Douglas Todd: Developers are pushing to build soaring rental buildings in part because the city no longer requires them to provide as many millions of dollars worth of amenities for rental buildings, say critics.
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But opponents of the developers’ monumental vision for the supermarket site at 1780 East Broadway don’t believe the disparity illustrates an old east-west rivalry in the city of Vancouver. That theory, real or imagined, held that politicians at city hall treated the people in east Vancouver worse than the people on the west side, where property values are higher.
Instead, Woodward says the ultradense highrises proposed for the East Broadway Safeway site and parking lot are mostly because the developers want to make as much profit as possible.
“We need true housing affordability in east Vancouver and in the city. If only this proposal would bring it. But it won’t. It will just make investors richer,” said Woodward.
Given stratospheric housing costs, the flat condo market and blistering population growth, Woodward said the city of Vancouver is now obsessed with “rental, rental, rental.” The trouble, she said, is councillors are sacrificing esthetics, development cost charges and neighbourhood livability to ram projects through.
But the group didn’t imagine the developers, Westbank Corp. and Crombie Real Estate Investment Trust, the majority owner, would keep demanding more density.
Despite the properties being roughly the same size, the development proposed for East Broadway, near Commercial, is set to have 1,044 rental units. Its three towers would ascend to 37 storeys, 38 storeys and 44 storeys.
Why, asks the group No Megatowers at Safeway, is city hall seriously considering such an oversized proposal for East Broadway, near the Commercial SkyTrain station?
The B.C. NDP mandated new zoning rules in 2023, under Bill 47, that force Metro Vancouver municipalities to approve 20-storey buildings within 200 metres of SkyTrain stations, 12-storey buildings within 400 metres, and eight storeys within 800 metres. All this without having to provide parking.
But Woodward and allies say that hardly justifies towers in the 40-storey range at the Safeway site on East Broadway.
She believes Westbank and Crombie were encouraged to dramatically increase their density plans last year (by about one third over their 2019 proposal) after the city gave the go-ahead to the Broadway plan in 2022.
Even though the Safeway site near Commercial is to the east of the Broadway plan boundary by almost a kilometre, Woodward believes the Westbank-Crombie partnership “looked at the Broadway plan and thought, ‘Jackpot!’”
“The city is not demanding community benefits of any substance because the developers have insisted that rental housing is the benefit,” Woodward said. The developers say “they are taking a financial hit to put up rentals; that rentals in and of themselves are the benefit.”
In a statement, Westbank-Crombie said its proposal will “deliver an all-rental development with over 1,000 rental and affordable rental homes at one of the region’s busiest transit nodes, replacing an underutilized site. It directly addresses Vancouver’s urgent housing needs and aligns with the newly introduced Broadway plan goals.”
The Safeway site, the developers added, will also include a daycare and publicly accessible plaza.
So why are neighbours against the proposal?
One drawback is only 10 per cent of the units are to rent “below market,” said Woodward. That’s half the 20 per cent promised for the Safeway project in Point Grey, which is the city’s normal requirement to allow projects to go denser than zoning permits.
And, Woodward said, even the 10 per cent of units that are subsidized on East Broadway won’t be cheap, since they will still cost about four-fifths the average city rent.
According to the park board, Grandview-Woodland is poorly serviced with green space compared to the rest of Vancouver. The Safeway tower project would lack a real park and, Woodward said, would require “the destruction of a good chunk” of the nearby ravine, known as the Grandview Cut.
Then there’s parking. The Broadway and Commercial SkyTrain zone is already teeming with vehicles. But Westbank-Crombie is creating only 187 spots for the roughly 2,000 residents it expects.
The activists at No Megatowers at Safeway have additional concerns. But suffice to say they believe the three towers will not provide authentic affordable housing or enhance their beloved community.
Indeed, Woodward argues the bulky development will feel bleak to passersby. “Broadway will remain a wasteland.”
Today, the Point Grey Safeway site proposal is coming in at 3.92 FSR and the Kitsilano proposal is at 3.70 FSR.
The Broadway-Commercial development proposal is more than double both of them: at 8.27 FSR.
As DeMarco puts it, emphatically, Vancouver city’s policies are leading to “overbuilding everywhere!”