I’ll second the call for more buildings allowed with no parking. That would be one of the easiest ways to not only make buildings more affordable, but also encourage more people to give up their car. $40,000 is a lot of money. Add onto that the savings from using basic finishes rather than the unnecessarily pricey high-end stuff, and suddenly the homes become a lot more affordable for the types of people being pushed out of Vancouver right now due to price.

Isn’t there a concern that people with cars will buy the lot and just park in the surrounding area?

Perhaps the best way to have them remain “affordable” is by making them passively “affordable” instead of trying to do it actively. Giving the units no parking right away makes them less desirable (from a speculation POV). Making them owner occuppied again makes them less desirable to flippers as there is no potential rental income to carry costs. Providing them with so called inferior finishes also while keeping costs down will remove demand on the resale market. This items designed into the project will ensure that the resale value will always be below other units. Those items alone might not guarntee they remain “affordable” over time but they would always be “more affordable”.

Covenants could be put on title defining who qualified future purchasers can be. In fact, if the City is effectively subsidizing this project as per STIRS [are they?] + 0 parking, the City & developer have an obligation to do so.

I think thought & provisions must be put in place now on such projects as well as the STIRs to define up front what the developer / investor can or cannot do if their properties [condo or rental] get into trouble down the road as I believe the STIRs will. 39o sf, $2.50 / sf units will not be seen to be bargains when the going rate is $1.50 to $2.00. Then what? Will these SROs be rented as hotel rooms? I would appreciate knowing whether these possibilities have been thought through.

It’s interesting this proposal has come up. I have been thinking about the above ‘rent to own’ scheme for some time because I feel strongly the STIR initiative is misguided.

I suppose it would make it more inconvenient, though I’m not certain it would be any more expensive if the $30-40,000 value for a parking space is right.

Still, I guess it would make the cost of parking stall optional, which is something.

Does anyone think that a parking space could be considered a “mortgage helper”? Although I haven’t done the calculation on what mortgage paymentswould be on $40,000.

In my condo tower in Yaletown, parking spaces rent for about $100 per month and there’s no shortage of takers. With the number of condos rented out to “roommates”, there is often a need for more than one parking space per unit (even if cars are only used on weekends for road trips).

It’s a mistake to think that the car parking spaces that we use are as many as we need. Not so. Experience from other cities shows that if fewer parking spaces are available both privately and publicly, people will own fewer cars. If we allowed residential buildings to be built without parking on site, then some would park in the neighbourhood, and what’s wrong with that?, and some would buy private parking, nothing wrong with that either. In total, there would be fewer cars because owning a car that is a pain to find parking for is a pain. Some would not want that pain, making instead do with other transportation choices.

I just can’t understand DTES groups that would oppose something like this. I live in the area, and surely any sort of separate culture or identity is a very unhealthy one. What is there to preserve and promote, really?

I remember attending a film screening a few years ago about some volunteers that attempted to support people in the area and help them out. Afterwords the head of addiction services at St. Pauls had a Q/A. He was against the idea of so many services behind located in the DTES — he likened it to putting a AA location on top of a bar.

I’m not sure what the best way is to help/support all of the dtes residents/victims, but surely gettoization — barring anyone who is the slightest bit more able to cope with life — isn’t one of them.

Perhaps I missed this question and answer (it’s happened before!), but: Does anyone have information on how many square feet these various units will be, and how they compare with the average downtown condo? Putting it another way, will the “affordable” units be a livable size?

I like many of the ideas behind this building. My strata, where I serve on the council, recently replaced a portion of our parking ramp, and it was a major chunk of money. Less than half of the units seem to actually use their parking anyway, on a daily basis; lots of bicyclists and bus riders it seems. It’s nice to have parking freely available when I (rarely) take a work vehicle home, or when guests come, but I could get by without it.

My big concern in the arrangement described would be around the maintenance issues. It’s one thing to do painting and change lightbulbs, another to do boilers, electricals, or major concrete work in a safe, effective and lasting way. And what will they do when (not if) some people don’t pull their weight?

Another question – anyone have an idea what unavoidable condo fees per unit or square foot (e.g. insurance, hydro…) would be on a building like this? Even if the maintenance can be done by the residents, I doubt they’ll be running the building on locally generated wind and solar!

On the face of it, I applaud developers for trying new models to achieve affordability, but the reality is, the cooling market and rising interest rates are doing far more than this building or the nearby micro condos ever will.

