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Robertson: CPR is “bullying”; LaPointe: Vision has been “incompetent” on CP file

August 15th, 2014 · 174 Comments

So CPR sent out the bulldozers to take down the zucchini plants and raspberry bushes this week along its long-unused line, which apparently is now so critically in need of work that the clean-up couldn’t wait until, say, the end of the season. As someone on Twitter remarked, the PR in CPR sure doesn’t stand for public relations.

But at least the politicians are responding, with lots of heat, if no light.

First was the mayor with this statement.

Statement from Mayor Robertson on CP and Arbutus Corridor

“CP’s removal and destruction of long-standing structures along the Arbutus Corridor is completely unwarranted, and these actions are simply a bullying tactic. The City made a fair market offer to CP to buy the land, which they turned down. There is no business case to reactivate cargo trains along the Corridor, and the City’s right to control the zoning was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.

“The City offered to purchase the land at fair market value, which CP rejected. I wrote to the head of CP last month requesting a facilitated discussion to reach a long-term solution, which has been ignored. The actions by CP are counterproductive, unnecessary, and disrespectful.”

Then NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe with this statement.

STATEMENT BY KIRK LAPOINTE REGARDING CP RAIL’S ARBUTUS CORRIDOR PROPERTY

 The situation between the City of Vancouver and CP Rail concerning its Arbutus Corridor property once again emphasizes that Vancouver is a great city, badly run.

Gregor Robertson spends his time on sweeping pronouncements and commitments of tax dollars to issues outside the City’s jurisdiction, like the Aquarium, tankers and Granville Island ownership.

Meanwhile, he drops the ball on issues in its own back yard, such as the Arbutus Corridor negotiations with CP Rail. This week we saw the results of his failure to resolve this and it was upsetting for many.

I empathize with those who have put time and resources into creating and tending community gardens. They must now witness the dismantling of these gardens because the City failed to competently negotiate a commercial transaction with CP.

But it didn’t have to come to this.

We need an administration with the business acumen to finish these negotiations in a way that balances the needs and rights of the landowner with the City’s taxpayers and the affected community.

We also need far more transparency on this complex issue, which has important principles at its heart, such as private property rights. But openness is a foreign concept to this mayor. Consequently, the taxpaying public is in the dark, having to rely on media reports about the most fundamental aspects of the issue, such as the gap between CP and the City over the land’s value.

Let’s put this issue out in the open, see what solutions are on the table, wrap up negotiations and let communities, taxpayers and CP see a resolution. It’s gone on for too long.

 

 

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  • IanS

    @Dr. F #97:

    I would agree it’s a criticism without substance. Without knowing what happened, or is happening, behind closed doors, criticisms of either side seem to be pretty much without substance. However, when did that stop a political candidate from trying to score points, or an internet commentator from offering an armchair critique of the negotiations?

  • rph

    Didn’t the government retain the actual ownership of the BC Rail lands, and is only long term leasing the right of ways?

  • Roger Kemble

    CPR’s bullying of west side garden squatters?

    Where is it going and where is it coming from?

    Lets take a look . . .

    1. Tram sheds in the old BCE building on Hastings, or Norther teminus!

    2.Trestle over FC or revive Olympic Line!

    3. Starbucks on GI!

    4. Duplexes on Kits Point!

    5. Safety crossing on 4th etc etc!

    6. Marpole Bridge!

    7. North Arm crossing!

    8. Steveston terminus!

    Jeeezless after 101 mealy mouthed nonsense!

    A right-of-way just ain’t gonna happen! Quit yer gossiping. CPR is a bully!

  • spartikus

    For 990 years, I believe.

  • Bill

    Once again Bruce Allen nails it in his daily rant this time contrasting the actions of CP in dealing with squatters on the Arbutus lands with the inaction of the City in dealing with squatters in Oppenheimer Park. CP told the squatters what they were going to do, when they were going to do it and then did it after giving them a couple of weeks’ grace. The City issued an eviction order on July 15 and did nothing with it and consequently the number of squatters has actually increased.

