Vancouver city hall pauses housing project decision until after fall election

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Vancouver city hall issued notice this week that the final step needed for a massive new housing project in a heavily trafficked neighbourhood will be deferred for at least six months.

That last-minute move to cancel the July 7 public hearing for a redevelopment of the Safeway site next to the busy Commercial and Broadway SkyTrain station – currently a one-storey building with a large parking lot – prompted angry criticism.

Critics say the move speaks to the dysfunction within council and the mayor’s lack of leadership. Some blame councillors who, they say, are afraid to take a stand on another controversial development too close to the October election. And others say the decision is emblematic of the problem with public hearings, which have become pitched battles in Vancouver, as people view them as a kind of referendum.

In the meantime, the developer has cast the deferral as an opportunity to make the project even bigger.

A representative for the real estate trust that has been working with the city for almost a decade to develop the site said the company will now explore the possibility of more density.

“We see even greater potential for new housing – including more rental and affordable housing – at one of the busiest transit hubs in Canada,” said Donald Clow, CEO of Crombie REIT, in an e-mail statement. “We look forward to further exploring the full potential of this one-of-a-kind, transit-oriented site, by aligning with the principles of the recently approved Broadway Plan to enable the addition of more housing and more diverse housing.”

The current proposal is for three 29-storey towers, two of them rental, with 93 of the 438 apartments at below-market rates. There would be another 215 ownership apartments, a grocery store and other retail and office space, a public plaza, and parking for almost 1,400 bicycles.

The July public hearing, before being cancelled and deferred to December, had attracted about 80 speakers, fairly evenly split between supporters and opponents.

Buildings at transit stations to the west on the new Broadway subway, which will extend the line that runs through that site, are being projected at 30 to 40 storeys. Council recently approved 39 storeys for a tower at Granville and Broadway. The Commercial Drive site was excluded from the Broadway Plan.

Mr. Clow’s statement said he was “disappointed” at the decision to defer the hearing until after a new council is elected in October, but did not go beyond that, even though the move has caused consternation at city hall and among the public.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart also said he was disappointed and that he had “fought hard to get that on to the agenda.”

But, he said, various councillors’ insistence on taking up valuable meeting time with “private members’ motions,” along with recent public hearings that have attracted hundreds of speakers, have meant council simply ran out of hours to complete everything by the end of July.

Mr. Stewart said public hearings have changed and become much longer, because people can now phone in instead of having to wait around to speak in person. “That has changed the dynamics.”

In spite of that, he rebuffed suggestions that the deferral is a sign of a dysfunctional council, as some have said.

“Last year, we approved almost 9,000 units, almost double 2010. This is a hardworking council. We tried as hard as we could but we ran out of runway.”

City council always breaks for a full month in August and, from now until then, it still is hearing from the almost 300 people who signed up to support or oppose a social-housing project in Kitsilano, another 50 speaking to the city’s Vancouver Plan, and speakers on several other issues. There is almost no time set aside for public hearings before the civic election Oct. 15 and, typically, councils don’t like to make big decisions weeks before an election.

The group of opposed residents around Commercial Drive have been vocal in their criticisms about the lack of lower-cost apartments they say the developer should have had to provide, the shadows that might be cast on homes to the north, and their fears that the condos will just be bought up by investors, not the people who need housing.

“This council is afraid,” said former Vancouver councillor George Affleck, now a political commentator and occasional radio-show host. “Afraid to make a decision. Afraid to not get re-elected. Afraid of a strong activist neighbourhood. My advice to this council: Have some guts, stop hiding behind rhetoric and misinformation and make a decision.”

Ken Sim, the mayoral candidate for the new ABC party, also said the deferral was a sign of failure.

“The postponement of the project’s public hearing speaks to the lack of leadership in the mayor’s office and his unwillingness to deal with the project during this term or early in the next one.”

The deferral means the proposal will go before a new council that may have a crucially different mix of opinions about new development – especially with at least one party running specifically on a too-much-development theme – in contrast to the known positions of the current councillors.