Over the past decade, traditional single-family neighbourhoods in Vancouver have been under intense pressure to change, as busy arterial streets have been increasingly zoned for high-density residential buildings.
New developments, especially tall condo towers, have drawn the ire of residents in areas like Grandview-Woodlands and Mount Pleasant, who fear the new developments could erode the unique character of their neighbourhoods.
The developer behind one of the most controversial projects says he has learned from the fraught process.
“I’m an engineer by training, and the approach of logic and next steps and putting the facts on the table, it’s always worked exceptionally well,” said Chris Vollan, vice-president of development for Rize Alliance. “But in this case it didn’t work with the political and the neighbourhood outreach side.”
Rize has been working on a residential development called the Independent at the corner of Kingsway and Broadway for 10 years; seven of those years have been spent getting approval from the city. The building has undergone major design changes, including lowering the height, and was challenged in BC Supreme Court by a residents’ group.
Vollan said the process has taught him that the emotional effect of projects needs to be acknowledged from the beginning, and a bigger effort needs to be made to listen to community concerns.
“As a developer … you are causing change, and people get upset and they have very good reason to,” Vollan said. “Their lives are changing and they feel very left out of the process.
“Just putting the facts on the table is not going to make them feel any better.”
A more thorny problem, which Vollan says he doesn’t have the answer to, is that the people who supported the project weren’t the ones coming to meetings and voicing their opinions.
The project began selling units in February, and Vollan said that 90% of buyers have been Vancouver residents and over 60% live within four or five blocks of the future building.
“That’s exactly what the exercise brought us to, is designing something that fit the neighbourhood. The problem is that these [future buyers] didn’t participate in the design process or the approval process.”
On making the extra effort | “We opened up our outreach centre for a year prior to the public hearing. … We were on the ground, we were involved in the community meetings. We did a lot, but was it enough? We were able to reach out moderately broadly but not broadly enough to be able to inform the process. And we were behind the curve on social media, using that as a tool to inform the neighbourhood.”
Has a work or life challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected].