  • Chris Keam

    Another way to look at it would be to point out that it has taken CP years to deal with people who apparently won’t fight to defend their cause, and the city has acted immediately in beginning action against a group liable to go down swinging.

  • Chris Keam

    @in response

    It doesn’t cost the taxpayer a dime for a mayoral candidate to engage with the full spectrum of Vancouver residents. Nowhere in my post did I suggest spending more money on anything.

  • F.H.Leghorn

    “Defend their cause”? What cause, the right of trespass? Double-edged sword. Fight for it and before you know it CK and a mob of symapthetic higher purpose types are camping on your lawn.

  • Threadkiller

    The ongoing use of the term “squatters” here and elsewhere is deliberately and infuriatingly derogatory, used by the army of trolls who have lined up to publicly and enthusiastically smooch CP’s corporate hindquarters. Simple definition for the simple-minded: Squatters live on the land or in the building they occupy. The people who have been cultivating community gardens for the past thirty years on the rail lands on the west side– unused industrial wasteland, except where the gardens grow, for the past 13 years– have planted trees, food plants and flowers, but they are not living in their gardens. In Kitsilano at least, most of them live in apartments, and a lot of apartment dwellers’ fondest dream is to be able to have a garden once again, perhaps like one they remember from their childhood. Most community gardens in this city have a waiting list a year or more long, likely for this reason. Fools that they were,the rail land gardeners tried to create something beautiful… in a city that yammers endlessly on about its purported beauty.

    Some of us, given the seemingly terminal state of the global environment, consider it an honorable thing to plant a tree or a garden. Not so the trolls and CP-adoring knuckledraggers, who squeal in porcine ecstasy at the prospect of trains once again rolling along over creosote-soaked ties and tar-soaked gravel, through the green and leafy lanes of Kitsilano and Kerrisdale. I have seldom been as angry about an issue in this city as I am about this one, but I’m angrier still at the morons who rant on about gardens on unused land as though they were some kind of socialist plot (no pun intended). Do you guys pour Tordon on your Wheaties every morning, or what?

  • F.H.Leghorn

    @Dr.F: “Some of us…consider it an honorable thing to plant a tree or a garden”. On someone else’s property.
    But only if the property belongs to an evil, faceless, profit-driven (blush) foreign corporation (in which my pension fund is invested) or perhaps is owned by everyone, which is to say no-one, like the parks for example. And after the recent Supreme Court ruling just what does ownership really mean any more?

    Moving into a condo spares His Worship the annoyance of having Harsha Walia and the others camping on his lawn. He doesn’t have a lawn.

  • Jenables

    In response, you do realize the eastside doesn’t mean exclusively the downtown eastside and that many people who use the food bank are actually employed as well, don’t you?

  • IanS

    @TK #109:

    “Some of us… consider it an honorable thing to plant a tree or a garden.”

    IMO, the negative comments arise not because these people planted gardens, but as a result of the misplaced sense of entitlement and outrage some of them appear to be expressing because the entity on whose land these gardens were located is removing them.

    Perhaps the best way for them to counter this negative image is to make public the numerous letters of thank you and appreciation which I have no doubt these gardeners sent to CPR over the many years during which CPR permitted them to grow such gardens of its property. Given the length of time during which some of these gardens have existed, I’m sure there must be hundreds of expressions of gratitude for that permission.

    IMO, making those expressions public will go a long way to countering the negative commentary you decry.

    Oh, and this… “squeal in porcine ecstasy” was a really nice turn of phrase. Well done.

  • Roger Kemble

    Yunno I cannot understand all this ribald hostility to the gardeners making good use of that strip of land that has been pretty well abandoned for decades.

    Perhaps this . . .

    http://www.intellihub.com/california-wake-callextreme-
    drought-will-lead-migration-exit-real-estatecollapse/

    . . . may awaken the naysayers to the imminent threat to our inexpensive, convenient, fresh fruit and vegetable supply that the gardeners are trying to hedge against.

