses at reasonable rents.

Many are worried that the city’s plan – which includes not just the separated bike lane, but also a proposal to remove some street parking – will kill their fragile efforts. “We took a huge risk by coming here and, obviously, we’re not making money yet. Even a small change will affect us here,” said Kleah Michnik, one of the founders of Charlie & Lee, a hip clothing store mentioned by magazines like Travel + Leisure as a hidden treasure.

At The Board of Trade Co. next door, owner Eunice Quan said the shop doesn’t do as well as her other store in Gastown already. “A lot of people still don’t want to cross Main. And the closest SkyTrain is a 10- or 15-minute walk.”

She said her store works as a destination, mostly for people willing to drive to discover something new.

The proposed changes on Union are part of a major city upgrade to the 20-year-old Adanac/Union bikeway, one of the first established in Vancouver and among its busiest. The city’s transportation engineer, Jerry Dobrovolny, pointed out that about 4,000 cyclists a day use it in the summer. The two blocks of Union on either side of Main also get used by about 5,000 trucks a day.

The intersection of Union and Main is one of the top 10 locations for cyclist-motor vehicle crashes. The location has also been fatal for 45 per cent of the pedestrians hit there, according to statistics for 2006-2011.

Mr. Dobrovolny said the city is trying to work with the businesses and has already ditched one idea – making the street one-way – that they were concerned about.

Erin O’Mellin, the executive director of the city’s cycling advocacy group HUB, said that those statistics show that “it’s really important cyclists have an obvious and designated space to go.”

Ms. O’Mellin said her group plans to talk to businesses about how much they can gain from new bike traffic there.

“It brings a whole new market to their neighbourhood.”

For some businesses, the bike lane is no big deal. Leon Basin at Shop-Task, an in-line skate store, said the store’s customers will find their way there no matter what.

But the concerned group is not so easily persuaded about the “cyclists will buy your stuff” message.

“We’ve been trying to cater to the cyclists, because that’s who’s going by our stores every day. But cyclists are only now starting to realize there’s something on that block,” Mike Leung said.

He owns the space that houses Harvest Community Foods, which sells soups and local produce in its store as well as delivering boxes of produce through a system called Community Supported Agriculture where people prepay for a share of a local producer’s crops.

Like others, Mr. Leung said the main problem on the route is the intersection of Union and Main, not the whole street. He said if the signage were improved and if traffic were blocked on Union west of Main, as the city is planning, that would likely solve most of the issues.

Devon Skuban lives in a condo above the store and cycles regularly to his job in Gastown, so he thinks he understands the need for safe cycling.

But, he said, the changes being proposed by the city are too drastic for the fledgling businesses on the street.

“We are the revitalization,” Mr. Skuban said. “Businesses need to develop here.”

The Bob Rennie annual event: “I told you so” + “Two markets, one paycheque”

Frances Bula — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:11:31 +0000

My account of condo marketer/power broker Bob Rennie’s speech to the development industry, which began with him saying “I told you so” and continued from there.

(For those recently living under a rock, Rennie was one of Premier Christy Clark’s most vocal backers, convinced to the last minute she would win.)

Clark thanks condo kings for their support

FRANCES BULA

Published Thursday, May. 16, 2013 10:50PM EDT

Last updated Thursday, May. 16, 2013 10:52PM EDT

The must-attend event of the year for Vancouver’s condo industry began on Thursday with a standing ovation for Premier Christy Clark from a business group that had been among the most alarmed about the possibility of an NDP government.

Ms. Clark, who confounded the expectations of many with a big win for her party on Tuesday, came out to thank two of her major supporters, who are leading figures in that world.

“There were a lot of people who doubted this could be done,” Ms. Clark said at the annual address by powerhouse condo marketer Bob Rennie to the Urban Development Institute.

Mr. Rennie and developer Peter Wall were two who stuck by her. On Thursday, Ms. Clark walked into a downtown hotel ballroom arm in arm with Mr. Wall and voiced her gratitude personally before Mr. Rennie started his speech.

“I want to say a special thanks to Bob Rennie and Peter Wall,” Ms. Clark told the enthusiastic crowd of about 1,000.

But Ms. Clark likely got a lot of support from the whole industry. As Mr. Rennie remarked shortly afterward: “This is a really, really important room to the B.C. Liberals.”

In both informal conversations and some public remarks at earlier industry forums, many people in the real estate business made it clear they thought building construction had ground to a halt when the NDP was in power in the 1990s. They feared the same would happen again if the party had won on Tuesday.

Once Mr. Rennie took the stage after the Premier’s departure, however, he avoided suggesting the industry had dodged a bullet.

Instead, he delivered a speech thick with his usual mix of personal observations, jokes and carefully assembled statistics about the real-estate industry and its personalities.

Among the first topics: gentrification in the Downtown Eastside and the need for the city to protect the small businesses that cater to its low-income residents.

“We may not like the Pidgin restaurant protesters’ tactics, but they do have a point,” Mr. Rennie said of the now-famous anti-gentrification protest that has been carried on almost daily outside an upscale restaurant that opened February in the heart of the neighbourhood.

He said no market condo developments should be allowed in the three core blocks of Hastings Street near there. Pidgin is around the corner from the most western of the blocks he identified.

And he said the city needs to find a way to subsidize or encourage businesses that cater to low-income people to open up in that area.

“There’s no sense putting 20 to 30 per cent low-income people in a neighbourhood if they have nowhere to shop,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to start allocating commercial space the same way we do with non-market housing: Create low rent for those services that cater to non-market residents in the neighbourhood.”

