Vancouver city hall continues to be a workplace under stress. News broke earlier that the non-union staff had issued a memo outlining their concerns about the new style of management. While I know there are some people who are really enjoying working with new city manager Penny Ballem — they like her directness, willingness to listen to new ideas, and decisiveness — I continue to hear daily complaints from people in various departments and at various levels in the system.

I explored this a little in my Globe story here, looking at how Ms. Ballem is dealing with this and what the organizational-change experts have to say.

(Roger, perhaps you could re-post your comment here.)

Architect Nigel Baldwin, who was always a thoughtful and rigorous evaluator of development projects when he was on the urban-design panel has also weighed in on his concerns about the Marine Gateway project.

Besides his words, which I will include below, he has also provided visuals: what the Marine Gateway project would look like if something that size were placed at Broadway and Cambie, the entry to Vancouver on Burrard, or Kingsway.

just how big is it

This is one-two punch now from the French-Baldwin household. Tough blows for the Marine Gateway project to have such high-profile people coming out so strongly against the proposal.

One of the unfortunate side effects of this controversy over the height and size of the project, someone pointed out to me recently and I agree with, is that people aren’t talking much about one of the other aspects of the MG project, which is the central plaza and gathering place it provides on the main level.

At least one speaker at the recent public hearing said that a development that gives people in the neighbourhood a place to go, as opposed to big boxes lining a traffic-clogged arterial, would actually be a pleasant thing. That part of Marpole is bereft of anything that people in the community can walk to or hang around.

The central plaza in this complex has been designed not just to move people through but to be a small main street. The south end has a set of wide steps leading down to the bus-loop level that have been put in specifically to encourage sitting out in the sun with their coffees or lunches, similar to the successful steps at the central Vancouver Public Library.

It would help everyone in the neighbourhood if they could sort out what parts of the proposed development might actually be a benefit to Marpole and what they could try to encourage the developer to hang onto, no matter what else happens.

In the meantime, Nigel’s letter

[Read more →]

Sad news for us urbanists who love travelling between these two cities.

What is it with municipal councillors these days?

At least Mayor Gregor Robertson had the decency to wait until everyone was gone and he thought the mikes had been turned off before he referred to speakers/audience members at a public meeting as “f***ing NPA hacks.” (For the irony-challenged, please spare me your posts about how this is another glaring example of my mindless defence of everything Vision does.)

But this Vancouver, Washington, councillor actually started shouting during a public meeting — all captured on YouTube, of course. Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing these days?

My one-time buddy and sparring partner at the Vancouver Sun, Pete McMartin, has written a timely column on the problem of the missing renters in public debate.

Housing manager Don Littleford at Metro Vancouver has helped initiate a site for them at www.RentersSpeakUp.org to prove that they’re out there.

As he said in a recent story I wrote about the STIR controversy in the West End, there’s a problem in that everyone talks about the need for affordable housing but when a fight breaks out over how to achieve it, as has happened with STIR, the voices of renters who might be in support are missing.

They’re also missing every time housing advocates go to the government to say that there needs to be more done to create affordable rental housing.

I know they’re out there. I’ve talked to so many of them in my years. And I, like almost everyone in this city, know all kinds of personal stories.

My son lived in a building in Strathcona where he didn’t have electricity for over a month. But he didn’t want to move or even complain because it had been hard enough to find a place he could afford ($400 a month with a shared bathroom) as it was. The landlord, needless to say, didn’t offer to give him a break on the rent. I’ve had students who’ve told me about their rental situations — nails coming up through the floor, doors so warped they had to go in through the windows — that sound Third World.

And those kids are from fairly privileged middle-class families. You can only imagine what is happening to others.

For those of you who’ve missed it on the Urban Wonks Events calendar here, the Non-Partisan Association is reviving one of its old techniques for developing some public profile.

It will be holding a community forum on Vision’s controversial STIR (Short Term Incentives for Rental) program tonight, presumably to capitalize on the dissatisfaction that has been boiling there for months, but also to develop more of a presence as the year-long election campaign gets rolling.

Much appreciated would be, besides critiquing the current program, some ideas for what to do about rental construction in the city. Everyone from all sides has acknowledged for a long time that there’s an impending crisis as the apartment buildings in the city, mostly built in the 60s and 70s, come to the end of their lives.

