Bad link on your blog to the Globe and Mail story, unless it’s my computer acting up.

My wife has strong ties to the community-centre community (so to speak) and even she was surprised to hear that Oly Village has a capital-letters Community Centre.

Thanks Lewis for your OV perspective, almost seems like the content is sufficient for a separate blog, now only if there was a way to drive traffic to that site. (BTW is there any planner/architect that can compliment the work of a fellow professional?)
I was down to visit the community centre last week, and was too late to visit, but I’m sure it will fill up soon enough. It still doesn’t have much more than cardio equipment at the moment, and weather like this makes it hard to try and go indoors. Wait until the fall, and we’ll see a lot of the locals around false creek, and some of the commuters taking advantage of the new facilities and location.
Will the village remain dark for a while, probably. I don’t see Urban fare and London Drugs turning on the open sign any time soon. But the square fits, although the tables and chairs shouldn’t have been bolted down like they are. And I’m looking forward to the Salt building re-opening.

The birds are Chick-a-dees . . .

http://members.shaw.ca/rogerkemble/4.down.town/athletes.village/athletes.village.html

Olympic village is in part empty because the City owned rental building, over 100 units, 151 W 1st, is completely empty. The building has been ready for occupancy for months and supposedly will mix market and non-market rentals. There were no signs giving contact numbers on the building; and a call to City Hall produced a statement that a marketing agent has not yet been selected by Council and an offer to put my name on a waiting list.

However, on Tuesday, a.m., a construction worker offered me the opportunity to select my apartment and move in right away if I payed him cash. (Presumably he was joking but maybe not.)

Lost revenue on the building at least $150,000 a month.

The link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/if-you-build-it-will-anybody-come/article1655195/

The thing that interests me is the – reported – dearth of attendees at the Olympic Village community centre compared with the masses always present when I go by the new centre at 1 Kingsway, although they are quite close to each other.

My suspicion is that much of the reason – aside from the relative lack of built and occupied housing around Olympic Village so far – is simply access. For example, the article mentions people living at Citygate. While it’s true that the Olympic Village centre is less of a walk, the Kingsway centre has at least three buses (Main, Kingsway and Fraser) running from Citygate directly past its doors – not to mention the Broadway buses just a block away.

Dan, I am currently using the Mount Pleasant Library at Kingsway cuz my internet is out – nice and convenient facility indeed!

Been using it for slightly over a week no complaints, so far.

Olympic Village. $36 million for the community centre. Over $10 million put into the Salt Building. More than $150 million funneled from the Property Endowment Fund.

What a contrast with the four and a half years of planning for Norquay Village. City staff assure us that significant capital injection will not happen because there is no money. Our 11,000 residents live in a demonstrated amenity vacuum (Workshop 5 on 14 May 2009). Somehow an impending mass rezoning is supposed to work local magic, despite the math we have seen on how little DCL and CAC produce.

Some neighbourhoods count for more than others?

Richard, have you seen those bollards they have in Europe that sink into the ground and disappear?

Some of them are activated by a swipe card, like a garage gate. Maybe Hardwick St. should be “local traffic only” and some such control device(s) installed to make the regulations stick.

However, if we are going to open up this discussion to traffic pattern analysis at the OV, we have to wonder why the square is surrounded by streets on all four sides! Surely one or two through streets would have sufficed, and the urbanism substantially improved by having the piazza “stick” to more than one of the fronting buildings.

However, I still have larger things on my mind. Let’s look at this “Big Bird” issue more critically. If it is not Pop Art, and it is not Surrealist Art, then why are the Chickadees so huge?

There has been a design ethos quietly building in the background as we were not noticing the height of the towers and the length of the shadows and the shortening of the hours of sun on our parks, sidewalks, and streets.

