At a citizen-led planning forum last night (May 13), speakers from numerous Vancouver neighbourhoods blasted the city’s planning processes.

Residents from Mount Pleasant, Kerrisdale, Riley Park-South Cambie, and the southwest side of the city peppered questions at councillors Ellen Woodsworth, George Chow, and Suzanne Anton, and NPA council candidate Bill McCreery.

“Why doesn’t the City of Vancouver just obey its own zoning and development bylaws?” Mount Pleasant neighbourhood activist Grace MacKenzie demanded.

She was referring to a proposed 19-storey tower at Broadway and Kingsway. MacKenzie explained that 200 people in her area showed up at a community meeting to say they wanted a structure around the same height as the seven-storey Lee Building across the street.

“How come the city didn’t listen to us?” she asked. Anton replied that this project hasn’t made it to council yet.

Grace MacKenzie says the city should follow its own bylaws.

The well-attended meeting at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver was organized by the Shannon Mews Neighbours’ Association.

Another audience member, Sheldon Zelitt, questioned the “credibility" of council and the planning department in listening to public input.

“We have a process by which the planning department undertakes long, careful, intensive community consultations—and then deep-sixes the results,” Zelitt, a member of the Arbutus Ridge/Kerrisdale/Shaughnessy CityPlan committee, claimed. “So my question is: how does council adequately take into account what the people who live in the communities say?”

Sheldon Zelitt wants council to listen to public opinion about rezoning applications.

Chow remarked that council works on the assumption that the current process is “satisfactory”. That prompted loud guffaws and heckling from the crowd.

“I can see that”¦councillors should have led some of these information-gathering sessions,” Chow quickly added. “That would be my short answer.”

In her response, Woodsworth pointed out that people at the church came from neighbourhoods across the city.

“You’re all here,” she said. “It’s clear that it’s not working, and people aren’t being heard. I think we not only need area plans, but we also need area councils that you elect—and that have a voice and a vote at the table with city council to make sure that the plans you’ve spent hours and years on, actually, are what gets implemented.”

McCreery, a veteran architect, questioned the value of neighbourhood councils, suggesting they might create another level of difficulty. He called for a “contract” between various neighbourhoods and the city, which would guide development in different areas.

He emphasized that the first step is creating a community vision, followed by a neighbourhood plan.

“The plan then has to be fleshed out via zoning bylaws—the written words that tell you that you can build such-and-such in this location. It can be this high, this big, here’s the setbacks, and how many parking spots, and so on that you need,” McCreery stated. “So that basically allows the developer and the real estate agents to determine what the land is worth.”

According to McCreery, this would enable architects and developers to design projects suitable for neighbourhoods. “You don’t need a spot rezoning process,” he declared.

This was one of several occasions in which McCreery condemned spot rezonings. His NPA colleague, Anton, remained silent on this issue throughout the forum.

However, Anton acknowledged being frustrated about information from communities not appearing in staff reports to council.

“I think that is something that as council, we do need to pay serious attention to,” she told the crowd. “It’s very, very disappointing when you’re reading a report and people say to you, ”˜But it doesn’t say any of the things that we said.’ Well, that’s not good. But I do also want to recognize that a lot of neighbourhood comment does make its way into the policies and into the plans and into the rezonings.”

Anton also claimed that it’s not “futile” for people to speak to council. “It’s not bogus,” she said of the planning process. “It’s far from perfect, but there are some really good things that do come out of what neighbourhoods have to say.”

Some in the audience wanted the panel to discuss Wall Financial Corporation’s application to rezone Shannon Mews, which is a four-hectare estate just west of Granville Street near West 57th Avenue. The developer hopes to increase the number of housing units from 162 to 800, and include towers on the site. This would involve razing townhouses on the site designed by famed architect Arthur Erickson.

One woman couldn’t get answers about Shannon Mews.

The moderator of the event, Karl Brodhecker, is a tenant at Shannon Mews. Despite this, he cut off one woman who wanted to raise concerns about this rezoning application. Brodhecker explained that the meeting was to held to discuss "general issues", not specific projects.

A man who lives near Shannon Mews, UBC instructor Gary Hewitt, framed his question about the application in a broader way. He asked about the relationship between city finances and council granting higher densities on development sites.

Hewitt noted that the city is strapped for money after hosting the Olympics. He claimed that this slants decisions in favour of spot rezonings at Shannon Mews and other locations.

He suggested that the city’s desire for community-amenity contributions and development-cost levies from developers ends up shutting out citizens’ voices from planning decisions.

“This might explain why these spot densities increases are not EcoDensity at all, when there is no transit connected with them,” Hewitt declared. “How can anybody dare to call this EcoDensity?”

Gary Hewitt says spot rezonings are being driven by the city’s desire for money from developers.

In responding to Hewitt, Anton said that the city should be more transparent up front about where dollars are going in connection with development projects.

“When the process is being worked through, it’s not very clear that there is a certain amount of money being set aside to preserve a heritage house, for instance, or a certain amount of money that will go into affordable housing,” Anton commented. “I think that when these things come through the city, we really need to be way clearer up front what the dollar implications are. That way, the public—you—have a better idea and can make clearer decisions because you know you have the facts in front of you.”

(Anton had earlier said in her opening statement that the previous NPA council’s goal with EcoDensity was to focus on increasing density downtown. “It was not to talk about changing the whole city,” she stated at the outset of the meeting.)

Woodsworth echoed Anton’s call for clearer financial data. In addition, the COPE councillor zeroed in on the builder's bottom line.

“I also think that we need more transparency on the kind of profits that developers expect to get out of the developments,” Woodsworth said, generating loud applause.

She highlighted the city’s commitment to provide 20 percent “affordable housing” in large residential developments, but noted that this repeatedly fails to occur. Woodsworth acknowledged that the federal government eliminated a national housing program in 1993. She also mentioned that the province is only building single-residency-occupancy units on city sites.

“The city council needs to step up to the bat and say to the planners, ”˜When you’re in the development process, we expect you to listen to the community. We expect you to have meetings—not just open houses—but actual meetings where people are talking to each other, and find out really what is needed in terms of amenities,” Woodsworth said.

One man at the forum raised concerns about the CPR line along the Arbutus corridor, describing it as a “dirty filthy dagger” and a “filthy garbage pit” between West 37th and West 41st avenues.

He wanted members of the panel to "throw some light on that situation".

One man described the Arbutus corridor is described as a “dirty, filthy dagger”.

Anton said that she didn’t think that negotiations with the CPR had progressed very far. “I cannot wait until we have the streetcar running through Kerrisdale,” she exclaimed.

A different resident expressed very serious concerns about the Riley Park-South Cambie planning process, saying she knows that residents weren’t listened to.

One member of the audience wanted to know the value of a citizen's presentation to council.

She wanted to know how important it is for people to come to speak to council before the final vote—and whether or not that would help in getting results.

Chow said that it’s very important to speak to council. “I think from our point of view, being a decision-maker, we look at the whole plan,” he added.

He emphasized that a recent vote on the Cambie corridor was on a policy report, and it wasn’t a rezoning bid. Therefore, he maintained, there is still “recourse” to citizens when any applications come forward.

He described the Cambie corridor plan as a “signal of change going forward 50 years”.

“Of course, it doesn’t make you any happier,” Chow commented. “I realize that.”

Related articles:

Video: COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth outlines her concerns about city planning processes

NPA council candidate Bill McCreery calls public consultation a "game of neighbourhood charades"

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.