I have a knee jerk negative reaction to any group that:

a) Uses all caps in the name, as though yelling it makes it more true or important.
b) Is such a one dimensional, myopic, one issue group.

I don’t think a tower at Venables and Commercial Drive makes a lot of sense. We should exhaust the more sensible locations in the city for adding density first. There are no towers around the Commercial Drive skytrain station, or Nanaimo, or 29th avenue. Major arterials like Nanaimo, Victoria Drive etc. have plenty of single family homes on them. There are plenty of opportunities on the West side for adding density as well.

The CoV donating land under the counter-proposal is nice, but that doesn’t pay for architects, engineers or construction material. Where are they suggesting the $3.2 million come from?

I say this as someone who was against Rize at least partially due to height concerns so I’m normally a bit empathetic to this sort of thing, but yeah it’s really, really hard to take this group’s concerns seriously at all when there’s another building roughly the same size across the road.

Regarding affordability the area is already at risk of redevelopment. It’s zoned such that you can build duplexes so rents could easily rise here if developers started buying up old single family homes that are being rented out at low rates and converting them into brand shiny new duplexes with higher rents. I recently had some friends evicted from their Mount Pleasant house due to a developer buying many in their area so this may already be happening.

Great article! Three comments:
1) The Boffo proposal is not really a “tower”, it is only 12 stories tall with massing that will make it look smaller.
2) The Kettle has exhaustively explored numerous other ways to fund a new complex and just can’t do it under the current Provincial govt.
3) Most importantly the No Tower folks want to pull up the drawbridge in their single family homes bought years ago for cheap – unfair to many young families and folks that want to be a part of the Drive community and can’t afford detached homes.

I support the Kettle and Boffo.

Nice try with that tactic, but that old tower is an anomaly from the days of Tom Terrific. Sort of like that eyesore on top of Capitol Hill in Burnaby.

The land is owned by all Vancouverites, not just residents of the Drive who do not have an exclusive right to dictate its use beyond expressing an opinion. Land everywhere is increasingly expensive, and arguably is the common denominator to our lack of affordability when it is constrained by zoning for large lots (plenty of those around this site), which in turn constrains adding more supply.

Selling condos in a tower will increase the value on neighbouring land in today’s superheated market, but not nearly as much in the long run as locking in the existing housing supply to maintain the lifestyle of those who live on large lots just a few metres away. The price of condos in East Vancouver has not risen nearly as much as detached homes on large lots that house orders of magnitude fewer people.

The O’Keefe lands at Arbutus x 12th lands faced a similar dilemma years back, and the city hosted meetings between the developer, who wanted a 15-storey max height, and the community who wanted four. It was a long and heated negotiation, but they compromised on an eight-storey height restriction, with four along Arbutus. That was a successful development with a pleasing streetscape reinforced by continuous retail frontages, an internal publicly accessible park, and if memory serves, one building for seniors with fixed incomes.

Maybe 12 storeys is too high for this location, but to try to manipulate the process and cut compromise off at the pass is not a constructive or helpful strategy that benefits the whole community. Perhaps hitting the reset button is required on this one and settling on six to eight storeys with some additional developer-financed public amenities without a taxpayer gift to the neighbouring detached house owners is in order.

So the old tower is an anomaly from the old days…does that mean it is invisible or not part of the neighborhood? It is there, the proposal seems pretty good to me.

I did not have time to read it to double check, but pretty sure this is the right link.

http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.pdf

LOL… you’re absolutely right, I’m busted… “billionaire” is hyperbole. Maybe I should rephrase as “millionaire owners of heritage homes in one of the trendiest neighbourhoods, in one of the most desirable cities/countries in the world… many making a killing renting out rooms to tourists illegally and jacking up rents while insisting that the rest of the neighbourhood stay stuck in the 80s.”

Well, it’s never Shaughnessy. Funny how people get upset when their neighborhood gets destroyed or they lose their homes. I don’t think people actually understand that this neighborhood is quite dense already; it’s just that the units here are actually occupied.

