Broadway corridor plan leads to spike in development applications

For decades, Vancouver's major east-west thoroughfare — Broadway — has been largely defined by a ho-hum mishmash of low- and medium-rise residential and commercial buildings.

But at the corner of Broadway and Granville, a soaring 39-storey tower now under construction is a sign of the transformation about to hit this corridor.

“It's an awesome view, right?” a visibly excited Tim Grant, president of PCI Developments, commented on a recent tour of the penthouse suite. “It's going to be a pretty significant change in a pretty short period of time.”

What kind of change? Taller, denser and more urban.

Almost two years after Vancouver's previous council adopted a plan to turn the Broadway corridor into a “second downtown,” city hall has been flooded with dozens of major development applications.

PCI Developments' 39-storey tower above the future South Granville subway station is the only residential project already being built under by the plan.

But dozens of other major projects are in the planning and approval pipeline along the under-construction subway line.

City planners say they show the plan appears to be rolling out largely as hoped, giving priority to market and below-market rental housing, rather than condos, and job spaces in this corridor of roughly 500 city blocks extending through Kitsilano, Fairview, and Mount Pleasant.

Postmedia's analysis of city data shows developers have submitted 50 rezoning applications for a range of projects that could produce:

6,215 new market rental apartments

1,322 new below-market rental apartments

125 condos

1.37 million square feet of office space

287,000 sq. ft. of retail and service space

780,000 sq. ft. of industrial space 282,000 sq. ft. of hotel space 49,000 sq. ft. of child-care spaces 46,000 sq. ft. of cultural spaces And this only represents the earliest round of development interest.

While there is no guarantee all of these projects will be built soon — or at all — all signs indicate many more will follow. In addition to the 50 full rezoning applications submitted, the city has also received another 94 inquiries about rezonings. Details about those 94 inquiries are not yet publicly available and not included in the tally above.

All this change will inevitably be challenging for some people — especially longtime tenants facing displacement when their homes are demolished and redeveloped.

Postmedia's review of the public rezoning applications shows about 430 existing rental homes could be lost through this first round of rezoning applications. These include old apartment buildings providing many of the city's more affordable rentals, as well as land assemblies seeking to redevelop houses and duplexes. Projects still in the early stages will also add an unknown number of existing homes that will be lost through redevelopment.

A primary goal of the Broadway plan is “minimizing displacement impacts by ensuring renters can remain in their neighbourhood at affordable rents.”

To some, this will seem a tall order. Before and after the Broadway plan's approval in 2022, planners and politicians pointed to Burnaby's Metrotown area as something to avoid: older, more affordable apartment buildings being torn down and replaced by expensive condo towers. That development rush added homes, but yielded a net loss in rentals, displacing many longtime tenants who got relatively meagre compensation and were forced to leave the region.

Matt Shillito, who oversaw the

Broadway plan's development and is now the city's interim director of planning, is both pleased with the surge in development and confident tenant displacement can be minimized.

This is because of the Broadway plan's tenant protections, which then-mayor Kennedy Stewart and others heralded as the strongest in Canada. The new rules mean any tenant displaced by redevelopment will have right of first refusal for a similar apartment in a replacement building, at the rent they were previously paying. The developer is also responsible for finding an interim home during construction, and topping up their rent.

This is one key factor providing at least a sliver of optimism for longtime Mount Pleasant renter Mike Hanafin, who predicted in his comments to Postmedia in 2022 — before the Broadway plan's approval — that he and many others would likely face demoviction through redevelopment.

Last month, Hanafin received confirmation: Developers are considering redeveloping his apartment building.

“I don't want to be perceived as a NIMBY, or resisting the future,” he said.

“The future is coming. But what is the collateral damage going to be for certain people?”

Hanafin, who has been demovicted before, said displacement will inevitably be difficult even if all tenant protection policies work as advertised — and, he said, “that's a big if.”

Despite Hanafin's unease, the protections adopted by Vancouver's previous council give him some optimism for the long run, he said, and the idea of a new, rent-controlled apartment in the neighbourhood is appealing. And, he points out, projects seem to be advancing despite some developers' predictions in 2022 that onerous tenant protections would kill development.

“Not often I say `thank goodness for Kennedy Stewart and the previous city council,' but I say it now,” Hanafin said.

“It's still going to suck for some people — most people? But at least there are some potential good outcomes down the road.”