Social housing replacement for Jubilee House proposed

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      Vancouver residents interested in planning processes might want to pack a lunch and head down to SFU Harbour Centre on Thursday (April 18) for a panel discussion on a significant downtown development. Beginning at 12:30 p.m. in Room 2270, Vision Vancouver councillor Raymond Louie, former Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian, and architect and developer Michael Geller will offer their views on a proposal to replace social housing at Jubilee House at 508 Helmcken Street with a new 13-storey nonmarket Jubilee House that would be built at 1077–1099 Richards Street.

      The event is part of SFU’s City Conversations series, which is free to the public and includes plenty of opportunity for audience members to ask questions.

      If council approves the application by GBL Architects Inc., it would clear the way for Brenhill Developments to proceed with a 36-storey tower at the southwest corner of Richards and Helmcken streets. The proposal calls for 454 residential units, including 110 market-rental dwellings, and a private preschool and kindergarten.

      “Vancouver has had periodic debates over heights of new buildings, first in downtown, then in some neighbourhoods like Mt. Pleasant,” reads the event description on the SFU website. “Successive councils have allowed developers to build taller buildings than zoning would otherwise allow, in trade for developers’ donations of parks, preservation of historic buildings, day care centres, recreation facilities and other public amenities. But where is the tradeoff inappropriate?”

      In this instance, the applicant maintains that the “coincidental geography of the two sites ensures no residents will be displaced during the construction of the new Jubilee House and they will simply move across the street once the new building is completed”.

      “Overall, between the two proposed projects which are inter-linked, more than 43% of the new homes will be non-market social housing or rental housing,” GBL states in a “rezoning rationale” on the city’s website.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      RUK

      Apr 17, 2013 at 7:20pm

      I'm down as long as Pidgin gets a lease there

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