People who bought affordable homes decades ago and who have no intention of moving are only “millionaires” if they happen to sell in a buoyant market. I’m a pensioner and happen to own an old house, but I’m not a millionaire!

The average income in Grandview-Woodland is 2/3 of Vancouver’s average income. 14% of Vancouver’s social housing is in GW, 65% of the neighborhood rents, and of that 65% it is estimated that nearly half spend over 30% of their income on rent. Many live in buildings which are threatened by the gentrification you are touting. Sorry to burst your bubble of righteous indignation.

They are NIMBY with respect to “towers”, which this development hardly qualifies as. This is a great public/private partnership whereby the developer is sharing some of the social housing costs.

Instead, this group would rather the taxpayers of Vancouver contribute $5M so they don’t have to endure some imagined slight of having moderate density in their neighbourhood.

“Kettle jointly released with Boffo Properties a visualization of the project, presumably to demonstrate that a 12-storey project can fit in and isn’t any more obtrusive than the tower nearby”. I’m confused, does this mean it is ok now to re-zone GW for towers as long as the aren’t any more obtrusive than the Lions tower?

It’s 12 stories and the developer has previously stated that it would need to be fifteen to be profitable. There are also two other mid rise buildings in the massing. The developer is asking for an FSR of 6+. Adanac towers is 2.75 In every rendering, Adanac towers is shown as higher than the development, even when it is further away in the horizon! Why do you think they do that? Also, this neighborhood already fits the criteria for transit-oriented development because it is already dense.

Probably the misinformation, unwillingness to engage with residents, blocking foi requests and of course, the gentrification the developer is bringing to a low income neighborhood that actually currently houses low income people.

How exactly does this proposal “destroy the neighbourhood” or deprive anyone of their home? The existing site contains no housing whatsoever in an uninspiring building that’s well past its prime. The proposal adds some affordable units, associated support space, and a bunch of market apartments that are likely to sell for much less than the houses nearby. Doesn’t sound like destruction or eviction to me…

Speaking of towers, anyone see this? I live in a condo with kids. Maybe I can take advantage of this program and get back some of my donation money. LOL.

On a more serious note, does this mean raising kids in a condo is known to be bad for them? They reference some research saying it is. Yikes!

For that reason, Valsonis was more than happy to receive on Friday $300,000 in funding from the Lower Mainland wing of the United Way charity, to help kick-start two initiatives specific to City Centre: “Vertical Parenting” and “Neighbourhood Connectors.”

“We understand that more and more families are living in high-rises and becoming more isolated because they don’t really see their neighbours,” said Valsonis, when asked why the program was focusing first on City Centre and, in particular, the area around Cook elementary on Cook Road.

– See more at: http://www.richmond-news.com/community/the-only-way-is-up-for-richmond-s-high-rise-kids-1.2193781#sthash.sMWs88so.dpuf

Considering the fsr they want is 6+, and mostly market rate units, I’d say it’s nothing like the Adanac towers.

I’m still not seeing the “neighbourhood destroyed” argument. The proposal will provide housing at a cost lower than a house (a good thing for local affordability), 30 SRO units (even more affordable), support space (yay) and “will be nothing like Adanac Tower” (great news -that building, while important functionally, is not exactly a paragon of design). So is the only downside is the lack of grass and trees? If so, the Drive has already been destroyed by numerous zero-lot-line buildings with similar landscaping schemes. And many people come to the Drive to shop and socialize, despite the lack of grass and trees on each and every site…

I would assume the community amenities for this proposal is the subsidized housing and services.

I did endorse the slate, but not in my role as a No Tower supporter. Those 12 people are from all over Grandview and care about a wide range of issues, most having nothing to do with your Towers. It’s a lie that the slate was “based solely on opposition to [your] project.”

To be fair, they have offered an alternative solution. I would say the vast majority of NIMBY style opposition is more on the lines of the infamous “we are the creme de la creme” don’t ruin my expensive neighbourhood.

On a city budget of over a billion, 3.2 mill can be found.