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Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s Kitsilano residents dread 28 'disrespectful' new towers

The Broadway plan imposes “forced-fed generic zoning” on unique neighbourhoods, including historic, beachside Kitsilano, says an architect and former Vancouver city planner.

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The historic neighbourhood of Kitsilano is bursting with disturbing stories like that of Alex and Barbara Downie, who are soon to be forced out of the rental townhouse they have cherished for 25 years.

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The City of Vancouver’s sweeping Broadway plan is set to bring 28 new residential towers to the eastern edge of beachside Kitsilano, one of the most attractive and vibrant character neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver, if not the country.

Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s Kitsilano residents dread 28 'disrespectful' new towers Back to video

Trees, shrubs and lawns in Kitsilano will be obliterated, along with half-century-old, lowrise rental apartments, where hundreds of long-term tenants have been able to pay reasonably affordable rents.

One of the dozens of lowrise residential buildings set to be demolished in Kitsilano as a result of Vancouver city’s council’s unanimous vote Feb. 24 will be the 21-unit Balfour Building, with its folksy courtyard.

That’s where the Downies live at the southeast corner of West 3rd Avenue and Vine Street, the latter marking the western edge of the 500-block zone of what the city labels the “Broadway corridor.”

Dozens more concrete-and-steel highrises in the 18- to 30-storey range are set to be erected in Kitsilano, whose eastern edge is Burrard Street.

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While some residents who move into the new, small rental units in the towers being approved will get panoramic views of English Bay and Stanley Park, a former Vancouver planner says the highrises will be oversized, homogeneous and disrespectful of the neighbourhood.

“The Broadway plan process has been like taking a sickle and hacking through the off-Broadway blocks where people live, work and play,” said Scot Hein, a retired architect and former City of Vancouver planner.

Residents of Kitsilano are bracing themselves, since their neighbourhood will be absorbing about one-fifth of the more than 160 large, new buildings that have been approved or proposed for within the so-called Broadway corridor, which includes 500 blocks between Clark and Vine streets, and First and 16th avenues.

Hein, who lives in Kitsilano, said Vancouver council has misled the public by labelling the arterial the “Broadway corridor.”

It’s, he said, “not really a corridor,” because Broadway encompasses varied neighbourhoods. That’s unlike, he said, the more consistent stretch of the city encompassed by the “Cambie corridor plan.”

The creators of the Broadway plan made the mistake of imposing “forced-fed generic zoning” on a series of unique neighbourhoods, Hein said, which have evolved in much different ways.

Since “the fear of community engagement is now palpable” among Vancouver councillors and staff, Hein said they failed to engage local citizens to ensure that new buildings “respectfully strengthened local identity.”

That’s especially the case in Kitsilano, he said, which has an active citizenry and has been the beneficiary of what he refers to as “precious” RT zoning, which encourages the preservation or renovation of older dwellings.

With thoughtful citizen engagement, Hein said, city council in the 1990s created Kitsilano’s exemplary, mid-rise Arbutus Lands, near 12th Street. But even the Arbutus Lands, he said, is under threat from the Broadway plan, since two new towers are proposed for the spaciously landscaped residential village.

As if 28 bulky new buildings aren’t more than enough for the eastern edge of Kitsilano, development pressure is also coming to the neighbourhood from beyond the boundaries of the Broadway plan.

The most startling examples are the first three highrises of the 11-tower Senakw project, which are going up on Squamish Nation reserve land next to the Burrard Bridge. They’re being constructed independent of city zoning bylaws. And just across from Senakw is the expansive former site of the Molson brewery, whose owners plan to develop a project along the lines of ultra-high-density Senakw.

Meanwhile, a company co-owned by Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, who lives in Kitsilano in Canada’s most expensive house, has just started building three condo towers on the former Safeway site at Vine and Fourth streets, across the street from the Downies. Construction noise from the site pounded as Postmedia News interviewed the couple.

In the midst of all the development action, the Downies feel like the forgotten casualties of an all-powerful, for profit property development game.

“We’re all being pushed around,” said Alex Downie. “Tenants are being treated like pigeons: ‘Just go away. Go away.’ ”

More than 240 people made submissions to the city about whether Marcon Development’s 21-storey tower should replace the Downies’ complex — with seven of 10 opposing. Yet, despite Vancouver council being made up of politicians from the right, centre and left, the vote to demolish and redevelop was unanimous.

Once evicted this fall, Alex Downie, who is retired from the Vancouver park board, said his family will face severely limited options. Vancouver’s tenant protection and relocation policy, he said, “doesn’t provide adequate or equitable compensation. We will be evicted from family oriented, livable, affordable units into a much smaller, less livable, highrise apartment.”

Like many others, Alex Downie asks why Vancouver council is in such a hurry to approve hundreds of glistening, mostly rental towers in Kitsilano and elsewhere when the vacancy rate in Greater Vancouver is 3.7 per cent, the highest it’s been in 30 years.

In addition, Jennifer O’Keefe, a friend of the Downies, said council is failing to provide new parks or other amenities as it approves a wave of residential towers.

“While there are plans for private rental spaces for daycares under proposed highrises, where are the new schools for these thousands of new children to attend?”

Hein wants the city to remember: “Vancouver is first and foremost a city of neighbourhoods.”

And council, he said, has been ignoring that cultural history as it feverishly blankets the Broadway zone, and Kitsilano, with one-size-fits-all highrises that threaten both existing affordable housing and small, mom-and-pop retail outlets.

While city councillors show their devotion to developers’ slogan of more “supply, supply, supply,” Hein said, they have failed to consult with residents to find better low- and medium-rise ways to increase housing density while respecting an established, appealing neighbourhood.

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