Greening up
Snowdrops and crocuses are showing themselves once again, so spring is on its way – but over in Victoria, there’s also fresh life sprouting at Dockside Green, the ambitious redevelopment of the 14.6-acre Dockside lands on Victoria’s Inner Harbour.
Originally slated for more than 1,000 residential units and approximately 150,000 square feet of commercial and industrial space, the project concluded its last residential sales in 2010 with just 300,000 square feet of space built. Approximately 1.1 million square feet has yet to be built.
Now a rezoning application submitted to Victoria proposes to redistribute space across the site, slightly increasing the residential component while reducing the commercial space to 144,000 square feet. The final count of residential units – last pegged at 1,200 units – has yet to be determined.
“The overall density of this site remains the same,” said Norm Shearing, president of Dockside Green Ltd. “What we’ve done is taken that density and re-parcelized the remaining lands to take that density.”
Dockside Green itself will also assume the position of master-developer, overseeing infrastructure and amenities while allowing other developers to handle individual buildings.
“It’s … better, in lots of ways,” he said. “Not just at a risk level, but in terms of creating a neighbourhood and having different hands in the bowl to create variety.”
The rezoning application goes to public hearing this fall; construction is scheduled to resume in 2016.
’Fessing up
Vancouver planners have taken to espousing the view in recent years, especially in the face of community opposition, that nobody gets everything but everyone gets a lot.
Community benefits are key to the lot people get, but as BC Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan noted in a recent judgment, the lot can’t be foisted on neighbourhoods after letting everyone have their say. There has to be genuine consultation, not just listening.
McEwan made the point with respect to the city’s handling of arrangements with Brenhill Developments Ltd., developer of 508 Helmcken Street and a social housing project at 1099 Richards Street. A land swap involving the two properties prompted a petition from the Community Association of New Yaletown, which claimed details of the swap were never fully disclosed; in a moral sense, the process wasn’t fully conducted, and approval – from the community, anyway – wasn’t received.
But the deal with Brenhill, as Urban Development Institute president and CEO Anne McMullin notes, was struck 18 months ago. A lot has changed since then; the mayor even offered an apology for how the city was pursuing its agenda for greater density and affordable housing and pledged to be more open.
“Certainly there is concern that this will delay other projects,” McMullin said, while noting the city has taken steps to ensure the public is clear regarding the need, impacts, cost and benefits of new developments. On the developer side, certainty with respect to community amenity contributions is also occurring.
“That’s the direction we have to go in, and that’s the direction we’ve been talking to the city about,” she said. “I credit the city for the lot of changes that they’ve made.”
Gassing up
A few runs to the recent Pacific Agriculture Show in Abbotsford at the end of January gave ample time for reflection on just how much transportation infrastructure has changed – for the better – over the past decade.
The jam-packed stretches of Highway 1 from Langley, which this writer encountered on coming to the city in 1998 to scout apartments, are gone, replaced with steadily flowing traffic (even at rush hour). Whatever impact the tolls have on daily commuters across the Port Mann Bridge, the experience for this sometime motorist was a pleasant change from even five years ago. In short, whatever hassles it caused, the investment in infrastructure is paying off in less idling and more commuting. The road is fulfilling its intended purpose. Similarly, a recent trip along the South Fraser Perimeter Road also underscored the worth of infrastructure investments. These experiences will factor into this traveller’s decision when the transit funding referendum takes place later this year. A growing region can’t afford to skimp on the infrastructure needed to keep it moving. •
