While many in Metro Vancouver lament about the direction that densification is moving the region, according to the following Seattle Times article, Vancouver is at least a decade ahead of where Seattle needs to be when it comes to transit and transit oriented development. In particular, the article cites the development around Brentwood Town Centre as an example of where future urban living is heading. While Seattle may feel that it is a decade behind Metro Vancouver in this regard, we are certainly decades behind other well-developed cities in Europe and Asia. It's all relative.
With three fully-built light-rail lines and an interconnected bus network, Vancouver’s transportation system is like Seattle’s, just a couple of decades in the future. But the Canadian city differs in its rock-solid commitment to building housing right on top of transit.
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Stand in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, at the Brentwood SkyTrain station, and you can see how the region has literally taken shape around public transportation.
The rail station is surrounded by residential skyscrapers, both completed and under construction. By 2020, there should be 11 towers — some up to 60 stories, with 6,000 homes and a massive mall — within a block or two of the station.
Look south.
Close by it’s an unremarkable suburban panorama: squat apartment buildings and town houses, tree-lined streets, car dealerships, a Costco.
But three miles in the distance lies a cluster of skyscrapers. Scan left, a stretch of empty green, then another clump of high-rises. And a bit farther left, the biggest, highest assemblage of skyscrapers yet.
The towers, all in Burnaby, are built along SkyTrain’s original line, which opened in 1985. The high-rises flag the rail line beneath it — each clump a station — a real-life pop-up map of the transit line.
Metro Vancouver — which comprises Vancouver and 23 surrounding cities and towns — is a region being built, more and more, around its thriving and ever-expanding light-rail system.
Click here for original full article with better visual presentation
With the Evergreen Line taking shape along its route from Lougheed Mall to Coquitlam, the debate over the merits of densification is taking place in Port Moody which will see 2 stations built within its boundaries.
With the Millennium Line seeing massive developments take shape along its route on Lougheed Hwy in Burnaby, with many more to come in the future, a similar trend seems inevitable along St Johns Street.
The densification process in Port Moody began long before the Evergreen Line broke ground as funding uncertainty delayed the long-promised line for over a decade. With the line within 2 years of completion, the debate is becoming more prominent as developers are now looking at potential mega projects along the St. Johns Street corridor.
This story is part of a joint Vancouver Sun-Langara College project looking at the urban future of the rapidly growing Metro Vancouver region.
The cities of Port Moody and Coquitlam are set to fundamentally change their identities from suburban neighbourhoods to urban communities over the next two decades.
But that transformation operation is being met with very different responses. While many in Coquitlam seem to embrace the shift, some Port Moody residents are pushing back against the city’s development plans.
“Residents are being told that we must have major densification to support (the Evergreen Line),” said Hazel Mason, a longtime Port Moody resident and president of the Moody Centre Community Association, which is fighting the city’s official community plan. “We’ve got seniors that are moving out and we’ve got people who want to live in Port Moody that are forming their Plan B — it’s sad.”
The city is pursuing more transit-oriented development to account for the 10.9-kilometre Evergreen Line, expected to be in service by summer 2016. In the next 30 years, Port Moody’s population is projected to rise from 34,500 to 50,000.
Port Moody plans to densify around designated SkyTrain stations such as Moody Centre, the heritage commercial district (where Mason lives) and Coronation Park. Concerns include lack of park space, traffic congestion, overcrowding and stress on the city’s infrastructure.
But not all Port Moody residents oppose densification.
A group of homeowners in Coronation Park, which sits between Suter Brook and Newport Village, submitted a petition in favour of densification in the neighbourhood.
“I could live here forever,” said Rose McFarlane, who initiated the petition last November. “It’s not that I have a big desire to see development happen. But I think it would make sense if they’re going to develop ... this is the area to do it.”
That minority group of cautious approvers in Port Moody is a majority in nearby Coquitlam, where many embrace the incoming rapid transit line in a city whose population is expected to grow from 131,500 to 224,000.
“We love the densification of the area and how it’s got a downtown feel to it, but you still know you’re in the suburbs,” said Heath, adding that densification means a greater variety of businesses, restaurants and stores.
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said residents understand that densification is necessary to support the rapid transit line that has been years in the making.
