This story is an example of how following a trail of breadcrumbs on a story can lead to outcomes you never expected. I started out planning to write something about yet another West End site selling for a crazy price — $79.5 million to newbie developer Vivagrand, with only one messy project so far on […]
Vancouver’s bold new housing plan calls for massive rental construction — but the people who would build it say the city makes it almost impossible. Some are giving up
December 17th, 2017 · 1 Comment
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Beedie goes for appeal to Board of Variance on controversial 105 Keefer project. Appeal letter included here.
December 17th, 2017 · 3 Comments
Every retired planner I talked to in the last month was convinced that the development company Beedie Living would take the city to court after the surprise decision from the development-permit board in early November to reject the proposal. The board has never completely rejected a proposal before. Many of us wrote that it had […]
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City loses lawsuit to Chinese owners wanting to demolish Shaughnessy house
November 27th, 2017 · 2 Comments
I’m surprised more media didn’t report on this Supreme Court decision that found the city at fault for delaying so long on a decision about a Shaughnessy house (whether to allow demolition or designate it as heritage). Perhaps it didn’t take off because there were no easy heroes to cheer for. It pitted some offshore […]
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A round-up of the stories about 105 Keefer
November 27th, 2017 · No Comments
Catching up on posting some stories here, so that this blog can continue to be a useful archive. As we all know, the development-permit board made a historic decision on Nov. 6, with a 2-1 vote by the city’s top officials to reject the proposal. Although I and many other reporters had written that there […]
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Impact of out-of-town investors: yes, increases prices; increases them more when supply restricted
November 8th, 2017 · 4 Comments
If you want to be guaranteed loads of clicks in this town, write about how everyone is being driven out by high real-estate prices (caused by heartless politicians, shadowy foreign investors, the real-estate cartel, etc etc) and/or about a study that tries to bring real data to the anecdotes. So this recent study from UBC got […]
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The archive of by-election coverage
November 8th, 2017 · 1 Comment
Catching up on posting some older stories here. First up: the stories before and after the Oct. 14 by-election, which provided a story with endless interpretation possibilities (Vision dead; no, progressive vote on the rise; no, NPA on the rise; no, people-power politics on the rise; coalitions the politics of the future; yada yada). First […]
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My tour of the underground — underground Chinese restaurants, that is
October 10th, 2017 · 3 Comments
One of the great pleasures of my life is connecting with a wide variety of students as a journalism teacher at the University of B.C. and Langara College. International students, in particular, bring a different eye and an ability to connect with communities here that many of locals aren’t always capable of. My students at […]
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Vancouver, usually at forefront of hipster trends, finally catches up with outdoor ping-pong
October 10th, 2017 · No Comments
A friend who visited Montreal recently commented on the number of outdoor ping-pong tables there when he came back. Out of idle curiosity, I asked on Twitter if there were any in the Lower Mainland. The answers I got made me realize that, yes, there were some scattered around but, more fun, there seemed to […]
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City puts on a big push to demo new programs for lower-cost housing: rentals geared to income, infills
July 25th, 2017 · 1 Comment
The Vision council is using the slow summer months to push out lots of news on its planned “housing reset” — new policy aimed at trying to shape supply in the city more than it has in the past to create lower-cost housing. The target market, planners and politicians keep saying, is the households with […]
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A hidden wrinkle that will make the group decision to sell your condo building even harder
July 19th, 2017 · 3 Comments
There are about 70 groups of residents in the Lower Mainland at present thinking about selling their buildings to developers. That process is already stressful enough. I’m told that, no matter what price sellers get, they are always convinced the developer is somehow ripping them off and making a huge profit. Then there are the […]
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