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The last big downtown waterfront area about to be developed — and it will be the most complicated of all

June 2nd, 2017 · 3 Comments

If you think the current Chinatown debates are heated, wait until things really get going with Northeast False Creek.

The city is going to present the proposed ideas so far in a big fair/demo on June 10, with material from all of the many participants involved (park board, stewardship community work on the Hogan’s Alley project/black community, Concord Pacific, engineering with new road plan, Canadian Metropolitan Properties, etc.).

I got an advance look at the ideas and plans so far in my story here. Here’s information about the planned block party to introduce everything June 10 here.

There is already some criticism, with one Hogan’s Alley advocate saying that what the black community is getting from all this is token stuff.

I’m sure the people currently in an uproar over development in Chinatown will be weighing in (though I was talking to Doris Chow of Youth Collaborative for Chinatown yesterday, who is also on a stewardship committee, and she sounded excited about some of the possibilities in the new parks and blocks planned for new Chinatown).

Plans for buildings are preliminary yet — they’re more concepts (terracing, horizontal lines along the park edge, etc.) and massing than actual designs yet.

Lots more to come.

 

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  • Bill_McCreery

    Sounds interesting. The proof is in the pudding, so will look forward to seeing the actual proposals.

    A question: Why is the new Director of Planning saying the “Chinese and black communities, which had their neighbourhoods first cut off from the False Creek waterfront,…”? False Creek only has had a ‘waterfront’ since the 1970s. Prior to that the Creek was an industrial and rail centre. There was no ‘waterfront’ to be cut off from.

    When TEAM took over in 1972 we required continuous public waterfront access and we started to clean up the Creek’s water quality by closing stormwater and industrial sewage outlets, and requiring all boats in Creek marinas to have holding tanks and the marinas to have sewage disposal stations, as well as restricting the vagrant moorage of boats in the Creek. Our consultants told us there could be no False Creek fishery for decades, so we were pleasantly surprised when edible fish were being caught by the mid 70s.

    Good luck to Councillor Reimer’s efforts to make swimming possible in the Creek. There are layers, feet deep, of industrial pollution in the Creek bed. The water quality will remain relatively OK so long as the bottom is not disturbed, something difficult to do if swimmers are introduced.

  • Dory Sheldan

    I sometimes hear the criticism of Vancouver social housing plans that they don’t give enough social housing compared with market and/or lightly discounted rentals. I suspect that the reason for this might create neighbourhoods with income diversity. In the past, social housing projects have been disastrous. Many American social housing efforts, often called “the projects” have become unliveable ghettos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_States) Paris created the Banlieues (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue) which are hotbeds for political and social unrest. I believe that a good mix of income levels will make the areas more healthy to live for all.

  • Kenji

    Well the idea of a planned neighbourhood with a mix of social housing and getting away from podium and tower (to preserve some of the view, I guess?) and new access sounds great. The city was right not to rush this, although part of me regrets that the Whitecaps did not get to build their open air waterfront pitch.
    There will never be enough welfare rate units there to suit the critics, but a) it’s waterfront property in Vancouver, what did they think was gonna happen and b) welfare is totally inadequate as a livable income by design – minimum basic income is coming sooner or later.