“We’ve always fought for it,” he said. “I think, in reality, a majority of people in Port Moody embrace it. They embrace the same kind of livable community that we want in Coquitlam. I recognize that some want it to be a small town and do not accept any of the new population, but I don’t think that’s a sustainable position.”
The following article highlights how corporations pressure governments to make decisions that negatively impact ordinary citizens. I've mentioned how density bonuses or community amenity contributions (CACs) work in Burnaby where developers pay a fee in exchange for being allowed greater heights and more density for their projects. The fees go into City funds that allow for amenities in the local area where the greater density has been allowed.
The provincial government has created guidelines for fee structures that cities can charge developers in exchange for the tremendous benefit that developers achieve in the form of greater profits. The guidelines are merely that; guidelines. Cities have been able to charge developers more than the guidelines for allowing greater density and developers have been paying the higher CACs because it is profitable to do so.
But the "poor" developers want protections with detailed limits on how much they have to pay for the benefit of increased profits...because they want to make even more profits than the hundred of millions that they already do.
It's amazing that corporations want the benefits of a free market economy where they can tremendously profit from a "free market economy" that has been Vancouver's real estate market over the past 20 years, but don't want the free market conditions to apply to them in the form the costs of participating in that real estate market. Ordinary citizens are required to deal with the same type of free market conditions which has led to inflated real estate prices that have benefited who else but corporations. If developers want "protections" from the free market, perhaps citizens should have the same protections to keep real estate affordable as well. Let's cap real estate costs. Not in the free market spirit? Then forget about limiting CACs for developers. Let's let market conditions apply to developers as well. After all, what's fair is fair.
The question should be asked; if the BC Government places a cap on what municipalities can demand for CACs, how many people and who in the current BC Government will end up with jobs with the very real estate development companies that they will have helped as legislators?
Developers might have no option but to sue municipalities that don’t respect provincial guidelines governing community amenity contributions (CACs).
The province’s Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development recently released new guidelines following a two-year study of municipal practice with respect to CACs, which are charged at rezoning.
But consultant Alan Osborne – who drafted the guidelines – told the Urban Development Institute (UDI) last week that there’s no resolution process in place if municipalities ignore the rules.
“Someone has to take them to court,” Osborne said, in response to questions from Anne McMullin, president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute. “There isn’t an appeal board you can go to, the minister can slap them on the wrist, the minister can send letters, but ultimately, in British Columbia, the system is that somebody goes to court.”
While the province might consider entrenching the guidelines in legislation, Osborne said that would be a decision for the politicians if it’s clear that the guidelines haven’t achieved the change in municipal behaviour the province aims to effect with the new ground rules.
“The decision was to produce guidelines; obviously the next step is to monitor the use of guidelines by local governments. Then it’s a political decision about the next steps,” he said. “It’s now very clear what the province thinks about CACs; that foreshadows the next steps if they want to go that far.”
CACs have become a contentious issue for developers over the past decade as municipalities have seen the charges as a lucrative source of revenue for funding public amenities such as child-care facilities, affordable housing and space for community groups.
The charges are typically based on the projected change in a property’s improved value following rezoning.
Between 2000 and 2010, CACs charged to B.C. developers jumped to $720 million from $100 million.
The increase is a function not just of the upswing in rezonings and property values during the period, but funding cutbacks by senior levels of government that forced municipalities to seek alternative revenue sources.
“Somebody’s going to have to pick up that tab,” said Burnaby Coun. Nick Volkow, speaking in lieu of Mayor Derek Corrigan. “That’s why the development community has now got a bull’s eye on their foreheads.”
Vancouver staff have sought to establish fixed rates for CACs to give developers certainty, but it was one of several municipalities, including Richmond and West Vancouver, singled out for harsh criticism during the UDI discussion.
Whether developers act on their ongoing discontent with CACs – which can add millions of dollars to the cost of developments – is another question.
McMullin told Business in Vancouver that litigation is hardly a positive or profitable way to do business.
The industry would most likely ask the province’s attorney general to intervene if municipalities don’t bring CACs in line with the guidelines, and potentially create new legislation to avoid unleashing costly court battles.
“I think if we can bring in legislation based on these guidelines, then we will avoid court cases,” McMullin said. “I don’t think anybody finds any value in going to court.” •
The density bonus received by the City of Burnaby from Shape Properties is in the form of cash in exchange for allowing greater density in the Brentwood Mall Redevelopment. It has yet to be decided what funds will be used for in the future.
