Part of the wrath the City of Vancouver has faced regarding proposals to raise downtown building height limits are due to poor maps the city’s planning department admits it released.
“I had been trying to figure out why people were confused that we were proposing a change to large areas as opposed to just seven buildings,” the city’s director of planning Brent Toderian told Business in Vancouver.
“Now I get it. I’m looking at this map and there’s a problem in the legend. We were trying to say too much with the map and it’s not at all clear.”
Activists such as West End Neighbours member Stephen Bohus took issue with the report to council the city released on December 16.
A map in the report has a dotted line around the area between Beach Avenue, Helmcken Street, Hornby Street and Burrard Street as well as two sites west of Burrard – the community garden site and the Esso gas station.
The dotted line implies developers who own land in that entire area would have extra potential density to play with.
Not true, Toderian said.
But Bohus is correct that city staff are recommending a higher height limit for the site on the northwest corner of Davie and Burrard streets, where there is currently a community garden.
“The increase could be 25 feet,” Toderian said. “The current policy is to allow a tower of up to 350 feet.”
Bohus opposes raising height limits in the entrance to Davie Village because he believes it will diminish the neighbourhood feel.
“Even in places such as New York, in SoHo, there are parts of the city where there aren’t as tall buildings,” Bohus said. “You need to have the height in some places and not in others.”
Toderian stressed the only piercings of a view corridor that city staff is recommending is the one from Queen Elizabeth Park – a view corridor already pierced by the Shangri-la tower. (See “Taller buildings raising city citizens’ ire” – issue 1104; December 21-27.)