Saturday February 10, 2018

Brentwood One and Two

Concord Brentwood excavation

Brentwood One and Two from behind Carter dealerships

Gilmore Station with Gold's Gym in the foreground

Brentwood One April, 2017

Still Creek history in Burnaby Now

A nice article in the Burnaby Now about the area that is now the site of Costco, the city recycling centre, and car dealerships.  The story is about Geraldine Knibb recalling her life around Still Creek before Brentwood Mall.  I wonder if the crows were there back then.

Burnaby Now article and photo below

Former resident offers glimpse into Brentwood's past
Janaya Fuller-Evans / Burnaby Now
October 1, 2015 11:01 AM

Home sweet home: Geraldine Knibb near the creek on her family’s
property at Dawson Street and Willingdon Avenue in 1944. The creek
is gonetoday, and Costco’s parking lot is located where it used to run.
   Photograph By Contributed/BURNABY NOW

Before Brentwood mall moved in, before houses sprouted up, before the streets were even paved, the Brentwood neighbourhood was a place of woodlands and creeks, according to former resident Geraldine Knibb.

“It’s just unbelievable what they’ve done in that area,” she says of the neighbourhood today, adding the SkyTrain is right where she used to turn up Alpha Avenue to get to her home. “It seems like it’s up in the heavens.”

Nowadays, Knibb lives in White Rock, where she retired with her husband. But in 1946, her father gave her husband an acre of property in the area between Willingdon and Alpha avenues, right where Brentwood Town Centre is today. Back then, there were only three houses in the area between Alpha and Beta avenues, she says – the red shack originally on her property, the house her husband built, and her sister’s home nearby. Otherwise, there was no one around, she says.

“It was all bush,” she adds.

The shack was originally owned by a First World War veteran, a bachelor, who willed it to her father, according to Knibb.

“In those days, there were all kinds of old bachelors living in that area,” she says, adding they all had an acre of land.

In 1959, developers came knocking. Brentwood Mall opened two years later.

“In those days, they didn’t tell you what they were going to develop. They just knocked on our door one night and said, ‘We don’t want your house, we just want your property,’” she says. “We were able to live in the house to ’60. By this time, the bulldozer was starting to come down, so we decided to move the house.”

The family had the house loaded on a truck and transported to Duthie Avenue and Broadway, she says. The red shack was moved to Spring Avenue and Hastings Street, and her sister’s home was moved to Grandview Highway.

Her husband was involved in developing the area. He worked as a carpenter building houses in Willingdon Heights, as well as homes and apartment buildings in Vancouver, Knibb says.

Knibb first moved to Burnaby with her parents when she was five. Born over the border in Washington, she first lived in Vancouver, and moved alongside Still Creek in 1929, she says.

“We had a little yellow house, a two-room house, and my mother and father and five children,” she says. “Our little house was right on the creek between Willingdon Avenue and the Burnaby Lake trestle.”

The children hauled water from the creek on Willingdon Avenue up to the house so their mother could wash clothes, she says.

We had quite a time down on our creek,” she adds.

But living beside a waterway wasn’t all fun and games.

“I was there when we had the flood. The creek flooded up, and it came up as high as the train tracks, and Burnaby Lake, and over as far as Douglas Road,” Knibb says. “In fact, there was a Chinese gardener who lived over on Douglas Road, and the people that got off the Burnaby Lake tram, he had to row the ones that lived down on Grandview Highway.”

The family had to move after five years because the area wasn’t good for their health, she says.

“I had a sister that died at the age of 13, and a sister that had a bad heart, and the doctor said we had to move,” Knibb says. “It was damp down there, it was all peat moss.”

Burnaby planned to dredge Still Creek at the time, so they traded her father for an acre of land on Dawson Street and Willingdon Avenue, according to Knibb.

Today, the Keg and Costco sit on the property her family owned on Dawson Street, and a creek that divided the property is gone, she says.

But it’s not just the homes and waterways and woods that Knibb misses from her childhood – it’s the people, she says.

“I find it really sad because there’s not one soul… I just love to talk about when we lived down on the creek, and there’s not one soul living that I can laugh and say, ‘remember the good days,’” she says. “Nobody’s left.”

© 2015 Burnaby Now

Evening stroll through Brentwood

As the Brentwood area continues its transformation from the evening quiet, dark void into the evening entertainment destination that it is slated to become I can't help but take a few photos of it's current state.    It will be the only evidence of how quiet the neighbourhood once was.