Mr. Rennie added that the possibility for gentrification is limited in the Downtown Eastside because no superblocks, except for the site of the Army & Navy discount department store, are available for development.

He also carried on with a theme he began last year, explaining how baby boomers in Vancouver are driving real-estate development.

A surge of seniors is coming who are sitting on $88-billion in home equity that they’re going to cash in to help their children buy property and to pay for their health care.

Those people want to stay in their neighbourhoods when they downsize.

“It doesn’t how matter how wealthy they are, they’re looking to age in place in their community,” Mr. Rennie said.

That means builders need to be aware that they are building for two groups: the seniors buying down, and their children buying for the first time or buying up. But since the parents are helping out financially, they’ll have a say in what their children buy.

That means, said Mr. Rennie, they won’t go for anything too radical or any “crazy green initiatives.”

“You have to understand, it’s two markets, one chequebook.”

Municipal politicians a big bloc in new Liberal government — and what will they do with that power?

Frances Bula — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:28:49 +0000

Christy Clark used a card from Gordon Campbell’s book to draft candidates — she plucked them from city councils around the province.

As a result, about a dozen new MLAs will be leaving their jobs as mayors and city councillors to sit in Victoria. Here’s my story from this week on what a few of them had to say about their priorities. TransLink ranks high on the list.

I’ll be waiting to see how they exert their influence (if they have much as newbies). As a few reporters/columnists around town have noted, here and here, there are a lot of municipal issues at the table.

I note that former Sam Sullivan staffer Daniel Fontaine keeps twitting (yes, double meaning intended) Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson about having to now plead his case for transit and housing with Sullivan and Suzanne Anton, his former municipal foes.

But I’m wondering if he will. The Vision team established pretty solid connections with Christy Clark’s people in the last two years. And, when it comes to transit, my guess is that it will be the developers, who have turned into the biggest transit fans ever, who will be joining forces with the mayor for a Broadway line.

And let’s not forget who handed Clark the biggest electoral defeat of her life: Anton and Sullivan, who more or less called her a carpetbagger with a nasty bunch of Liberal campaigners behind her when she ran for the mayoral nomination back in 2005.

Liberals build a new municipal brain trust

FRANCES BULA

Published Wednesday, May. 15, 2013 10:17PM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, May. 15, 2013 10:20PM EDT

B.C.’s new government will include a group of people with some very specialized expertise.

They know the gritty details of garbage, transit and sewers, and the impact of funding cuts on little arts groups. And they will bring some of those local concerns to Victoria.

They are the unusually large group of mayors and city councillors elected as part of the B.C. Liberal team, accounting for nearly a fifth of the new caucus.

They include high-profile politicians from the Metro Vancouver region with strong views on transit funding, affordable housing and other issues that have been priorities for local governments. In that group: City of Langley mayor Peter Fassbender, a vice-chair of the TransLink mayors’ council at one point; Surrey councillor Marvin Hunt, chair of Metro Vancouver’s zero-waste committee; former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, and former city councillor Suzanne Anton.

Those new MLAs will be joined by others from their political level, such as Linda Reimer, Scott Hamilton and Linda Larson, councillors in Coquitlam, Delta, and Oliver; and Mike Bernier, Dan Ashton and Jordan Sturdy, the mayors of Dawson Creek, Penticton and Pemberton, respectively.

“We have an in-depth understanding of the pain of all those local issues,” Mr. Hunt said. “There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed [in municipalities] and it will help when there are now so many municipal voices at the table.”

Mr. Hunt’s main concern is finding a better method for running TransLink. The Lower Mainland transportation agency has been in limbo for the past two years, deadlocked with the provincial government on how to pay for transit improvements.

“It’s the biggest one we’ve got to solve. It dominoes through the whole province. And it’s one of my hopes for this election that we can find some ways to change how the provincial government does things.”

Mr. Sullivan, who won the Vancouver-False Creek riding, also said all cities and towns in B.C. will benefit from having so many former municipal politicians in the provincial government.

One of his priorities is stable funding for local arts groups, something that was a flashpoint for many after the Liberal government under Gordon Campbell drastically cut funding in 2009.

“We do need a real sense of stability and certainty in the arts.”

He said he is also hopeful that, as an MLA, he can pick up a project that he started as mayor: a streetcar in central Vancouver.

“The streetcar follows the contours of my riding. That’s a natural.”

Mr. Fassbender simply said he hopes the municipal presence will help the province learn to communicate better and develop solutions collaboratively.

None of the three who spoke to The Globe and Mail promised to fight for extra funding, but talked instead about finding “creative” or “innovative” solutions to problems without adding to provincial debt.

“We know there’s not a lot of money around in the next four years,” Mr. Hunt said.

Metro Vancouver chair Greg Moore, a former provincial politician who is now the mayor of Port Coquitlam, said he is hopeful about the new city-minded crop of MLAs.

“It’s a really good thing. I know from dealing with Terry Lake [the former Kamloops mayor who is the MLA for that region now] that there’s a deeper understanding of what we’re going through at the local level. They know the challenges.”

Mr. Moore said the region is anxious for the provincial government to find a new deal with cities to pay for big projects like waste-treatment facilities.

Transit is another priority that he will push. Mr. Moore said he believes this group understands that improved transit is not about just making people in the Lower Mainland happier.

“If it’s not working, it hurts the whole economy.”

And, he said, Metro Vancouver will work to persuade the new provincial government it needs to help encourage developers to build apartments.

“We want some commitments to build rental stock.”