A few weeks ago, I wrote about West Van’s efforts to slooowly bring in a few more housing types to the community and I highlighted efforts to start some pilot projects for small secondary houses on large lots, along with a duplex and a four-plex.

I especially focused on a plan by one set of West Van homeowners, Rick Gruneau and Shelley Bentley, to build a small house designed by Barry Downs (one of Vancouver’s leading architects of the last generation) on a large property that they could move into when they retired, while selling off the big house.

Sadly, it seems as though that project has fallen through because of their fears thatseveral members of  council are so lukewarm that Gruneau and Bentley could end up spending a lot of money and get turned down in the end. (They had already spent about $18,000 to get to this stage in the pilot process.) They say that it appears West Van has created a pilot project programmed to fail.

Here is the strongly worded letter that the couple sent off, which underscores the problems cities have when they try to introduce new policies while bending over backwards not to alienate any possible resisters.

 
After considerable discussion Shelley and I have reluctantly decided to withdraw from the pilot project program.  Last Monday night’s council meeting was the tipping point.  While the OCP amendment needed to move forward with the project was passed (barely) we were extremely uncomfortable with the discussion that preceded the vote.  Comments by councilors Soprovitch, Lewis and Smith, in particular, made it appear that council as a whole is insufficiently supportive of the pilot project program to give us the security we need to continue to commit our time, emotional energy, and money to this dream. Indeed, we felt that Monday’s discussion from these three councilors was a tacit insult to all the time and to the professional expertise of the working group committee who evaluated the pilot project “competition” last fall.  It was also a slap in the face, in our view, to the work put in by the planning department, and to the department’s recommendations and to us.  The fact that some councilors could say there had never been any discussion of “neighbourhood character” in conjunction with these projects is simply astounding.  We had written a detailed 20 page proposal including photographs of neighbouring houses, zoning discussion, and maps of amenities and services. We had also consulted neighbours extensively, many of whom are long time friends made over the course of our 27 years in this community, and all of whom were very supportive of our dream. Several even wrote letters of support that were included in our proposal. Even our new neighbours at 6915 Marine Drive, initially said they supported our project before changing their minds over the Christmas holidays. The whole pilot project proposal evaluation process involved extensive discussions of neighbourhood character: by us with our neighbours, by the working group committee who evaluated the proposals, and by planning department staff.  There was also an opportunity for the pubic to speak to the proposed pilot projects at the council meeting on December 14th.  So to suggest, as one of the councilors did last Monday night, that the pilot projects are premature because of insufficient discussion of neighbourhood character ignores all of the hours of discussion and evaluation associated with this issue prior to the selection of the two projects that were recommended to council.
 
At one point in the discussion in Council last Monday night, Shelley leaned over to me and asked “what did those councilors who are speaking against the OCP amendment think they were voting on last December? Didn’t they already approve this implicitly when they chose to go forward with our proposal as one of the municipal pilot projects?”  These are good questions. When our proposal to build a modest retirement home on our remainder lot at 6801 Hycroft was officially “chosen” as one of the two pilot projects going forward, we were elated.  We understood the call for proposals as a competition and we had set out to “win” the competition by putting together the best proposal we could. After council chose our project to go forward as one of two pilot projects endorsed by the District we assumed that we would realize our dream. After all, if there was nothing of consequence at stake in the pilot project selection process, then why have a competition?
 
In other words, we were under the strong impression that winning the competition meant our project would be built, albeit through a complex collaborative design process where ongoing discussions with the planning department and with neighbours would lead to possible modifications in house siting and design. We believed, incorrectly it now appears, that the “approvals” associated with subdivision and development permits, at the Council level, would be more or less automatic because the project had been vetted by both the a blue ribbon committee, and the planning department, as well as supported by a unanimous vote in Council with all but one member present.  Of course, we understood that Council would still have to officially approve zoning and development application decisions, to guarantee that we were living up to what we said we would do in our proposal. But, we assumed this would occur in the spirit that the District as a whole was now fully behind the project and wanted to have it completed.  Council’s vote in support of staff’s recommendation to go forward as a pilot project with our 6801 Hycroft proposal was unanimous and we interpreted that as a green light to move forward.  We assumed that no responsible municipal Council would approve a process that encouraged individual homeowners to become partners with the District to develop new housing types, and ask them to spend money along the way, only to hang the homeowner out to dry at some point later in the process. 
 
Convinced that we had ‘won’ the competition, we went out and celebrated after the decision on December 14th. The following weekend, we had a community Christmas party attended by more than 20 of our neighbours who had supported our dream to build a little retirement house on our remainder lot.  Following  closely on the heels of the December 14th Council meeting, we were also celebrating the success of our proposal. Barry Downs was at the party and his drawings and site plan were circulating freely and received numerous positive comments.
 