While some people think that the rental market is now being supplied by private investors renting out condos, the reality is that those investors will sell the moment they think they can get a good price to new buyers who willl want to move in. The wave of 50,000-some condos that Vancouver has had in the last decade won’t be replicated any time soon. As those investor condos slowly get bought up and old stock continues to decline, where will the new supply come from?

I’ll be looking forward to the debate on that.

As a side note, it’s a sign of the petty and fractious times we’re living in that poster advertising this event generated complaints to the West End Community Centre.

Why? Take a look at it and see if you can guess why.

NPA.Sept20poster

Stumped? It’s because the poster includes a reference to “West End Community Centre.” Apparently a member of the public phoned to complain about it, park board chair Aaron Jasper confirmed to me when I called to ask what was going on. He said, in response to rumours I’d heard that it was actually park board commissioners who had called to complain, that that wasn’t true.

While there’s no problem with political groups having events at public community centres (he’s had many there himself), they’re not supposed to put the name of the community centre on any advertising so as to avoid any inference, presumably, that the centre is supporting one political group or another.

The thing is, I can’t imagine any general member of the public even knowing that, let alone having the time to phone up and gripe about it.

Local mayors kicked up a sh*tstorm last year with the province by campaigning aggressively to get new mechanisms to pay for transit than they have now. (What they have now: property tax, fuel tax, fares, so-far-unused vehicle tax)

When the province wouldn’t entertain using the carbon tax or allowing new road-pricing schemes, the mayors voted for a TransLink budget that contained no money to pay for the Evergreen Line.

That fighting prompted the provincial government to order a review of their finances. Subsequently both CEO Tom Prendergast dumped Vancouver to go back to New York and Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts abruptly decided to give up the chairmanship of the mayors’ council.

A year later, Langley Mayor Peter Fassbender is leading the charge for a new supplement (as they call increased packages of tax/fee revenues for TransLink) in December that would raise money for the Evergreen and all kinds of all expansions/improvements. Some say it’s a necessary compromise to get the provincial government to soften its position. Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan says Fassbender’s dreaming in technicolour. More details here.

The Marine Gateway proponents have released a survey on what the Marpole community thinks of the proposal for the large complex being planned for Marine and Cambie, which currently includes a very tall residential tower, a smaller office tower, a plaza surrounded by retail, a daycare, and a cineplex.

The proposal has been generating significant public protest (250 people at the public meeting last night, says my source Coun. Ellen Woodsworth) and concern from people like the city’s former assistant director of planning, Trish French.

Here is the survey for all to peruse. Yes, the sharp-eyed will notice that it has been done by Stratcom, Vision Vancouver’s preferred pollster. As well, I have looked through and cannot find the number of people surveyed or how it was done (phone or internet), though the margin of error is calculated at 4.7 per cent plus or minus.

In spite of that, I am not surprised or disbelieving to hear that there are residents in the community who support it. Public meetings advertised as being a gathering of those concerned about a building project will draw those who are concerned. Those who support it will likely not turn up just to get into an argument with everyone. There’s nothing in it for them.

But I’m interested in your comments or analysis.

Final Marine Gateway survey

Oh, and here is a revised survey that shows the numbers of people interviewed and methodology, which Stratcom put in after seeing the earlier post.

Marine_Gateway_survey_extended_memo_Sep_14[1]

Here’s my more official recap of the week’s events in the Globe when it comes to the story of FD Element, the company hired to build the mayor’s website, also funding a political blog that attacks Vision critics.

I should note that the anonymous former contractor who went on Global did not specifically say that the money for the blog was coming from the mayor’s office, going through FD and to blogger Jonathan Ross. He says FD paid Jonathan to blog and paid to set up his blog. He says Mayor Gregor Robertson’s chief of staff Mike Magee was directing operations on the blog. The inference is that that’s where the money is coming from but it’s only an inference.

As my story notes, in Magee’s first interview since coming back from China yesterday, the chief of staff says he’s willing to open up the books so people can see anything they want about FD Element billing and work for the city.

Just in case you’d forgotten this, the city is moving ahead with the plan to look at removing, replacing, reconfiguring or something the 1970s era viaducts that bring commuters into the downtown across the filled-in False Creek basin.

If you want your say, you could try bidding on this but I think you have to have an engineering degree. Here’s the request for proposals.