Background for current and future Brentwood developments

The following 2003 report by Avison Young provides a background to the current construction boom in and around Brentwood and mentions the factors that may affect the rate of development.

(view through above link or by zooming into this page)

Area plan needed for south of Dawson

The following article in the Burnaby NewsLeader highlights difficulties that developers may face when seeking approval of rezoning applications for property owned in and around Brentwood.  In this case, it's not an issue of conflict with an existing community plan but rather an issue with the fact that a community plan currently does not exist.  The area in question is the land located south of Dawson Ave between Willingdon and Beta on Alpha Avenue.

The City of Burnaby needs to develop a plan for the area in question and give prospective developers a definitive guideline for their plans and create more interest in the Brentwood area.

Stuck in redevelopment limbo near Brentwood

By Wanda Chow - Burnaby NewsLeader

Published: April 23, 2013 11:00 AM

Wiinton Williams will likely one day get a nice windfall from the sale of a property he owns in the Brentwood area.  

Today, though, his industrial property has a breathtaking property tax bill based solely on its development potential. 

If only he could develop it.  For now, with the taxes so high, he’s having trouble just leasing out the place. Williams says he can’t redevelop his property and sell it for what it could be worth because Burnaby city hall has been slow to come up with an area plan.

Since 1993, his company, Vernon-based Sako Pacific Properties Ltd. has owned the property at 2450 Alpha Ave. in Burnaby where it also owned and operated Universal Concrete Accessories, a business that first opened there in 1970. Starting in 1995, Burnaby city hall started sending Williams’ company notices about redevelopment plans for the Brentwood area, including the industrial lands south of Dawson Street where Sako’s property is located. Williams said since then, his property taxes have soared from about $17,000 in 1995 to an expected $70,000 this year.

Seeing the writing on the wall, he started working with a developer several years back and has spent about $70,000 on site investigations necessary for any redevelopment. But while Burnaby city hall has indicated for years that redevelopment is on the horizon for the area, the planning department has yet to complete a plan for the area south of Dawson to allow any such transformation to begin. 

To make matters worse, when Sako sold its Universal Concrete business it continued to lease the property to its new owners. The business’ owners just vacated the site a couple months ago, relocating to an area with lower property tax costs.  Williams said he found two possible tenants in the film industry, but they decided to look elsewhere when they found out Sako planned to redevelop in the next few years and that the property taxes they’d be expected to help pay were high.

“We’re stuck in limbo, we can’t sell it, we can’t rent it, all we can do is click off 25 grand a month,” said Williams.  About eight years ago when the taxes went up to $32,000, Williams spoke to B.C. Assessment Authority and explained the land is zoned industrial, it’s being used for industrial so it should be paying industrial-level taxes.

“They said, ‘yeah, but it’s going to be high density and then it’s going to be worth a lot more.’”  Williams replied, “When it is high density then it will be worth a lot more, just like you actually have to win the lottery before [you can benefit].”

Sako has yet to appeal its assessment and while they’ve missed this year’s deadline, Williams said they may do so in future. He recently wrote to Burnaby’s community development committee describing his company’s predicament.

Coun. Colleen Jordan, chair of the committee, said the city’s master plan for the area bounded by Dawson and the railway tracks and Gilmore and Holdom avenues, “is kind of up in the air.”   Even in the late 1990s it was designated for redevelopment but the form and type was never defined by city hall, Jordan explained.

A property on the western section of the area was rezoned several years back for highrises but council decided to put any further applications on hold until a plan could be developed.

One of the issues to be determined is whether some areas are suitable for highrises since some of the land is peat bog.  “You have to consider whether or not stuff is going to sink,” she said.  As it stands currently, property owners could apply to rezone “but we would say no.”  Jordan said she sympathizes with the situation Williams and others in the area find themselves.  “We appreciate that so we’re just asking our staff how much work it would take to get this on the table and moving forward,” she said, noting staff already have their plates full doing similar work for other areas of the city.

Jordan hopes the planning work for the area south of Dawson will be completed by the end of the year.  Kash Kang, B.C. Assessment Authority’s area assessor for the North Fraser region, said Brentwood town centre is a “really good example” of such situations which are not unusual for urban areas in transition.

Kang stressed that property assessments are based on market value and take into account what similar properties in neighbourhoods have sold for recently.  The market will discount properties if there are constraints, such as the fact redevelopment is not yet able to go ahead. But if land is at the stage where it could be rezoned, its value would be “substantially higher,” he noted.

