A rendering of the civic plaza in the proposed Little Mountain development.
The redevelopment of Vancouver's oldest social-housing site, which has been stalled for almost a decade, appears finally to be on the cusp of moving ahead – and with the endorsement of community activists.
The new plan for the Little Mountain site near Queen Elizabeth Park, sold by the province in 2007 to the same company now building Vancouver's Trump International Hotel and Tower, got approval from the city's urban-design panel last week.
Company officials are hoping to go to public hearings before council breaks for the summer and tentatively plan to start construction by this time next year.
Unlike the situation with so many other projects in Vancouver, neighbourhood watchers appear ready to give the 1,573-unit development cautious endorsement.
"Terrible decisions have been made all along. But, given how flawed it [was], we're happy," said Ned Jacobs, a member of the neighbourhood advisory committee that has had more than two dozen meetings in the past five years to give input to the project's architects and planners.
"I think a sincere effort has been made by both the advisory group and the architects to do something interesting here and attractive. It will make for a vital community."
The Little Mountain development has been troubled since the province decided to sell the 6.2-hectare site in 2007 to Holborn, a development company run by the son of a prominent Malaysian businessman, for $300-million. Holborn agreed to replace all 254 social-housing units on the site, first opened in 1954 as part of the new postwar effort to provide affordable housing to lower-income families.
The province was already under fire from some for selling such a valuable asset to a private developer, even though Housing Minister Rich Coleman promised the profits would all go back into more social housing.
But then BC Housing quickly moved out almost all of the 254 families who had lived there, saying the developer had asked for the site to be cleared. That broke up what many had said was a successful and cohesive community.
A few of them refused to go and, finally, BC Housing and the developer agreed to build one of the required social-housing buildings earlier than originally planned, allowing the holdouts to move in so that they wouldn't have to leave the site.
Little Mountain2
Frances Bula