City email on redevelopment plans riles advocates
City accused of betraying public process with ‘edict’ on neighbourhood’s future
On Sunday, Mayor Gregor Robertson delivered a formal apology to Vancouver’s Chinese residents for the city ’s historical discrimination.
But even as Robertson spoke, a new controversy was erupting in Chinatown over the redevelopment of the historic neighbourhood.
Late Friday afternoon, the city sent out an email that recommended several changes to a Chinatown Planning Update that the city had released in March.
The March document was the product of extensive community meetings among Chinatown groups and the city, and reflected many of the ideas from the planning sessions.
The email came without notice, which shocked urban planner Andy Yan.
“They had done a sizable amount of public outreach work in terms of rezoning (Chinatown), and then this one email basically crippled the entire process,” said Yan, who is the director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University.
“They throw out about a year’s worth of public engagement. It moves from one of the most innovative, publicly engaged planning processes (in Vancouver) and reduces it down to a fiat edict, at 4:36 (p.m. on Friday) on the same weekend of the Chinese-Canadian apology.
“What the hell is that?” Henry Yu, a UBC history professor, was also perplexed by the city ’s email.
“This has upset people because it seems like there was a good faith genuine public engagement, and then this … at the last second,” said Yu. “I think there’s room for compromise, but this is not the way to create compromise.”
The city seemed caught off guard by the uproar.
“I am shocked that people are shocked,” said Tom Wanklin, the planner who wrote the email. “Much of the proposed policy changes are still there, (and are) still relevant, not being changed, not being taken away.”
The four proposed changes in the email are written in plannerspeak.
One would remove the proposal for an “outright” floor-to space or FSR ratio of one, meaning a potential builder has the right to build a one-storey building. A builder that wanted to build higher would have to negotiate with the city using the “conditional” FSR as a guideline. In Chinatown South this is 5.35 FSR, which could allow a building up to 90 feet tall.
Wanklin said the development permit process already is subject to a “rigorous review” by the city, so that one FSR clause isn’t needed.
But Yan argues the one FSR restriction “would have kept frankly a lot of the speculation at bay. By taking it off it’s basically the wild Wild West . ... It (leaves) the neighbourhood wide open to developers.”
Yu said the city did have some discussion with the community about removing the one FSR proposal, but didn’t do a good job explaining what the impact would be.
“It’s meant to dampen speculation,” Yu said of the one FSR clause. “We wanted to know, what’s your rationale for (removing) this? Where does this come from?”
John Atkin, a heritage expert, was dismayed that Wanklin’s email nixed a proposal to place a threemetre setback in the lane of any new building in Chinatown. Lanes in historic neighbourhoods in China often have storefronts or food or merchandise carts; the setback was supposed to try to bring them to Vancouver.
“Eventually over time they’d get this large wide swath of lane and could start looking at stores and all sorts of things,” Atkin said. “Then somebody focuses on the lane between Pender and Hastings and says ‘You’ll never be able to make that work, it’s a hell hole!’ Oh, OK, sorry, we’ll drop the lane activation.”
Wanklin said the three-metre setback was “impractical.”
“We discussed the problem that could occur as the result of some properties having the three-metre setback and others not having the setback,” said Wanklin, who is the senior planner for the city’s Downtown Eastside Plan. “There would be safety concerns because of opportunities for people to either encamp or hide and jump out at passersby at night. The feeling was there are complications with the idea.”
Chinatown has civic, provincial and federal heritage designation, but is under pressure for redevelopment in Vancouver’s continuing housing boom. The city has designated Pender Street as the protected heritage area but is allowing some redevelopment along Keefer, Georgia, Main and Gore streets.
But this has sparked fears of gentrification in the working class neighbourhood. A proposal for a condo tower at 105 Keefer St. fit within the city’s Chinatown plan, but sparked massive public outcry, and was eventually rejected by the city.
Atkin thinks the city needs to be cautious with any planning changes.
“The disappointment is those initial zoning revisions (in the March Chinatown update) showed a lot of promise,” he said. “But that’s a pencil sketch, now you’ve got to start looking at making the rest of the drawing. And all they’ve done is the pencil sketch and erased bits because somebody said I don’t like it.”