Burnaby Now article below:
Brentwood mall coughs up another $5 million to city coffers
Council takes cash-in-lieu despite developers wanting density bonus money for "extraordinary plaza improvements"
Brentwood Town Centre's first highrise tower is putting another $5 million in the city's hands.
Within the mall's first phase of development is another rezoning application to allow for a 53-storey residential tower above a commercial podium. City council approved an estimated $5.2 million cash-in-lieu contribution from the density bonus at its Jan. 13 meeting.
"This is a contribution made by the developer, which will go back to the community and result in community facilities, such as rec centres and other services in Brentwood Town Centre," Coun. Dan Johnston said.
The latest density bonus contribution puts the Brentwood Town Centre amenity account to $14.5 million, with $9.3 million in the city wide housing/special needs sub-account, according to a staff report.
The proposed tower will add about 591 units, and 300 of those are being considered for purpose built market rental units.
Lou Pelletier, director of planning and building, expects a future report regarding the 53-storey tower in the back portion of the Brentwood mall lot to come forward in 2014, which will set a public hearing date.
Shape Properties, the company that owns Brentwood mall, first applied for the density bonus funds to go towards "extraordinary plaza improvements," but city staff had a different idea.
"With regard to the use of amenity bonus funds for privately held market rental units, this is not considered supportable in this circumstance," Pelletier states in the report.
Instead, Pelletier recommended to take the cash-in-lieu contribution first, then consider on-site plaza improvements funding during a detailed review of the process in the future.
As the Burnaby NOW previously reported, the entire Brentwood mall redevelopment plan is divided into four phases, which includes 10 residential towers - with a structure capable of accommodating one more in the future - possibly ranging in height from 20 to 70 storeys depending on the location, and two office towers ranging in height from 30 to 40 storeys.
Council approved the master conceptual plan for Brentwood mall in September, which includes more than 350 shops and services, a high street and a public plaza.
According to the following Burnaby Now article, Concord Pacific is behind the development Between Beta and Delta Avenues along the south side of Lougheed Hwy that includes the Dragonwood warehouse lands off of Beta Ave.
Brentwood proposal includes park, school
Developer wants to transform industrial area into family neighbourhood
By Stefania Seccia, Burnaby NowJuly 25, 2013
Another high-density development is being proposed near Brentwood Town Centre on industrial lands, which could include an elementary school and park.
Concord Pacific Holdings has put forward a rezoning application to allow construction of a multi-phased highrise, mid-rise and low-rise residential development with a commercial component.
The site is on 10.5 hectares (26 acres) of land south of Lougheed Highway and east of Beta Avenue.
At its Monday night meeting, Burnaby council authorized staff to work with the developer on the 10 individual parcels and areas of unopened rightof-ways.
The site is currently occupied by the Dragonwood Industrial Estates. Dragonwood consists of heavy industrial buildings, a large outdoor storage yard and a used car dealership.
About seven acres of the site - for the park and school - would be acquired through a mixture of density transfer and cash, to serve the southern portion of the Brentwood area.
"The proposed preliminary development concept for this key site within the Brentwood Town Centre is to transform its existing industrial nature into a new signature multiple-family residential neighbourhood, with a new elementary school, a neighbourhood park, and an improved naturalized riparian corridor for Stickleback Creek, at its heart," the city report states. "The neighbourhood park space would be for both active and passive recreation, children's play and environmental enhancement, and would add to the primary outdoor and indoor recreation opportunities available at the nearby Burnaby Lake Sports Complex."
Concord Pacific will have to meet certain service requirements such as finishing surrounding streets with bicycle facilities, sidewalks, trees, boulevards, and street and pedestrian lighting.
Coun. Dan Johnston noted that despite the controversy with high-density developments, it's often a good opportunity to get density bonuses, which fund great community amenities.
"Density is not always a bad thing," Johnston added.
A noise study will also be completed due to the site's close proximity to the SkyTrain line and Lougheed Highway.