In North False Creek, there is that steel or cast aluminum piece perforated with letters (I can’t remember if the letters spell out a slogan or not) that casts a perfect shadow of itself on the ground on sunny days. Up Davie Street on Richards, there is Emery Barnes Park, with its quirky water feature with a linear design that is impossible to comprehend walking around the space. And, now there are the mutant birds on the Olympic Square. What gives?

We’ll have to wait until we hear from condo dwellers on the other side of the water. But, my sense is that all these designs were intended to be seen from high up, and far away. This is not public are per se, but art in public places intended to be seen from high up in a condo tower. Private viewing after a fashion.

So, anybody out there, how do the chickadees read, across the water and 3,000-feet (900m) away seen from the condos on Beatty Street? Are they visible from the towers on Main Street behind the golf ball? Any other sightings of these things from anywhere else?

The day-care space is probably the best in the world. Little kid-sized sinks down at kid-level, private office space for a large staff, top-of-the-line interior finishing. Presumably the children who attend will get to know the 5-metre-tall fibreglass birds better than the real thing.
Note to strata councils : remember to put a clause in the constitution forbidding bird-feeders on balconies. They already have to have a guy with a ladder and hose in twice a week to wash off the sea-gull droppings. He drives a Mercedes panel van.

Interesting, this OV blog!

Yes it refers to the so far dormant community center but Lewis and I transgress as we concern ourselves with the beauty, or otherwise, of OV’s streetscape as public amenity.

IMO, it is beautiful.

For myself I eschewed the grotesquely expensive, hi-tech fitness gadgetry. With the money I saved I was able to regularly visit Vishnu Devanda’s various ashrams: the girls are much prettier there.

Maybe, too, that is how, being a decrepit octogenarian, I can still tie my shoelaces.

Of course I am way too far into my dotage to afford chasing a chromium plated stationary gadget now.

With the money I save I can afford a Ranger 22 that really keeps me active: phew, no kiddin’, the wind has really been beating up on us lately.

And rest assured it is past its prime: I am no Tony Hayward!

It appears, from these blog-istas sin embargo, Vancouver is well endowed with chromium plated gadgetry.

What Vancouver profoundly lacks public social amenity.

@FB.
“Here’s my story on the new $36-million community centre in the Olympic village, which is spectacular and mostly empty so far.”

The reason the OVCC is empty is because there aren’t people living in the OV yet & because the adjacent sites are not built out. In the 1st instance, why are there not people living there yet? There are 4 reasons:

1] perhaps the prices are to high for the condos as well as the City subsidized rentals; we still have a semi-recession mentality;
2] the City doesn’t have its act together about getting the social housing rented;
3] @ the asking prices for the condos, many will be purchased by the international jet set, so they won’t be around much &, for when they are perhaps the OVCC should develop an outreach personal trainer service so these people can sweat it out in the privacy of their own surroundings;
4] the bad publicity throughout the development process but, particularly the Mayor & his Vision colleagues using this project as an election tool has done huge harm; I’ve worked on many development projects over the years & when a project gets a stigmatized label it sticks & it’s not good for sales.

The project will have its shortcomings. But, it has many very positive features as well, as partially highlighted in the foregoing comments. I hope Vancouverites will be supportive of this development in 2 ways: stepping up, buying in & living there & stopping the endless quibbling over details. The big picture is its a great project in a wonderful location in the heart of a a very livable City.

I haven’t been to the site yet (will spend substantial time exploring on foot while on vacation) but judging from the comments, notably Lewis’s, conversations with designers who worked on the project, and Urbie’s great photos, it’s evident:

1. That you can’t judge the OV’s success until the community to the east and south are built out. There is a tremendous potential for mixed light industry and residential south of 2nd Ave right up to Broadway, and also for some innovative and progressive architecture. I would say the Cambie – Main rise could act as a counterpoint affordable community (for the 90%) to the unaffordable OV oriented (for the 10%).

