Wall Financial Corp. rezoning at Shannon Mews raises hackles
Three dozen Vancouver residents held a protest on the southwest side of the city on July 20 to draw attention to a major rezoning proposal coming before council. One of the organizers, Simon Ng, told the Georgia Straight by phone that they distributed pamphlets in the neighbourhood around Shannon Mews, a historic four-hectare estate near the corner of Granville Street and West 57th Avenue.
Wall Financial Corporation has filed a rezoning application to increase the number of housing units from 162 to 735 on the site, which was once owned by sugar baron Ben Rogers. A public hearing is scheduled to begin at Vancouver City Hall on Tuesday (July 26). Ng claimed that such a large development will “destroy the livability” of the single-family neighbourhood. He also accused the city of trying to “jam” the rezoning through in the middle of summer, when many people are on holidays.
“We were only given less than four weeks to prepare for the public hearing,” Ng said. “Because of the postal strike for a little while, a lot of the neighbours didn’t get their card mailed”¦until this last week.”
Wall Financial’s first application, in August 2010, sought approval for 891 units. “The mayor and council can still approve the original application sent in by Wall,” Ng said.
Company president Bruno Wall told the Straight that the proposed floor-space ratio on the site has been reduced from 2.08 to 1.53, after taking into account various criteria that the city is demanding. (A document that the company distributed to the media mistakenly stated the FSR in the August 2010 application as 1.86 when it was 2.08. A city report recommends that the FSR not exceed 1.60.)
Wall said that this is a lower FSR than the city has accepted at Granville Street and West 70th Avenue and at Cambie Street and Southwest Marine Drive. Wall also noted that his company’s proposed FSR is less than what has been applied for in a proposed rezoning of the Arbutus Village mall.
“Our density is sensitive to the neighbourhood,” Wall stated. “It also takes advantage of an opportunity to provide public open space, to do the heritage restoration, and to provide a variety of new and different housing opportunities for people who want to stay and live in that particular part of Vancouver.”
Ng, however, said that the city has restricted the size of buildings along Cambie Street to six storeys except in two areas: Oakridge and Marine Drive. He pointed out that this has occurred on a street with a SkyTrain line, whereas the planning department has prepared a report recommending nine-storey buildings at Shannon Mews, where there is no rapid-transit line.
“Where is the logic?” Ng said. “It’s so contradicting. There are so many things wrong with that report.”
Meanwhile, neighbourhood groups from across the city are planning to converge on Vancouver City Hall at 6 p.m. on Tuesday to protest what the organizers call Vancouver’s “broken” planning and rezoning process.
Comments
4 Comments
Andrew
Jul 21, 2011 at 10:34am
There's more information on the Citywide neighbourhoods' gathering over at CityHallWatch.ca (for July 26th).
karl brodhecker
Jul 21, 2011 at 11:11am
Mr. Wall seems to be unfamiliar with his own project. He states that "floor-space ratio on the site has been reduced from 2.08 to 1.53", while his own proposal as listed at <http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/rezoning/applications/7101-7201gra... gives a true FST of 1.86 and a manipulated FSR (minus storage, balconies, kitchen sink, etc.) of 1.64. In another document of the same proposal, the true FSR is given as 1.83 (evidently the architect also is uncertain of the FSR calculation). All are clearly greater than 1.60 maximum of the City report. The only way that the FSR can be claimed to be 1.53 is if the heritage buildings are removed from the calculation, which would be duplicitous as the FSR requires the inclusion of all the residential buildings.
We see here a simple example of the many reinterpretations and misrepresentations being foisted on the public by both developers and City planning to grease the rails of both city policy preferences and developer interests.
Albert Chin
Jul 23, 2011 at 11:23am
City Planning Dept. is being used as a Public Relations arm of the current council to fast track Super High Density developments all over the city, to increase the tax base to cover the financial credit rating & sink hole created by the Olympic Village debacle.
"Eco Density" policy pretends to be Environmentally Efficient by jamming millions more people into Vancouver by 2050, on the Fraser River delta, is an oxymoronic theory.
Show me any modern city with millions of residents, but "minimal " ecological impact.
We need Gradual change, yes.
The world does not need another version of New York, London, Tokyo, Toronto, Paris,
Hong Kong, Shanghai.
To Editor Charlie:
Jul 26, 2011 at 7:20am
Assign yourself or your second best journalist to cover the big push by Vision to redevelop False Creek Flats and the two viaduct areas! This is Vision's Wet Dream. Meggs was on CBC this a.m. talking about "putting traffic first" "8,000 new people in the area" etc. A person said they have 22 new towers in mind for the area. Meggs commented on that idea by denying it then saying that Chinatown business leaders want to develop along Main. Vision's big funders, Concord Pacific owns the land underneath the viaducts, I believe.
A good write could do a lot with this!