A couple of blocks away at 168 Powell, the Concorde condos that completed in late 2009 with high-end finishings and parking have not sold well (14 unsold), and the prices in the suites have dropped to pretty much the same $$$ as this project: 624 sq ft for $318K, $295K for 583 sq feet, etc. Ginger in Chinatown is in a similar boat. The strata maintenance fees are not outrageous, in the $150 per month range on Powell. I assume the 60 W Cordova suites generally have less SF per suite, though don’t know for sure, but if they do, the price per sq foot of buying into Gillespie’s “affordable” building will likely end up being higher than buying into a high end condo in the same neighbourhood!

So, I wonder how popular or affordable this project is going to be if you can pay the same and get more SF, better finishing, parking, no covenant on retaining the suite, and don’t have to fret every time a lightbulb burns out? The only thing that’s better presumably is the proximity to Woodwards, although it will live in that monstrous shadow for most of the year…

But the parking and maintenance relaxations are not the end of the story. This building is also applying for a building height relaxation for 100ft, pushing 33% higher than the Gastown maximum of 75ft. The street frontage is also substantial, and with the added height, will create another imposing streetwall only a block from the gargantuan W. After all the BS around the Historic Area Height Review, and all the BS about Woodwards being the exception, we see the trend continue towards the DoP and developers ignoring height restrictions, even the ones they recently raised through HAHR! Dangerous precedents, indeed.

Lastly, this building is proposing very different building materials than Gastown, with public art built into the frontage, and a row of trees at the top acting like a cornice. This is decidedly out of character with the rest of Gastown (as is the Concorde building), and required approval/relaxation from the advisory panels and DoP. Personally, this is the part of the project I applaud, as I am all in favour of creative architecture in the HA on sites that aren’t designated heritage, and I agree with Henriquez that the last thing we need is more faux heritage brick buildings.

All in all, however, there are significant relaxations being granted to this building in the name of affordability, yet despite all these “giveaways”, the building is likely going to end up being less affordable than similar buildings in the area that had few or no relaxations. This sets a very dangerous precedent, and makes me really question how altruistic the developer and architect are really being here, and why the DoP is apparently not blinking an eye. There’s no way these guys are clueless about the current market in the area, right?

Wendy Pederson’s comment makes it incontrovertibly clear how much weight we should give her opinion: Zero!

I was referred to a friend to the Globe and Mail for an on line review of The Woodwards, February 2010. This is the the exchange that caught my attention:

Skip Towne from Vancouver writes: 

How is architecture ‘ethical’ if a neighbourhood’s stakeholders, apparently solely for financial gain, cavalierly disregard and circumvent heritage protections that have been carefully preserved for generations? In the case of Woodward’s, for many years the site and its surroundings were designated part of a unified historical district.

Ceremonial plaques were placed on important buildings (including Woodward’s) and height and density restrictions were rigidly enforced. Immediately prior to approving the project, which allowed 40+ stories to rise incongruously (and hideously) in the midst of this heritage, the City of Vancouver had posted official assurances on its website that the height and density restrictions, in place for years, would be retained and respected. But as condo values soared the plan for the current development by Millenium was deployed, and all of the protections were swept away in an instant. Oddly, not a single dissenting opinion to this heritage destruction was published at the time in the predominant media voice, The Vancouver Sun.

Did the Sun foresee the massive injection of advertising revenues that the weekly full-page colour sales ads for Woodward’s would bring to its coffers? This entire project is tainted by a shameful process, and the players should be held accountable.

Gregory Henriquez: 

Two comments: First, the developer’s name is Westbank/Peterson Investments. Second, there are many European cities like Berlin, Frankfurt or Barcelona who all have much more meaningful heritage contexts and have no problem in contrasting the present with the past.

The future health of a neighbourhood can not be mothballed by nostalgia. What Hasting Street requires is real density and body heat.

I’m not sure where the comments attributed to Gregory Henriquez came from but, I take exception to both of his cavalier assertions.

1] While Berlin, Frankfurt & Barcelona all have meaningful heritage contexts, so do we in Vancouver. To say the heritage of those cities is more valuable than ours is wrong. Our heritage is just as important to us & to Vancouver’s urban fabric than that of those European cities. What is different is how much ‘heritage’ fabric we have as compared to those cities. We have much less &, much of it is concentrated in 3 small, Provincially protected areas [Gastown, Chinatown & Yaletown]. We have also designated individual buildings as having heritage value. We need to protect those areas & buildings precisely because we have relatively few by comparison. That was the purpose of the original legislation in the 1970’s, the creation of which I supported as a Park Commissioner @ the time. Our City is much richer for it. It is as important today as it was when it was created.