2. That the site’s history is missing, with the singular exception of the Salt Building. Within five seconds of arriving at Granville Island its historical function hits you in the face with the obvious abundance of adaptive re-use of the buildings. Where you don’t have old insustrial buildings you have the Hotson + Bakker historic interpretation of it in a wonderfully simple pipe-and-post venacular. SEFC lost several old industrial structures (Canron Steel for one) that echoed the common old post and beam timber or steel famework. Historical referencing would have grounded the OV better.

3. That the lack of historical grounding makes the big birds seem more incongruous in the plaza. Surely there were old steam boilers, pulleys, cranes or even a section of old steel girder framework that could have animated the plaza without resorting to extraordionary contrivances. Perch a large mock seagull on an old rusty crane and you’ve got something that Westcoasters can relate to. The old crane in the east parking lot near Emily Carr is wonderful, yet all the architects did was recognize its value as a piece of visual art and applied a simple coat of yellow paint. Imagine something like that as a children’s play object in the plaza (retrofited for safety, of course).

4. That the seawall hasn’t been mentioned as a public space, let alone one of equal importance to the plaza. This is perhaps one of the great successes of SEFC, not just for the recognition of the waterfront as a public space, but for doing it so well. PWL Partnership deserves much credit for their design of not just the hard seawall landscape, but for creating a bit of marine habitat in the middle of the city. Herring roe appeared for the first time in a century on the shores of False Creek soon after the intertidal rip rap and island planting were completed.

It’s obvious that the OV needs time to mature within the context of an evolving surrounding community.

“There is a tremendous potential for mixed light industry and residential south of 2nd Ave right up to Broadway, and also for some innovative and progressive architecture. I would say the Cambie – Main rise could act as a counterpoint affordable community (for the 90%) to the unaffordable OV oriented (for the 10%).”

—MB

I like the OV, but I think that the rich look and feel of the buildings are working against it. I rather see a more even build out, with the luxury kept on the private side, behind the streetwall. Why the opulent external display?

I’d like to piggy back on one of MBs four points, quoted above.

Can we do that neighbourhood without towers? What do we gain if we regulate away from the towers and the Kerrisdale 12 storey/social housing hi-rise blocks?

My mechanic sold his house some 3 blocks NW of Fraser and Broadway for $800,000. His house was a tear-down—i.e. “land value” for a Vancouver Special. He bought in west Cloverdale for $1M. The young mechanic from his shop that drove me home last night shares an apartment with a friend in an Arthur Erickson, early 1970’s concrete tower in New West, near Columbia. He pays $500 per month, but has free heat and cable. Condo’s have mortgage helpers as well.

What are the steps in the property ladder that may get the young mechanic owning a fee-simple, high-density house on his bosses former lot, or on MB’s new neighbourhood?

In a conventional mortgage, a 4,000 s.f. fee-simple, zero-set-back house on a 16.5-foot lot selling for $1.25 million requires an annual gross income of $250,000, and weekly payment of 1,500.

If the owners rent out two floors at $1,000 each, theoretically their mortgage payments would be $1,000 per week.

However, if these are third or fourth wrung property owners, and we sharpen the numbers a bit, the picture changes. If our family sold a house in the ‘burbs they had owned for 5 or 10 years, netting a cool $550,000; their combined gross income were more like $150,000; and we hope for a purchase price of say $1.125; then the weekly payments would be $800. With the mortgage helpers they are reduced to $320.

Let’s get green, assume we got BRT/LRT on those streets.

We can factor in $8,000 savings from giving up the second car. That might equal the costs of property tax, heating, and two transit passes. Or we could use those savings to drop the weekly mortgage by $152.

Property ownership is a kind of “freedom 22”. When the mortgage reaches maturity, the rental income becomes a retirement helper.

However, there is another issue not at the level of the individual—but at the scale of community as a whole—that we must identify. What form of tenure builds a stronger community?

A neighbourhood of condo dwellers, or a neighbourhood of home owners?

I have been to Vancouver’s Olympic village couple times already and I have to say that the architecture of the buildings out there looks just great. Despite many cons I think that the living must be pleasant there.