“There’s a distinction between what somebody could do with it if it’s already rezoned versus something that has a horizon that’s possibly three to five years out.”   Kang said similar situations have occurred in Richmond since the Canada Line has gone through there, and will likely also occur with the Evergreen Line out to the Tri-Cities.

He said property owners could appeal their assessments if they believe they’re higher or lower than those given to similar properties in a similar situation.  As for Williams, he said he’s been “pleasantly surprised” by the responsiveness of city hall staff and council.  “While we feel a little hard done by it’s not really anybody’s fault.”

wchow@burnabynewsleader.com

Brentwood Redevelopment will extend existing streets

According to the posterboards posted on Shape Properties` website, the Brentwood Mall Redevelopment will involve extending existing streets through the mall site.  As the map below shows, Ridgelawn and Brentwood Drives will extend westward into the mall from Beta Ave and connect with Willingdon Ave at the west end of the mall.  Halifax Street will extend eastward into the mall from Willingdon where it will connect with an extended Alpha Ave which will extend northward into the mall from a new intersection at Lougheed Hwy.  Brentwood Drive, once in the Mall site, will be called Brentwood Bvd and the existing "Brentwood Drive" name will remain unchanged east of Beta Ave.  The confusing part; Brentwood Bvd will again become "Brentwood Drive" during a brief half-block stretch ending at Willingdon Ave.  This half-block stretch will be further north on the map than the existing stretch between Beta and Delta Avenues,

Townhouses on Ridgelawn Drive

The future townhouses built at the north end of the site will have their addresses on the extended portion of Ridgelawn Drive.  The townhouses will face east-west instead of north-south to minimize their impact on the single-famly homes to the north.  The development also appears to have dropped its original idea of tapping into the rear lane located behind those homes to use as a shared lane with the townhouses.

Brentwood's 'Robson Street'

The 'Fashion' and 'Village' districts will be located on the new Brentwood Bvd.  The new boulevard is expected to be a destination street where the hustle and bustle of human activity will take place.  Major brand stores are expected to front this section of the development and the level of lease rates will certainly reflect this.  The map above has confirmed the desire of the development to have a grocery store in the Village District of Brentwood Bvd.

Solo public preview

According to the Burnaby NewsLeader the public will get an opportunity to see a preview of the Solo District project this Saturday June 23 on Willingdon Ave just south of Lougheed (SOLO).  I will definitely try to make it out for the viewing.  For those that will need to drive to the site, a parking lot has been provided next to the presentation centre.

Burnaby NewsLeader - News
Solo set to transform Burnaby's Brentwood corner
By Wanda Chow - Burnaby NewsLeader
Published: June 20, 2012 1:00 PM 
Updated: June 20, 2012 3:45 PM
As a Burnaby boy, Jim Bosa has passed by the southwest corner of Lougheed Highway and Willingdon Avenue thousands of times.

"I just saw the potential of what we could have down here," said Bosa, now president of Appia Developments.

Working from an office a couple blocks away, Bosa is set to make that potential a reality with the Solo District, a four-tower community on just over six acres, set to start construction in August once final approvals are granted by city hall.

"It's an opportunity that came up," said Bosa during a NewsLeader preview of the sales centre. "We've spent six years planning and designing for this."

The company contemplated getting the project off the ground three or four years ago, but decided to wait until market conditions were right. Then a couple years ago, Burnaby city hall introduced its "s category" of density bonuses and Appia redesigned the project to take advantage of it.

The result is a complex of four towers, with a total of just under 1,400 homes. It will include offices and commercial space, including the first Whole Foods supermarket in Burnaby.

The first phase, dubbed Stratus, will be a 45-storey, 374-unit highrise, the Whole Foods and additional retail space on the northwest corner of the site, at Lougheed and Rosser Avenue.

Phase two will be a 52-storey tower on the northeast corner, comprised of 250,000 square feet of office space, additional commercial space, and a residential tower on top of it all.

The third phase will be a 39-storey highrise on the southwest corner, with 12,000 square feet of commercial, and the fourth phase, to be built when market conditions permit, will be a 43-storey structure on the southeast corner, on top of a 20,000-square-foot podium of commercial space.

In exchange for the additional density, Bosa said Appia will be providing $32 million in community amenities if all four phases go ahead—a 4,000-square-foot community space to be owned by city hall, a $2-million value to be built in phase three, and $30 million in cash to be used for amenities off site.