2] I am not sure what GH is dealing with re: ‘Hastings Street’. It is not part of the Gastown or Chinatown Heritage Areas. There are a number of heritage buildings along it &, it has a certain architectural character of its own which should be respected. Gastown, Yaletown & Chinatown have not been ‘mothballed by nostalgia’. Quite the opposite. The creation of the heritage areas was precisely what permitted their economic revitalization & preservation. Recent evolution has made adjustments to be necessary in these areas & their surroundings to supplement & provide support to them to ensure their continued viability.

I would suggest to GH that there are many ways to make adjustments to urban fabrics & many ways to increase density. High rise intrusions are but, one but, are not necessarily the best. If there is a valid due process in place, hopefully the best solution will be realized.

Bill, here’s the link to the Woodward’s comment & response:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/archives/article971237.ece

The quartier, or pedestrian shed, is the cellular unit for designing the city.

Measuring 120 acres, or 0.5 km2, it can be home to 10,000 people at a density of 83.33 people per acre. If we assume an average Vancouver household of 2.2 people/800-s.f. unit, then we can house 10,000 people in 37.87 units per acre—say 40 units per quartier, plus commercial space.

The building types we presented at FormShift achieve densities of 60 units per acre in buildings with retail on the ground floor; and 69 units per acre with fee-simple, zero-lot-line houses. Both retain human scale. We felt that by introducing a more robust density, we could achieve much needed revitalization of the arterials at the same time that we preserved the values of the Vancouver neighbourhood streets.

The shift we had in mind was a shift in scale from thinking one building site at a time, to designing at the scale of the quartier as a whole. Co-ordinated neighbourhood intensification, arterial revitalization, and transportation implementation is only possible if we think in terms of the quartier(s)—rather than one site at a time.

We believe this represents a fundamental change in planning paradigm that can only be achieved by injecting the timeless and verifiable values of urbanism into the planning process. It is by identifying verifiable facts and testing them in a consensus-driven processes that the new planning paradigm is open, transparent, and consultative.

“The future health of a neighbourhood can not be mothballed by nostalgia. What Hasting Street requires is real density and body heat.”

—Gregory Henriquez

Of course, I disagree that changing the planning paradigm is nostalgic, or amounts to mothballing the neighbourhood. Our FormShift density is real density, and what Hastings Street could really use in my opinion is some relief from the blighting dominance of the automobile
Transit implementation and a long overdue revitalization will inject public investment along Hastings of the kind that will attract private sector re-investment in the lots fronting. This would reverse a long trend of disinvestment that was triggered when the freeway was planned in the 1960’s. A set of circumstances that winning the freeway fight did not reverse.

We should not underestimate the vitality of the pre-1914 urbanism of our historic neighbourhoods, or the walkability of a regular grid platted complete with an urban spine delivering transportation and neighbourhood amenity within easy walking distance of every front door. Getting this urbanism right is not easy. It requires special attention paid to the design of the street, the square, and the park, as well as the individual architectural project.

Getting this architecture right is clearly beyond the current sensibilities of many among us. It requires rediscovering that principles at play at the scale of the community as a whole ultimately liberate the architecture of the individual building site—maximum freedom within agreed upon boundaries. Only when we combine continuity of character at the scale of the neighbourhood, with diversity of form at the scale of the individual site, can we hope to build a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

We may not find among the products of human culture a more lasting analogy for the tenuous balance necessary to guarantee individual freedom and collective responsibility.

To me it sounds like great idea to build more low-cost houses for people with lower incomes. If the price of the buildings will reflect their real low value I don’t think there will be much space and desire for speculative buying.

What about the people in the $36K-$55K income bracket who cannot afford to purchase in the current market and would be disqualified from purchasing in a building of this nature? The housing costs in this city, both rent and purchase, are driving the economy into the ground. Does the term “house-poor” ring a bell? Who can afford to support local businesses, restaurants, artists, charities when all their cash is going to shelter and shelter only?

In addition, the units are incredibly small. One would be fortunate to fit a double bed in the bedrooms. Dresser or a nightstand? Not likely. I work in the design industry and am increasingly disgusted and shocked at what developers pass off as livable space. They’re not out to solve a housing issue, they’re out to make money, plain and simple.

KC # 35, I’m sorry to hear that your deal fell through on the purchase. Can you provide a bit more detail on your comment: “The strata fees are still outrageous (the cooperative nature of the original concept is out the window) and the terms are tenuous at best.” The recent Courier article indicated that purchasers will be required to particpate in the management and maintenance of the premises…” Presumably this was a way to keep strata fees lower (eg. by not paying a janitorial service?) Is this concept now eliminated? What were you quoted for strata fees?