    Remember the Skagit river Bridge collapse? The US is not the mighty United States it was when it embarked on the great freeway expansions of the 1950’s.

    Then look at the Arbutus rail line. Where is it going? Where is it coming from?

    If the CPR is dreaming of another coal port on the Fraser, or even an expansion of the existing facilities dream on. Obama has put the kibosh on US coal period!

    As I said in #103 A right-of-way just ain’t gonna happen for the eight reasons I mentioned: anyone who knows the city will know what I am talking about!

    But I am sure the CPR is salivating over selling empty condos (Arbutus slope view is multi-million-dollar-breath-taking) to remote, disinterested foreign investors.

  • Roger Kemble

    http://www.intellihub.com/california-wake-call-extreme-drought-will-lead-migration-exit-real-estate-collapse/

  • Bill

    @Roger #113

    “Yunno I cannot understand all this ribald hostility to the gardeners making good use of that strip of land that has been pretty well abandoned for decades.”

    The “hostility” is not that they were using the land and I believe the last train was 13 years ago and not decades. The strong feelings arise from their sense of entitlement to continue to use something that did not belong to them when the owner asked them to leave.

  • Roger Kemble

    “I believe the last train was 13 years ago. Bill @ #115

    I beg to differ. In the fifties when I lived in Kerrisdale it was a tram line.

    In the sevenites and eighties when I lived on Kits Point it was non existent from Arbutus @ Fourth North.

    Whatever ran on that line after the trams were abandoned where especifically to maintain ownership joy rides: maybe an engine and caboose!

    Now that the Marpole swing bridge and the FS trestle no long exist it is a line with no beginning and no end.

    I’m all for the gardeners who are putting essentially abandoned land to good use.

  • Jeff Leigh

    @Roger #116

    “Now that the Marpole swing bridge and the FS trestle no long exist it is a line with no beginning and no end.”

    How about the connection to the tracks along Kent Ave? Trains still run there. Sure, the trestle is gone but there is no need to cross the Fraser at that point.

  • Jeff Leigh

    @Ian S #112

    “IMO, the negative comments arise not because these people planted gardens, but as a result of the misplaced sense of entitlement and outrage some of them appear to be expressing because the entity on whose land these gardens were located is removing them.”

    Well said. Fully agree.

  • Bill

    @Roger #116

    “In the sevenites and eighties when I lived on Kits Point it was non existent from Arbutus @ Fourth North.”

    Chronology from Vancouver Sun

    “1995 — CP severs connection between Arbutus corridor and Science World by selling a single lot at 1500 W 2nd Ave., which becomes a Starbucks.

    1999 — CP discontinues the railway apart from service to Molson brewery and starts working on plans for residential and commercial development and offers to sell the corridor.”

    How were the trains getting to Molson’s if not down the Arbutus corridor?

    Do you believe all vacant lands are abandoned and anyone has the right to “put them to good use?”

  • Roger Kemble

    Jeff @117

    In my use and recollection going back 65 years the Arbutus line never was a freight line.

    It was a municipal tram line from the tram barns on Hasting to Steveston.

    The Brewery @ 12th may have had box cars latterly but they never proceeded south.

  • Roger Kemble

    Bill @ 119 “How were the trains getting to Molson’s if not down the Arbutus corridor”

    They didn’t. By that time the brewery @ 12th was abandoned.

    Molson’s @ Burrard Bridge was all trucking!

  • In Response

    So Jeff Leigh, and others, you think it’s ok for citizens to be put in a position of being used as pawns? And as a result of poor negotiating tactics and skills at City Hall?

    Consider for a moment that most of these garders aren’t telling the CPR that they have a right to use the land, they’re telling City Hall that they have messed up and created the current problems.

    And I would agree with them. As Mr. LaPointe correctly asserts, “it didn’t have to be this way.”