The scale of the upcoming Brentwood Mall Redevelopment may be overwhelming for some, but it's inception is part of a greater trend that began decades ago when subsidized automobile use had become so rampant that multi-decades of auto-centric development saw many people living driving distances away from nearly everywhere that they needed to go to on a regular basis. The flaw in that auto-centric view of the world has begun to show it's downside as our increasingly busy lives are being crammed into the finite hours of day and night coupled with soaring fuel costs for drivers. The extensive advertising that created our car-centric culture now seems to be at odds with reality (but that doesn't seem to stop automakers from continuing to make stupid commercials showing people doing stupid things as if those things were normal and legal).
We are constantly bombarded with such commercials that tell us cars are fun to own and fun to do stupid things with. What they'll never tell us is what really happens when the automakers are successful with their brainwash:
What's really amazing is the fact that some people are so overwhelmed by densification yet don't bat an eye when more lanes are added to our highways or more bridges are built with more roads to accommodate more cars with our tax dollars. And here we are over a year away from a referendum to determine how to fund public transit in BC. Where were the referendums when all of our roads, bridges and highways were exponentially expanded with our tax dollars so that the auto corporations could take advantage of the tax-payer-funded market expansion that was created for them?
The Brentwood Mall Redevelopment is based on principles that will counter previous auto-centric trends. Will real estate be manipulated by developers with catch phrases such as "density", "sustainable living", "green living" to make people buy into the concept that small and dense is a good thing? Of course they will. How do you think we got to the unsustainable suburban, car-centric lifestyle that we've come to accept as being normal after decades of spread-out car-centred development. Many (if not all) of us that were born here were born into an auto-centric, suburban society that we have always viewed as being natural or normal without question at least until we were exposed to an alternative idea. It is what it is.
The following Globe and Mail article talks about the trend of having people live close to most of the amenities that they need. What an overwhelming concept that is!
The death and rebirth of the mall. You don’t drive there, you live there
Honeydale Mall sits at the back of an oceanic parking lot, about as far from the street as it is from current urban-design thinking. A so-called “dead mall,” most of this shopping centre in Etobicoke, on Toronto’s west side, is practically empty. The giant space that Walmart once occupied has been vacant for a decade, as are the majority of the smaller retail spaces inside. Only a dentist’s office, nail salon and electronics store are still in business.
Customers have moved on. So has time. Opened in 1973, Honeydale, like so many other shopping centres, was designed to cater to a car culture. But the mall’s owners hope to modernize the site and revive its economic fortunes. Azuria Group has applied to have the 16-acre site rezoned and plans to add shops closer to the street, as well as residential and green space, creating a mixed-use community centred on a new and improved retail.
Many other malls across Canada and the United States have similar plans, or have recently undergone such a transformation, especially shopping centres with plenty of land and sagging economic fortunes. They’ve attracted better retail thanks to the addition of residential and, often green space.
For anyone who grew up in suburbia, the mall has almost always been a far-off place surrounded by a giant parking lot that you drove to, bought what you needed, and then drove back home. But with urban planners now making higher-density, walkable neighbourhoods a priority, and people looking for more convenient – not to mention environmentally friendly – alternatives to the car culture, shopping centres in Canada and the United States are undergoing a fundamental shift, being reborn as the anchors of communities, places you don’t drive to, but live above.
“It’s really about the fact that cities are moving from a car-dominated thinking to a multimobile way of thinking,” says Brent Toderian, president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism.
The trend is growing quickly in the U.S., says Ellen Dunham-Jones, who teaches architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is the author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.Green Street Advisors, which specializes in real estate analysis, has forecast that 10 per cent of the enclosed shopping malls in the U.S. will fail by 2022. Often, this trend, referred to as the “urbanization of malls,” sees parking lots scrapped for residential towers at so-called dead malls, defined as economically failing shopping centres with sales less than $150 per square foot.
In Canada, many malls have had to seek out non-traditional tenants to fill space, Dunham-Jones points out. City Plaza, in London, Ont., is home to a public library. Hamilton City Centre is home to government offices.
Making malls the centre of communities has demographics on its side, Toderian says.
“Both aging boomers and the millennials support more compact, walkable living, transit, walkable shopping,” he says.
Cities, too, are often looking to get more out of a space than just a sprawling piece of retail. Calgary, for instance, is preparing an area redevelopment plan for the Stadium Shopping Centre lands, a strip mall built in the 1960s, that intends to evolve into a local centre made up of a mix of residences, office and retail, all designed around walkability.
