Put Up Your Dukes, Dunbar, Says Michael Geller

Multiplexes like this on West King Edward are an example of why residents worry about having one built next door, says Michael Geller.

Poster for multiplex homes.

By Carol Volkart

If residents don’t like the multiplexes going up in Dunbar, they should get lively about fighting them, says veteran developer Michael Geller.

“There’s strength in numbers,” he told about 70 people who poured into a Dec. 8 Neighbourhood Café session on the city’s social housing plan. “So in Dunbar, you can use your voice collectively to start expressing the concerns about some of these things.”

While his presentation was on the city’s Social Housing Initiative, which would have allowed 20-storey towers in one-third of the city, including large parts of Dunbar, he said it seemed clear at the meeting that residents were even more concerned about multiplexes than towers.

And rightly so, he said. Social housing towers, which were killed by City Council the day after the Dunbar meeting, were a lot less likely to be built than multiplexes, he told the crowd. “I will predict that none of you will have one of these towers next door to you in the next five or 10 years,” he said when they were still a threat. “The biggest concern is the multiplexes because they are happening.”

Dunbar residents aren’t alone in their worries about multiplexes.

A few days after their meeting, a group of 16 Metro Vancouver mayors called on the province to repeal legislation requiring municipalities to allow at least  four units on single-family lots and heavily increase zoning around transit hubs. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim was not one of signatories.

At the Dunbar meeting, one audience member said the illness of a neighbour has raised the possibility of the 1931 house next door being torn down and replaced with a big multiplex.

“This is really my concern, what’s going to go up next door,” he said, adding that in the past, residents “had time to breathe, see the plans, have a tiny bit of input,” about what might be built around them. But now, he said, “I’m not hopeful.”

Parking is one of the worries. If a sixplex is built next door, “you have 12 people living next to you, not two.” He said it’s a fallacy that cars are disappearing, and the idea that everyone will walk and bike everywhere won’t happen in his lifetime.

“What happens on my lovely street? Where are these people going to park their cars?”

To which an audience member quickly responded: “In front of your house!”

Another resident said she’s not so concerned about the towers, “but within two blocks of me, they have torn down an old house and built a laneway the size of the original house and a duplex.” They look like “LEGO blocks,” are 50 percent taller than anything in the neighbourhood, and appear to be built with no restrictions on height or design, she said.

Neither Geller, who oversaw the development of social housing for CMHC in the 1970s, nor local architect Brian Palmquist, who was a key figure in the introduction of laneway houses in 2009, are fans of the multiplexes now rolling out in the city.

Geller said multiplexes can be done well, noting that he’s done two fourplexes in West Vancouver that worked well and fit into the neighbourhood. But he decried some of the buildings going up now, pointing to one he particularly dislikes on West King Edward. “Without some design intervention, this is what you can get.”

Palmquist, who joined Geller at the front of the room for the question-and-answer period, noted that laneway sizes and shapes were much more restricted in the beginning than they are now.

Allowable laneway heights have risen by 50 percent since they were first brought in, said Palmquist. And speaking more generally about the various kinds of housing being built now, he said everything has ballooned in the cause of flexibility. “All of a sudden we have blown air into not just the horizontal but the vertical element for no good reason . . Flexibility means maximum height of everything, maximum width, all of the stuff that is happening and that you’re seeing.”

“Take a look at the old and new monster houses; this is a perfect example of what happens when you blow air in all directions into housing.”

Geller agreed with the resident who raised parking concerns, noting that he wrote in a column last year that people will be fighting for street parking because the new multiplexes aren’t required to provide it on-site.

“[T]he builders are going to say, ‘Don’t worry, you can park on the street.’ But the point is, once you have three or four of these developments close to one another, then you can’t park on the street.” In Toronto, he noted, people started paving their front lawns for parking.

The multiplex program is also damaging the character and heritage of the city, said Geller. “Before, if you had a character or heritage home, you could get additional density to do something special,” he said, noting his fourplex projects started with a  heritage home. “But now you don’t need a character or heritage house, you can knock down anything  and put up four units or six units.”

Palmquist, who owns a character house with a secondary suite, said he’s looked into the possibility of creating four units including a laneway without changing the home’s character. But the cost would be prohibitive.  For a start, the house would have to be fully sprinklered, which means tearing off all the character elements, “throwing $150,000 at it,” then rebuilding. “So there are a lot of impediments to retaining the homes that people would like to retain. And there are a lot of cheaper ways of building four units on a lot.”

For all the changes they’re bringing to the neighbourhood, the new buildings won’t be cheap, Geller said. Even the cheapest is about $1,100 per square foot, “so you’re looking at well over $1 million for the smallest unit.”

Former park board commissioner John Coupar, who was in the audience, said the new densification plans are threatening livability because they pay no attention to amenities. He said when he was on the park board, there was strong opposition to the Broadway Plan because it didn’t provide for amenities like schools, parks and pools.

“In this plan, we’re not seeing any talk about livability at all; we’re just talking about this is going to happen in the neighbourhood.”

Coupar joined Geller in urging residents to speak out on issues, even if councils don’t seem to want to hear from them.

He said the province’s housing targets are pushing municipalities “into a situation where they don’t want to hear from the public because the public doesn’t like what’s happening. It’s up to all of us to make sure we get heard. . .

“This is going to make a major change to how we live in the city and something I think most of us have been so proud of – the parks, the pools, the community centres. . . if we are going to get this density, we need the amenities attached to it.”

Geller said if people are unhappy with multiplexes, they should be taking action.

He suggested a photo montage of some of the worst-looking buildings going up on both the east and west sides of the city, not just in Dunbar. “Assemble some photos of the most awful-looking buildings, and send them in to the mayor and council to say, ‘We think it’s time for this to stop.'”

Go to the media, start a campaign and get a conversation going, he urged. “[W]hile we were all excited at the prospect of being able to stay in our neighbourhoods with a broader choice of housing, smaller homes within the neighbourhood, what’s coming out of this multiplex program is just awful.

“Because I haven’t seen anybody speaking out about all these awful things.”

When one resident asked about recalling councillors, Geller said it’s best to start off by letting them know your concerns. He said he himself would talk to ABC Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung and ask if she’s aware of the concerns raised at the meeting. “Sometimes we have to be a bit alarmist. There’s more concern about multiplexes than there is about 20-storey buildings. That’s a headline that I think captures people’s attention.”

Like Coupar, Palmquist said there seems to be a reluctance at City Hall to listen to residents.

And he said residents will get even less attention once council passes the Official Development Plan, as expected next year. “If the ODP is approved, it will prohibit public hearings on any development that is consistent with the plan.”

He contrasted council’s current attitude to one he experienced personally in the past, when the city hired him to actually talk to neighbours concerned about monster houses. He and colleagues did so, came up with solutions accepted by council, and the problem was resolved.

“Now the planners don’t talk to the citizens, politicians don’t really talk to the citizens, and so you get these horrible things happening,” he said, suggesting the only way to change things is to change those in power.

Geller said he wouldn’t go quite that far. “I don’t think you need to get rid of the folks, but I think you need to send them a message.”