  • Jeff Leigh

    @In Response

    Some of these gardeners are telling the news media that they should be allowed to use the land. They are negotiating in the media. I think it is unfortunate the gardens are being removed.
    At the same time, I would object to the city paying $100m to provide free gardens. I think the idea of an active transportation corridor makes sense. Maybe a tram line, but only if there is more study on the need for one, since paying for it would require densification and I don’t think that will be palatable to these same neighbours.

    I don’t think the line is worth $100m. And paying that inflated sum seems like poor negotiating.

    I think CP made it this way, more so than the City. They don’t like the SC ruling.

  • spartikus

    Consider for a moment that most of these garders aren’t telling the CPR that they have a right to use the land, they’re telling City Hall that they have messed up and created the current problems.

    Oh?

    “It’s pretty shocking that [CP] would do this at all and we’re disgusted that they’re doing this at all. We’re worried about our own garden, of course, but we’re more worried for the people who have had their gardens already ripped up — it’s just unconscionable. I wake up thinking about it.”

  • spartikus

    Do you believe all vacant lands are abandoned and anyone has the right to “put them to good use?”

    In continues to be worth mentioning that these gardens have been around since the 1940s, when the vacant land was “put to good use” in the “fight against Hitler”.

  • In Response

    We can speculate endlessly about what the effected neighbourhoods want, but this doc seems to be a decent starting point for that speculation: http://www.shpoa.ca/pdf/ArbutusLandsVisioning07.pdf

    A senior yelling “it’s bloody balderdash” into a camera shouldn’t be parsed too much for exact meaning.

    Ok, so you won’t ascribe too much blame to City Hall for this mess. Not a huge revelation. That may be your honest and objective position, or it may be a position that’s consistent with your political leanings. I’ve spend more than my fair share of time in board rooms, sometimes with some very smart people, and I wouldn’t hold the city’s actions in this regard above reproach, to say the least.

    And the current lack communication coming from City Hall…… I only hope it’s because they’re locked in a room with the CPR and know a decent deal will be announced soon. It isn’t quantum physics, it’s just a deal.

  • Chris Keam

    “And the current lack communication coming from City Hall”

    is probably a response to the public comments that seem to be mostly in favour of the railroad in this case. Surprising because one is forgiven for thinking the ‘we have always been at war with the Canadian Pacific’ mindset typical in the West would come into play.

    Not a hill to die on if you’re an incumbent. Public sentiment is squarely in favour of property rights on this issue for good or ill, from the various online conversations I’ve seen in local media.

    Further, it’s good communication strategy to lay low, let the issue die out, and concentrate on winnable issues that will get out your voters. Soggy October gardens aren’t a good locale for pre-election photo opps.

    Anyway, who’s going to help me drag my lacklustre tomato plants off my north-facing balcony and plop them down in an unused section of Rocky Mountaineer parking lot? It gets a ton of sunlight and is just across the road and over the tracks.

    🙂

  • Barnes Raider

    Public comments? You mean the trolls on these boards?

  • Bill

    @spartikus #125

    “In continues to be worth mentioning that these gardens have been around since the 1940s, when the vacant land was “put to good use” in the “fight against Hitler”.”

    There was also conscription and rationing in the “fight against Hitler”. Does that mean we should have continued those practices?

  • Jeff Leigh

    @In Response

    “We can speculate endlessly about what the effected neighbourhoods want, but this doc seems to be a decent starting point for that speculation: http://www.shpoa.ca/pdf/ArbutusLandsVisioning07.pdf”

    I agree that this is a decent starting point. The process was run by CP, and I would be more comfortable if it was run by the City, but it seems a good starting point.

    Two of the visions in that plan were discounted as not being affordable. The third vision that emerged suggested densification along the corridor to raise funds to buy the corridor (from the sponsor of the study). OK. Based on recent public history with rezoning applications that sought to bring higher density to traditional low-density neighbourhoods, I was just a little doubtful that the ecodensity vision would be widely embraced. But maybe I am wrong and the west side would accept higher density in exchange for some clarity on the future use of the corridor.