At more successful malls, however, parking can still be king. One parking spot at Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto supports 15 shoppers a day, on average, equalling approximately 45,000 visits a year. A 400-unit condo building that holds 800 residents who shop three times a month at a mall, which is average, equals just 30,000 visits, according to Michael Kitt, executive vice-president of Oxford Properties Canada, the company that manages Yorkdale.
The better that public transit systems become, the easier it is to urbanize malls, he adds.
Several mall urbanization projects under way in British Columbia show how this might be a new workable model for urban living, where people can eat, do errands and go shopping all in one localized spot.
The owners of Brentwood Town Centre in Burnaby have proposed a plan to include 11 high-rise residential towers, two office towers and a public plaza on the site. The redevelopment of the Station Square shopping centre, also in Burnaby, will include five residential towers ranging from 35 to 57 storeys. The Oakridge Centre in Vancouver is the biggest Canadian example of the trend, and perhaps the most interesting given that it is a very successful shopping centre.
“The idea is to create a complete community on the site,” says Matt Shilito, a city planner.
The redevelopment calls for doubling the size of the mall, to almost 1.4-million square feet of retail space, from 600,000 square feet. The plan adds approximately 300,000 square feet of office space to the site and introduces about 2.7 million square feet of residential space, mostly in the form of mid- and high-rise apartments. There are also plans to build a civic centre, library, daycare and community centre.
“What we’re doing here is more than simply putting towers in a parking lot or on the edge of the mall. We’re actually integrating these towers into the fabric of the mall itself,” says Graeme Silvera, vice-president of western region retail development for Ivanhoe Cambridge, which owns the mall.
There also will be 11 acres of green space on top of the mall, three storeys above street level, that will boast a half-acre jogging track, reflecting pool, community gardens and a wedding pavilion. Such redevelopment is really only possible thanks to the success of the Canada Line, a rapid transit line that opened in 2009, Silvera says.
People still drive to the mall, of course, but many arrive on transit. Eventually, people will arrive by elevator.
To anyone who thinks of the term “the mall” pejoratively, the idea of living and playing on top of one, or getting married on top of one for that matter, is probably hard to swallow. And there is perhaps something unsettling in structuring our lives so that we are primarily consumers.
But Toderian cautions against such thinking. Creating higher density, mixed-use neighbourhoods that are easily walkable is in everyone’s best interests, especially when you look at the toll on health and the environment that the old model of driving to the mall has taken.
“This should not be about snobbery between urbanism and suburbanism,” he says. “What this is about is the true cost of things.”
There are always multiple views on issues. The following letter was written to the Georgia Straight by a resident of Metrotown criticizing Burnaby's acceptance of high density developments in Metrotown.
COUNCILLOR COLLEEN JORDAN and assistant director of current planning Ed Kozak seem to be wearing rose-coloured glasses when it comes to discussing town-centre development in Burnaby [“ Towers rise in Burnaby, all according to plan”, February 21-28]. Metrotown where I live is already overdeveloped and yet many more huge developments are ready to go. Jordan and Kozak justify the density of development at Metrotown with the fact that the SkyTrain runs through that part of Burnaby.
Have they tried to board SkyTrain at the Metrotown station at practically any time of the day or evening? SkyTrain comes from the already heavily developed city of Surrey and is usually full by the time it reaches Metrotown.
The ability and capacity of SkyTrain to carry more passengers, in my opinion, has reached its limit. People are already opting to drive their cars instead of taking SkyTrain, and the consequence is log-jammed automobile traffic on Kingsway to and through Metrotown. Putting more towers into this area is inviting even more congestion.
The quality of the street-level environment is another issue. One has only to look at Hazel Street and Patterson Avenue to see how earlier tower developments were superior. At street level, one sees gardens and trees, making for pleasant, spacious surroundings. The buildings themselves were fewer than 30 storeys. The newer developments are now reaching 40 or more, and at ground level, one sees ugly, square box-like townhouses.
Automobile traffic will increase dramatically, transit will be impossible, and the Bonsor Recreation Complex will be even more crowded. Infrastructure and services—police, fire, safety, sewage, water, and power—will need to be upgraded and enlarged, adding huge costs to the city.
Ecodensity is an idea that has been oversold. I would like to see Burnaby city council return to its policy of allowing development to proceed at a measured, closely monitored pace, as in the past.
