Dan Fumano: Two years ago, Vancouver’s Broadway plan limited building heights in so-called “village areas” to “minimize redevelopment pressures” on beloved small businesses. Now, change could be coming to the villages.
Nigel Pike has been running Cascade Room, a cosy and popular Mount Pleasant bar and restaurant for 17 years, and he has never felt so pessimistic about the future.
Vancouver is considering cranking up the high density already slated for the Broadway corridor, and small business owners like Pike are scared about what it could mean for them.
“It feels like we have a target on our backs,” Pike said. “If council says yes, then pretty much everybody in the area will know our time is limited. … We’re slowly but surely destroying Vancouver as a culture and as a city.”
The amendments going to council Wednesday would go further, increasing the number of homes by another 38 per cent over the Broadway plan.
Many of the changes are a response to 2023 provincial legislation that mandates minimum densities near transit stations. City planners are also recommending other changes in response to direction from the current council that seeks to boost hotel development and relax view protections.
When city staff drafted the original Broadway plan, they carved out certain areas called “villages” — described as “cherished neighbourhood shopping areas,” such as West 4th Avenue, South Granville, and around Main and Broadway.
Unlike other parts of the Broadway corridor, including many residential side streets where towers of 20 storeys or more were envisioned, city planners believed it was important to generally limit building heights to between four and six storeys in the blocks designated as “villages.” These villages made up a relatively small fraction of the overall plan area, but are home to a high number of beloved small shops and restaurants operating out of old, small buildings.
Some owners of commercial properties in the villages didn’t like those limitations on development potential. But the rationale at the time was that by encouraging development elsewhere, the city could “minimize redevelopment pressures on existing businesses, and maximize sunlight on the sidewalks.”
Pike believes this was a good idea, and it gave business operators “a sense of security.”
But now, change could be coming to the villages.
Staff are recommending allowing maximum building heights around Main and Broadway, for example, to more than triple from the current limit of six storeys to 20.
Matt Shillito, Vancouver’s director of special projects, said that while these changes will increase development potential in village areas, city planning staff expect only an “incremental increase in development pressure.”
“It’s fair to say that the provincial legislation and the changes we’ve made to the plan in response to it do increase the likelihood that development will take place in those areas, and will put more pressure on those existing businesses,” said Shillito. “But I wouldn’t overstate it. … I don’t believe, by any means, that the days are numbered for those cherished galleries on South Granville and the small shops and restaurants on Main.”
City staff have sought to moderate development pressure in the villages by limiting the building types: the proposed policy would consider rezoning of up to 20 storeys only for rental housing, with 20 per cent of units guaranteed at below-market rates.
That limitation is expected to help “safeguard those villages from significant amounts of development,” in keeping with the original plan, Shillito said.
The city could, if it chose to, reduce development pressure further by limiting the housing type, Shillito said. For example, city hall could change the policy to allow 20 storeys in the villages near subway stations, but only for projects that are 100 per cent social housing. This would comply with provincial legislation, while still tamping down development pressure.
But city staff didn’t recommend such a restriction, Shillito said, because it would dramatically impair the viability of development there, and “we thought it was important to bring ourselves in alignment with the spirit of the provincial legislation, and not create a kind of artificial opportunity.”
When old businesses are demolished to make way for a tower, the new building will often come with street-level commercial space — but the tenants are more likely to be national or international chain businesses instead of local independent operators.
“We’re all pro-density, we all want housing,” Robinson said. “But we don’t want faceless communities with just Dollarama and Shopper’s Drug Mart and No Frills.”
City hall has received significant development interest since the Broadway plan came into effect in 2022, with 139 projects in various stages of the approval process, including 20,324 homes (roughly 75 per cent market rentals, 18 per cent below-market rentals and seven per cent condos), as well as cultural spaces, commercial developments and hotels, the new staff report says.
While that flurry of development has been welcomed by city planners as well as residents clamouring for more homes and services in this central part of the city, it’s also drawn backlash from others.
Last month, hundreds rallied outside city hall calling for a “pause” and “rethink” of the Broadway plan. Rally co-organizer Theodore Abbott, a community organizer with the civic party TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, said people are worried about the displacement of renters in the area. But the loss of legacy businesses is also a real threat that could be exacerbated by “turbocharging” the plan.
“Mayor Ken Sim ran on protecting those small businesses,” Abbott said. “These are the gems of the city.”