  • gasp

    @Roger Kemble:

    I agree that gardens make a valuable contribution to this City; I am an avid gardener myself.

    However, I see this as an attempt by this City Council to paint themselves as “green” by using the gardeners as pawns, when most of their actions are the exact opposite of preserving or enhancing the natural environment.

    IMO, if this City Council cared about greenways and gardens, why does is allow developers all over the City to build the maximum footprint possible on their land without requiring any community gardens, greenspace or permeable land on their lots, and especially on large developments like Oakridge? Why did this City Council change the building code to allow massive houses to be built along with laneway houses on single family lots, thereby reducing Vancouver’s greenspace and permeable land by about 50%? Why does it allow some developers to violate the long-established view cones which many people cherish as it connects them with the natural environment?

    And if this City Council really cared about communities, why does it do everything possible to dismiss their concerns and ignore their property rights during rezoning hearings?
    And why have they changed the public hearing process to limit public input in addition to providing short notice to (and sometimes not even notifying) the people they are required by law to notify?

    It seems to me that this is a City Council that picks and chooses who it wants to benefit and, apparently, the CPR is not a “favoured” developer. That’s obvious, since Mayor Robertson (in his letter to the CPR’s CEO) dismissed outright the planning study commissioned by CP (referred to @In Response’s comment, #126, above), because it referred to EcoDensity – which is City Policy and applicable to all other property owners’ (including single family homeowners’) land.

    And to: In Response @126:
    Didn’t you know that City Hall is basically on vacation from the beginning of August until after Labour Day? I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a response before September!

    As to people who contest the value of the right of way land, I’d ask the Mayor why the City paid to have an “independent appraisal” done? The whole function of BC Assessment is to do independent appraisals, which the City relies on for taxation purposes. So if the City accepts BC Assessment appraisals for property taxation purposes, why didn’t it consider the assessed value to be “fair market value” and instead hire someone else to do an “independent appraisal”?

  • Roger Kemble

    I was a school boy in wartime England and yes, “Bill @ #129“, Victory gardens sprang up everywhere.

    They where called allotments before the war: families grew greens and the old man got a breather from the wife and kids.

    There is a much lighter legal way the CPR could treat their, errrrr squatter gardeners on their land without destroying all the family work.

    Let me explain: Trounce Alley, Victoria BC.

    Now I am an architect not a lawyer so I have no idea how the law stands after nearly sixty years.

    In about 1955 I was working for an architect commissioned to tart up Trounce Alley behind the National Trust Building between Government and Broad streets: the alley was NT property.

    The work fell to me!

    It was a pedestrian only alley way faced, nevertheless, with some very smart stores and of course subject to constant pedestrian traffic especially during tourist season.

    I did a fine job that lasted until recently when I suppose someone felt the need for a new approach.

    Be that as it may the alley was private property owned by Royal Trust and of course they did not wish to lose ownership by not applying their ownership. Evidently some obscure common law prescribes land as public ownership after a period of usage.

    Now, as I say I am not a lawyer.

    But Royal Trust evidently has some astute legal advice that set commissionaires at either end of the alley one day a year to declare ownership to all and sundry who entered the alleyway.

    Like, “hey, this alleyway belong to National Trust and you enter only with their permission!” That seem to make NT and everyone happy and as far as I know the alley is still NT’s.

    Pity the CPR doesn’t have the same sage law advice.

  • Roger Kemble

    As a graduate of SCARP and a practitioner of long standing gasp @ #131 I am certainly no fan of the present development process: it is not producing the city it bally-hoos about. Green City!!!

    Sorry you’ve lost me.

    Conventional planning, i.e. CoV PD, is conducted by as by a clerk with a good memory and an acute sense of expediency.

    I harbour the quite naive assumption that urban planning is an art and should be practiced as such.

    As of early century twenty-one that doesn’t have caché . . .

