By Carol Volkart
Do residents’ voices matter? That was the unspoken question hovering over three different gatherings of west-side residents this month to discuss issues of deep local interest:
- At Dunbar’s Neighbourhood Café on Jan. 22, the question was why the city is ignoring the decline of our main shopping street and instead focusing on developing “villages” around tiny retail spots nearby.
- In Kitsilano the night before, the mood was deep betrayal over a proposal for a 25-storey high-rise in Arbutus Walk, an area that years ago had negotiated mid-rise density in exchange for no towers.
- In West Point Grey on Jan. 14, there was a discussion about residents’ failure to win even minor neighbourhood improvements when the city approved the Safeway-site redevelopment on West 10th.
The common theme of “being heard” arose during question-and-answer periods at the three meetings, which drew crowds of 45 to 75 people. Each featured a presentation by an experienced former senior city staffer explaining the background of the issue to put it into context. When it came time for input, the audiences were bristling with questions.
Many were about specifics, such as parking or shadowing issues. But more were about the frustration and anger of dealing with a city government that’s perceived not to be listening to residents.
“Our voices don’t count,” was one comment at the Kitsilano meeting, but it could have been said at all of them.
“What changes minds?” another audience member asked at the same meeting.
“Elections!” was the quick response from the floor.
Some audience members talked about the pointlessness of writing or speaking to council, or even filling out the city’s Shape Your City surveys, because they believe their input is ignored.
Others offered strategies for getting the city’s attention. They suggested finding one councillor you can communicate with and making your key points; not wasting time writing council just before a public hearing because “it’s a done deal,” but instead choosing another time to “blast them;” taking councillors on tours of affected neighbourhoods; being persistent about emailing councillors on issues of importance to you; and speaking in person at public hearings because it’s the most effective way of being heard.
One participant at the Dunbar meeting suggested writing brief letters – on paper – to every councillor every week, putting them in addressed envelopes, and personally delivering them to City Hall for distribution to councillors’ desks. “It works!” said the speaker, adding she has long experience working for various causes.
Dunbar architect Brian Palmquist, who writes the City Conversations substack and frequently speaks at public hearings, offered his advice to fellow audience members at both the Dunbar and Kitsilano meetings. He suggested a combination approach: Write letters to council, get all your friends out to vote, and during this fall’s election campaign, pin candidates down on the issues that matter to you. For example, if you oppose the Broadway Plan, ask them if they will repeal it, yes or no?
When a Dunbar resident asked how we can stop “this very, very fast movement of change,” Palmquist said: “The only way to stop it is to vote them [current councillors] out.” He said his reading of the Vancouver Charter is that a new council could repeal everything the current council has done, including the massive Broadway Plan, so there are possibilities for change.
Christina DeMarco, former senior city planner and head planner for Metro Vancouver, who made the presentations at both the Dunbar and West Point Grey meetings, suggested approaching councillors directly, adding that taking them on tours of affected areas would be even better.
In her presentation to the Dunbar Neighbourhood Café about the city’s Villages Planning Program, DeMarco asked the same question many residents have raised to no avail: Why is the city prioritizing the creation of 17 new villages around tiny retail areas while ignoring main shopping areas that are struggling to survive? (The city was invited to send a representative to the meeting, but said no one was free to attend at that time.)
As a founding member of Friends of Point Grey Village, established in 2022 to help revitalize the shopping area there, DeMarco is well aware of struggling high streets. Dunbar Street has an even higher storefront vacancy rate than the West 10th shopping area, although both hover at about 15 percent, twice as high as what is considered healthy.
DeMarco said she didn’t think much of villages when they were proposed as part of the Vancouver Plan. “I never expected much out of the villages; I thought neighbourhood centres [like Dunbar Street] would be the priority.”
To her, it made little sense to base the creation of new housing and retail areas on tiny bits of remnant zoning from the 1930s streetcar era. Imagine her surprise, then, when council ordered staff in late 2023 to prioritize villages over planning for neighbourhood centres. When asked, the city says it has no timeline for working on neighhbourhood centres.