Over the past 5 months it has become increasingly clear, however, that we didn’t “win” anything when our proposal was accepted, except to become guinea pigs, at our own expense, in a flawed municipal experiment.  As you know, we were supposed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding which laid out the process and outlined everyone’s responsibilities in it.  In hindsight, it would have been nice to have an MOU early on that spelled out how contingent the process would would be.  You will recall that we discussed a first draft of  an MOU with planning staff, but a second draft was never completed. More notably, even the initial MOU draft did not deal sufficiently with the issue of “uncertainty” or risk balanced against the level of investment that would be required to see the project through the various formal approvals. Since being selected officially as one of two West Vancouver pilot projects we have been asked by your department to attend several meetings with our “project team” of professionals who we had to pay. We also had to supply professional engineering opinions in regard to site servicing and Barry Downs has had to spend many hours making revisions to the site plan as part of the “collaborative design process.” In addition, I have spent many hours working with Bill Chapman addressing variance and other issues to create a model for outlining the site specific zoning necessary to make this pilot project go forward.
 
The level of investment in money alone has been substantial and if we had known in January what we now know we most certainly would not have proceeded any further with the project. Since we became an “official pilot project” last December, and acting in good faith, Shelley and I have spent $18,500 in professional fees, as part of the process.  As the bills mounted, and especially when [our immediate neighbours] suddenly changed their minds about the impact of the project on their privacy and began to threaten the municipality, we kept asking for some official level of assurance that the project would go forward.  That was naive of us in hindsight, because, or course, your department is not in charge of the political process and can offer no such assurance. Last Monday night’s council meeting did nothing to assuage our concerns that we will be asked to spend more and more money in a process that offers us absolutely no guarantee of anything.  For us, this level of financial risk, and the emotional ups and downs associated with the process as it is unfolding, are unsustainable. We are not developers. We are simple homeowners who merely wanted to build a little retirement home on our remainder lot next door.
 
This is the fatal flaw of the West Vancouver pilot project process as it is currently conceived. It requires that individual homeowners lay out substantial amounts of money to move the project forward, but in an environment that offers absolutely no certainty of any repayment on this investment. This is no problem for developers. Balancing risk versus reward is their business. However, the program, in its current form, is not for individual homeowners like me and Shelley, and it is certainly not what we thought we were getting ourselves into. After having our hopes built up in December, we are now in a state of disappointment and frustration. We still have two children in university and we can’t be wasting any more money subsidizing the municipality’s experiment with new housing types. At this point, we have lost all confidence in the pilot project process and we feel a need to mitigate our damages.  [edited] Had we known that approval as a West Vancouver pilot project nonetheless meant the project might be killed later in the process we would never have agreed to participate. [edited] We entered the process in good faith, believing that no responsible municipal government would vote on a pilot project, invite the principals to spend money developing the project, then hold out the possibility that the project itself not be approved at a later date. [edited] 
 
When we walked into the Council Chamber last Monday night I was pleased to see a display of photographs on the back wall taken from Barry Downs’ book “The Poetics of West Coast Modernism.” In that context, the stunning lack of understanding shown by certain council members toward staff recommendations needed to move the pilot project process forward was depressingly ironic. Barry Downs is one of West Vancouver’s treasures and, at 80 years of age, it is not likely that Barry will have the energy to design many more houses.  Barry agreed to become involved in our project because he is one of our friends and neighbours, and, more importantly, because he deeply believes in the necessity of infill housing in the lower mainland, as urban and suburban populations increase. Lantern House was his statement to our neighbourhood about how to do this in a creative, aesthetically-pleasing, and site sensitive manner. The house would have made an enduring contribution to the quality of the built environment in West Vancouver.  Our greatest sadness in this decision is the disappointment that it will cause Barry. We feel like we have let him down, as well as all the other people like ourselves who embrace the ’small is beautiful’ mantra in West Vancouver housing. Hopefully, the District will learn something from our case and will develop a more coherent and transparent process for the next round of pilot projects. From the discussion the other day, and notwithstanding the Mayor’s obvious commitment to pilot projects, I suspect this particular Council has neither the vision nor the strength of political will to take the necessary steps forward in this regard. Smaller houses, infill houses, laneway houses and such are inevitable in West Vancouver in the future. Unfortunately, until there are substantial amendments to the current process involving municipal “pilot projects”, I can’t imagine that many individual homeowners will be willing to take the attendant risks.
Sincerely,
 
Rick Gruneau and Shelley Bentley