  • gasp

    Roger @133:

    Usually the starting point for determining Fair Market Value (FMV) is the most recent assessment, so why didn’t the City use that to determine FMV and instead opt to pay for an “independent appraisal”? Was it because CP’s asking price was much closer to the property’s assessed value? I suspect so.

    According to BC Assessment, public parks are valued based on the value of the surrounding properties.

    The Mayor’s position is that this piece of property is and should be a public greenway (and maybe, someday, potentially a light-rail corridor). If so, the City should value it the same as a park. But the City wants to value it based on some other unknown criteria because their value takes into account the “relative lack of any commercial activity on the Corridor.”

  • spartikus

    According to BC Assessment, public parks are valued based on the value of the surrounding properties.

    I can’t find confirmation of that on the BC Assessment website.

    Do you have a link?

  • gasp

    spartikus @135:

    I don’t have a link to that information.

    I spoke directly to a senior assessor at BC Assessment some time ago about this issue in relation to a small park in my area that was registered in the City’s name and that the City was looking at putting housing on. I was told that if there was a land title certificate for the property, BC Assessment puts a value on it based on the value of the surrounding properties. If there is no land title certificate (mostly the case with original older parks, which were “dedicated” to be parks when areas were originally subdivided) then BC Assessment does not assign any market value to it.

    In the case of the newer smaller pocket parks (like in Yaletown) I was told that the title would usually be registered in the City’s name with a restrictive covenant registered in favour of the surrounding residences – which is the only safeguard residents have to prevent the City from selling off the property at assessed market value.

  • boohoo

    @136

    Who told you that? Why wouldn’t the city take the land as dedicated park? Vancouver might be different because of the charter but in other cities when land is dedicated as park the only way it can be anything other than park is through a referendum. If cities take park land as lots then they could sell it as any other land owner could. But dedicated park seems to me the simplest and most effective way to protect land from sale or other use.

    RCs seem like an odd tool to use when a much simpler solution is out there.

  • boohoo

    @135

    Typically park is acquired at fair market price for what it would likely be if it weren’t park. So a park surrounded on all four sides by single family lots would be valued at single family lot prices. If it’s surrounded by different uses at different densities then it’s more complicated but usually done by averaging of surrounding uses.

    There are whole departments that deal with this all the time but I don’t think its a bc assessment thing, I think its a city thing.

  • Barnes Raider

    The CPR sold the land that is now Kitsilano Beach Park to the City in approximately 1910. That sale came about after citizens lobbied for a park there, negotiated directly with the CPR, raised the $ privately and lent it to the City in order for it to complete the purchase.

    The sale was made, with all parties agreeing that the land would remain as a park and not be used for commercial purposes. The Trust Agreement detailing that was executed at the time of the sale.

    Times have changed.

    Oh, and the Parks Board was unaware of that Trust Agreement when they proceeded ten years ago with a commercial development at Kits Beach. They’ve likely violated it, in spirit if not the letter of the loosely worded (by today’s standards) agreement. At the time the CPR considered suing the COV to get the Trust upheld, but didn’t follow through. It likely wasn’t a big enough fish to fry.

  • Keith

    @#92 Silly Season “I wonder how East Siders feel about any $$$$ going to another West Side walk ‘n bike path. ” This East sider feels that a few of the “pocket parks” on Point Grey Road could be sold for residential development at a handsome price.

    The proceeds could be used to buy up an entire block on the east side, the buildings demolished and a new park could be built. A decrease in west side park space, an increase in east side park space, at zero cost to the taxpayers. A win win win.

  • Barnes Raider

    Any more talk like that Keith and I might raise your rent, just for the fun of it.

  • spartikus

    Uh huh

    Vancouver has offered to give Canadian Pacific Railway “its rightful share” of any increased value in the contested Arbutus Corridor should a future council decide to develop the property.

    The offer is contained in a letter Mayor Gregor Robertson sent to the chairman of CP Rail, Hunter Harrison, at the end of July as the railway was poised to begin ripping up unauthorized gardens along its 11-kilometre line.

