Parking-lot battle brews over five-storey rental proposed near Commercial Drive

The parking lot of a café is the setting for another potential development battle in Vancouver.

It’s at the back of the Moja Coffee shop on Commercial Drive, where a developer wants to construct a five-storey rental building.

A neighbourhood group is opposing the project, claiming it will set a precedent for infill developments of that scale. Based on the public notice issued by city hall, it will be up to the city’s director of planning.

However, residents with the Grandview-Woodland Area Council (GWAC) are insisting on a review by either the development permit board—whose meetings are open to the public—or, perhaps, city council because, according to GWAC’s letter to city staff, the development might require a rezoning because the project exceeds zoning limits.

The developer, Tasoe Tsiandoulas, maintains that the five-storey rental would “fit in nicely” in the neighbourhood.

“It’s a gentle development,” Tsiandoulas told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.

The property is located at the southeast corner of Commercial Drive and Napier Street.

On the site is a two-storey heritage building facing Commercial Drive, with the coffee shop on the ground floor and a three-bedroom rental above. The proposed development with eight rental suites will have a Napier Street address. Tsiandoulas said that it’s like “marrying in” the new with the old, “without really offending or disturbing the neighbourhood”.

But according to GWAC chair Dorothy Barkley, the project is not a good fit in the neighbourhood.

“The scale is wrong. It’s out of character. It dominates on a residential street of single-family housing that, at the most, are two storeys,” Barkley told the Straight by phone.

Also on the line with Barkley was one of her GWAC associates, Stephen Bohus, who had written city staff to note that the project is “not neighbourly”.

Penny Street, a resident who lives on the 1700 block of Napier Street, where the five-storey rental will have an address, also wrote city hall to voice her opposition. According to Street, the parking lot isn’t even big enough for a single-family house.