“My big beef is that neighbourhood centres are more important than villages,” said DeMarco.
But she suggested residents should not give up on the villages issue. She understands that councillors are already hearing that the villages policy is causing concern, so people should think about a letter-writing campaign and meetings with councillors, as well as meetings with other residents’ groups and city staff.
Residents should also start thinking about the elements of neighbourhood centres in case the focus turns there, she said. If they’re to remain the main locations for city services, people must be prepared to accept more housing around them, she said. “We told the city that villages made no sense, but we will have to be willing to change.”
These are the four ‘West Villages’ closest to Dunbar. The plan is to allow up to six-storey apartment buildings in areas surrounding expanded retail hubs at 16th and Macdonald, 25th and Macdonald, 33rd and Mackenzie and 41st and Mackenzie.
DeMarcos’ encouragement for residents to keep pushing on the villages issue comes despite the failure of her own community’s battles for improved livability on two major sites. The city approved developments on the old West 10th Safeway site and the massive tower-filled Jericho Lands site with virtually no concessions to residents. Intense community lobbying for more livable, human-scale development on both didn’t make a dent.
In her role with the Friends of Point Grey Village, DeMarco experienced the Safeway-site disappointment first-hand. Residents envisioned a mix of housing, a new human-scale, pedestrian-friendly street with even a midblock crosswalk to encourage the village vibe. They hoped for new amenities like a daycare, a library, a public plaza and some green space.
“’Christina, stop dreaming,’” she recalls a city staffer telling her. The only community amenities the new development would produce would be the 20-percent below-market housing in the project’s ever-higher towers –now planned at 19 and 21 storeys (the original zoning allowed for up to six storeys.)
Even that may now be in jeopardy as the city reduces requirements for developers because of the housing downturn. In reality, she said, the developer could end up with increased density for providing no amenities at all.
“We felt really cheated that there was no money for amenities. All the money would go to below-market rental.”
As DeMarco said at the conclusion of her Jan. 14 presentation about the future of West Point Grey at St. Helen’s Anglican Church, it’s a hard time for hope.
But citizen action could bring change, she said. “Continued activism is important – we won’t accomplish anything by doing nothing.”
This is what Point Grey residents hoped the West 10th retail area could look like when the three-acre former Safeway site was redeveloped.
This is what was approved for the Point Grey site instead.
In Kitsilano, the underlying anger of a crowd of about 75 people was palpable as Scot Hein, a retired architect and former senior urban designer at the city, described the history of the Arbutus Walk neighbourhood and the current proposal for a 25-storey tower there. Now the site of a telephone utility building at 10th and Yew, the tower proposal is being made under the Broadway Plan.
It took years of fighting, planning and negotiating in the early 1990s for citizens to convince the city to abandon the idea of high-rises on the old Carling O’Keefe Brewery site, and approve instead a medium-density, low- to mid-rise project that has won awards and is known world-wide, Hein said.
By the time the project was approved, it had so much neighbourhood support that residents packed Kits High to express their enthusiasm, Hein recalled. “We assumed we were done.”
But the pendulum swings back and forth, and each council wants to leave its mark, he said. As well, staff changes at city hall likely mean there’s no one left who knows the history of the site and the tradeoffs that went into creating it. “Does five years of community participation still count for something?”
The question-and-answer period was passionate, with the size of the project, traffic, shadowing, and livability prime concerns. Future meetings were promised, and residents were urged to write city council before the tower proposal is referred to public hearing, which is expected soon.
“There is a real frustration that council seems to be focusing on policy compliance while ignoring livability impacts on existing residents,” said a follow-up summary from the West Side Community Housing Committee, which held the meeting. “The room was filled with a sense that our voices haven’t been heard yet.”
Among the suggestions for residents to use in their message to the city was this line: “I urge council to remember that Vancouver’s best neighbourhoods were built through collaboration with residents, not in opposition to them.”
Residents say a 25-storey tower is too big and will cause shadowing, traffic and other problems in the carefully planned Arbutus Walk area.