    Tell me again who is the party behaving badly here?

  • Dr. Frankentower

    Interesting that this offer (see link @142) hasn’t been made public until now. It was first outlined in the City’s offer made to CP way back on May 12, and reiterated in the Mayor’s letter to CP in July.

    The story notes that CP has never even responded to the offer, and instead preferred to just bulldoze the community gardens in an effort to make the City look bad. In this context, “bully” seems like a pretty apt characterization.

    On the face of it, the offer seems like a very fair and reasonable solution to the impasse wrt the chasm is in asking/offer price.

    It certainly does show CP to be the party behaving badly, but it also makes Lapointe’s knee-jerk name-calling look even more like cheap politcking. If the NPA was so business-savvy and able to close deals so easily, why were they unable to come up with a similar solution? Or any reasonable solution at all, for that matter.

  • Barnes Raider

    Vision apologists out in force. So, reacting to CP’s pressure, almost a decade into stonewalling and a failed strategy from the COV gets them off the hook. You guys are easy on your pols. Is this the “cult of Vision” effect at work?

  • Bill

    “On the face of it, the offer seems like a very fair and reasonable solution to the impasse wrt the chasm is in asking/offer price.”

    OK, let’s say that a family owns a lot that has been in the family for generations but was only used as a garden even though zoning would have permitted development. The City hears that the family is now considering developing the lot but decides that for food security we need more urban farms and changes the zoning that blocks development and offers to buy the lot from them but valued as a garden plot. When the family objects the City offers to share with them the higher value should the City decide in the future to develop the lot. This is a fair solution, isn’t it.

  • F.H.Leghorn

    “should a future council decide to develop the property”. Pass that buck, Gregor.

    spartikus neglected to quote Jonathan Baker’s view:
    “they (Council) can amend the ODP. It’s a piece of cake. It is amended in the same manner as a zoning bylaw — two-week notice of hearing and they rezone it. They can rezone it for anything they want. Nothing keeps the ODP in place”.

    It’s easy to understand the reluctance of Vision to run on a platform of “you’re going to pay so the other richest neighbourhood in town can occupy public land for gardens”. So vote for me.
    Uh-huh.

  • Jeff Leigh

    Interesting letter in the Vancouver Sun from Rob MacDonald.

    “Imagine having your property down zoned to purposefully reduce its value so the government could essentially steal it from you.”

    http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/letters/Bargaining+fails+education/10138404/story.html

    While ranting about egregious behaviour and the bullies in Vision, Mr MacDonald should perhaps be reminded who passed the OCP for the corridor in 2000. Hint: the initials are NPA, who had nine of eleven seats on council.

  • Chow

    Jeff@147. And of course the Vancouver Sun, non partisan as in NPA non-partisan, chose not to identify him as the just resigned VP of NPA.
    Which, of course, raises the question, why did he resign? To spend more time with his family? Or to be able to write letters like this, keep supporting the NPA with money and connections while not forcing Lapointe to resign as the NPA’s mayoralty candidate because of his clean campaign pledge. As in eating your cake and eating it too.
    Anyway, there must be a story there but no-one seems to be covering it. Ms. Bula?

  • rph

    It sets a dangerous precedent if the City can rezone land, devalue it, and set itself up as the only purchaser. And then years later change the zoning to sell parcels of it at a profit.

    As Bill mentions above, can you imagine that happening to other private property, say a few spreads in the Southlands. Great spot for community greenhouses?

  • Barnes Raider

    Chow….while we’re at it why don’t we suggest other topics for the local press to cover; Visions’s greenwashing, the low morale at City Hall and the resultant exodus of talent, the appointment of blatantly political Vision campaigners at City Hall, the role of big American money in Vision, Vision’s focus on issues outside of their purview, the claims made by Vision about the safety of our port’s operations and whether it’s just politicking or if we really should shut down all shipping due to the risk to Stanley Park, etc. Aside from rank speculation about Mr. Macdonald motives these would also make good stories.

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