The condos in Stratus will have their share of sustainable features, from Modo car co-op vehicles and two years of transit passes for a certain number of units to individual gas meters for each unit, so residents pay only for what they use.

All units will have air conditioning and a geo-exchange system will be used to reduce energy costs. "We're taking advantage of the energy the whole project produces (both retail and residential) rather than just blowing it out into the atmosphere," Bosa said.

As for Stratus, it features an outdoor rooftop common area that includes a fenced-in dog park, fitness centre, gardens and barbecue area.

The units range in size from the 475-square-foot junior one-bedrooms ($229,000) to three two-level skylofts at 1,785 square feet ($1.25 million), said Dennis Serraglio, Appia's director of sales. Two bedroom units will range in size from 850 to 940 square feet and start at $379,000.

They all come with balconies that are larger than usual but typical for Appia projects, said Serraglio. The junior one-bedroom (essentially a studio suite with a pony wall creating a sleeping area) comes with about 80 square feet of balcony, which is not included in the floor area.

"People in the summer like to spend a lot of time outside," he said. "It adds to the cost to build but it enhances the unit."

And when Solo is complete, it will all complement the planned redevelopment of Brentwood Mall across Lougheed.

"[Brentwood] will be more walkable and pedestrian friendly, more of a community versus a destination mall, in and out from the parking lot," said Bosa, stressing residents will be able to walk or take SkyTrain to their shopping and entertainment, leaving their cars, if any, at home.

While sales for Stratus will not start until mid summer, after the city grants final approvals, the sales centre at the end of Sumas Street near Willingdon opens for public previews this Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m.

A community event will be held at the centre on July 14, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., featuring free food, games, and entertainment for the whole family.

twitter.com/WandaChow

High-rise heights getting more attention

As the following editorial in the Burnaby NewsLeader suggests, the approval of new projects involving 45-plus story buildings is starting to garner more attention in the city as town centres like Brentwood continue to fill in and build up with high-rise developments.

Burnaby NewsLeader - Opinion
EDITORIAL: Burnaby rapidly changing into a soaring city

By Editorial - Burnaby NewsLeader
Published: June 20, 2012 10:00 AM 
Updated: June 20, 2012 10:16 AM

Burnaby’s town centres are rapidly changing. Metrotown, Brentwood, Edmonds and Lougheed are rife with construction cranes as these four areas densify. The growth is particularly fast in Brentwood and Metrotown, both on SkyTrain, both a short jaunt to downtown Vancouver.

Some have voiced concern that new towers are now reaching stratospheric heights, with Metrotown’s Station Square redevelopment to have a tower of 57 storeys, and the redevelopment of Brentwood Mall eyeing a 60-storey skyscraper.

Why so tall? That’s what Metrotown-area resident Carly Franklin asked in this paper recently, and it’s a legitimate question. Won’t the influx of new residents mean jammed libraries, community centres and parks?

As far as density goes, the plan for the town centres is no surprise. Burnaby’s Official Community Plan has charted the growth in these areas for decades. They were always meant to be busy, but in some ways they are only now coming to fruition. The soaring heights, though, are new.

The city now lets developers go higher on specific sites—achieving more density—in return for building amenities for the city or paying cash in lieu.

And it’s not petty cash.

The Solo project in Brentwood will encompass four towers, and the city will get a 4,000-square-foot facility for local non profit groups. In addition, the city will get $30 million in cash from Jim Bosa’s Appia Developments. Twenty per cent will go to Burnaby’s fund for affordable and special needs housing, which has supported worthwhile projects like the Poppy Residences, built by Royal Canadian Legion Branch 83 in South Burnaby.

The rest, $24 million, will go a long way towards building bigger, better libraries, community centres, and parks. These new shiny towers will certainly change the look and feel of the town centres. Whether a person likes the look and feel of the changing neighbourhood, well, that’s another question altogether.

Why increasing density makes sense

I remember when I got my driver's licence in 1991 and gas prices were in the 30 cents/litre range.  Many seem to think that current gas prices is a front-page news story even though the prospect of peak oil and future sky-rocketting gas prices has been talked about since the 1970s.

The photos below suggest why living in dense transit nodes makes increasingly more sense.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that reads a newspaper even as little as once a month that this is the way the future will be in terms of housing in Metro Vancouver.

Views from the train