While the STIR projects in the West End have been getting a lot of publicity, STIR (Short Term Incentives for Rental) have been quietly making their way through city hall for other neighbourhoods.

When I was at the Marine Gateway urban design panel hearing, this project at 1418 East 41st got a quick approval earlier in the meeting. I also haven’t heard a word about it from that neighbourhood. It is a heavily immigrant neighbourhood, so I acknowledge that could be a reason. But it could also be that it’s a much lower building. It’s still quite different from the small single-family houses on the rest of the block — but not a tower.

The problem, I suspect, with trying to build something this size in the West End is that when you’re paying $3 or $4 million for the land, I doubt that the 47 rental apartments here, even with some bonus density, will pay the costs.

In the last election, Non-Partisan Association organizers were dismayed at their reception in the West End during the campaign. “We gave up phoning because there was no point,” said one.

The renters there hated the NPA for not doing more to protect the neighbourhood’s rental buildings, which felt like they were under attack from owners wanting to “renovate” and charge much higher rents.

If the mini-revolt in the West End keeps going, Vision Vancouver could find itself meeting pockets of similar dislike. The ubiquitous West End Neighbors is organizing another protest/rally outside tonight’s VV fundraiser downtown, along with other activities. (Their news release attached below.)

A small note from me: Although this West End group’s efforts to have more input into development decisions is admirable, I have to sigh in despair at the way they stray into misinformation and hyperbole in an over-enthusiastic or perhaps incompletely researched effort to make their case.

Like actors in some Robert Redford drama about nasty developers, they have in the past made accusations that council is allowing certain developments in return for donations from particular developers. As I’ve pointed out before, this might make sense if councillors were getting direct cash in their pockets. But all contributions just going to pay off their giant election-expense bills. It doesn’t make any sense to imagine that even a $10,000 contribution would make a difference in a $2-million election budget and that the entire council would decide to allow a project just to get that.

They also make a reference, in this news release, to the “$16-million tulip tree” — reference to the six storeys that was proposed as compensation for a developer who would have to build around the 107-year-old tree in order to preserve it. As city planners noted, that estimate — the result of poor math on the part of one local writer — was wildly off. The net profit on six storeys was calculated at $4 million and that money would be used for the extra expense of building around the tree.

Finally, a point that opponents to tower projects in the West End keep making is that developers are getting “subsidies” from council to build rental projects. The implication is that they are making a killing on these rentals. As anyone who has studied rental housing for even 30 minutes in this country knows, developers more or less stopped building rental projects in this country in the 1980s when the federal government changed various pieces of tax law. Ever since, city planners and housing advocates have been struggling to figure out ways to encourage developers to get back into the business.

Vision’s Short Term Incentives for Rental — which the WEN group is so opposed to — is the local attempt to provide a solution. Developers do not get cash subsidies. They get given enough density to provide them with the equivalent level of profit they would make by building a condo project. Ironically, traditional housing advocates, who are not usually developers’ big friends, have supported this effort.

Okay, end of my exasperated rant.

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It was the official opening of the new bike lane in downtown Vancouver yesterday, which gave all us media types a chance to gather on the street at Granville and Dunsmuir and observe an array of unusual driving techniques while we waited for the news conference to begin.

My story here. As I and others are reporting, businesses along the street are waiting and seeing what the impact is going to be. They are worried about stories they’ve heard that have filtered over from the Burrard Bridge trial, particularly the case of the Appleton Gallery that says it is going to have to close because of the negative impact that bike lane had on its business.

(The mayor, by the way, asked about that yesterday said engineers looked at the case of Hornby Street closely but determined the only way to ensure cyclist safety was to prohibit right turns onto Hornby from Pacific. And he has his doubts about how much impact the bike lane had, saying it’s hard to sort that out from any possible recession impacts. “I disagree that it was all the bike lane, because the street’s open. You can get to it from a couple of directions.”)

I didn’t get too involved in the back and forth in the ongoing drama of the UFC negotiations the last few months, but they were certainly rocky, with any number of media reports that the event was going to be cancelled at various points.

Vancouver did seem to have a harder time than other cities in figuring this out, although it’s not the only regulatory body that ever had a scrap with the UFC organization or mixed-martial-arts proponents. It looks from past history as though Minnesota also went a few rounds with the MMA people. Nevada seems to have had the least problems, likely because they have put on so many unarmed combat events as part of the Las Vegas scene. Even they, though, did ask for some changes to the rules before sanctioning events.

Here, though, it was definitely a roller-coaster ride — for any number of reasons, as I discovered when calling around.

Okay, I know many of you urban-planning types don’t really care about whether you can do criminal-record checks until the federal or provincial government introduces new laws regulating crimes against good taste.

But I just had to spread the word about this, because it’s such a useful tool for checking on the records of people in the news, current charges, the status of the cases, what convicted people got in the way of sentences and so on.

For those of you who’ve never used it, go to the B.C. Court Services Online website, which is fairly self-explanatory if you go to the “esearch” section. Please don’t everyone go at once or you’ll crash the system and then they’ll shut it down again.

Now if we only had access to owners of licence plates, all divorce records, the credit card charges of every government employee and other wonderful stuff that other jurisdictions make available.

In spite of a valiant effort by a whole group of people hoping to save the 120-foot tulip tree in the West End, it was a no. Architects Bing Thom and Michael Heeney, the former head of real-estate services for the city, Bruce Maitland, an arborist and a landscape architect were not enough to convince councillors to bend the rule — or create a new one.

Councillors, with the exception of the NPA’s Suzanne Anton, said that it wouldn’t approve a policy that would allow planners to give a developer bonus density in exchange for preserving a tree if the owner of adjacent land, where part of the tree’s roots live, wouldn’t agree to a similar deal.

Arborist Norman Hall made a passionate case for the tree, saying it had managed to survive Hurricane Frieda in 1962, the winter storms of 2006/2007 and could easily live another 100 years. “We think this tree could outlive the structure that’s going to be built beside it. It’s still going strong. It’s got a long life ahead of it.”

Apparently not. Heeney said after the meeting that the landowner will likely take it down to build the mere 12-storey condo that he’s now permitted. (City planners had been proposing to give an extra six storeys in order to compensate the developer for the difficulties of building, especially building parking, around it. Yardley McNeill said that had been calculated in 2007 as worth $4 million to the landowner, just enough to cover the costs. The neighbour had been offered a similar deal but, as planners noted, was someone not familiar with the city system, just a regular person, and intimidated by the idea of a legal encumbrance on the land.)

Councillor Geoff Meggs said that while council wants to protect heritage, it has to be able to actually protect it. If there isn’t agreement from all landowners, there is no protection. Councillor Andrea Reimer said that the city should look at strengthening the tree bylaw to protect trees. “It’s very difficult to take a policy meant for bricks and mortar and apply it to living things.”

Anton had argued that voting to allow staff to explore the idea would not have held council to anything. They could decide at a later date if they weren’t in favour of the building’s height, the deal, the fit with the neighbourhood. Her dire warning: “If this tree comes down, that will be an extremely unfortunate consequence.”

The end.

But

Dear Ms Bula

Your article “A heritage proposal that tiptoes around the tulip tree”  explains very clearly the perplexing situation facing the city councillors and threatening the immediate neighbours of Bing Thom Architects’ proposed development at 1245 Harwood.  However, I am surprised by your statement  “So far the proposal has generated little commentary pro or con, in the area”  which is quite far from reality.

I suppose that you talked to people living in the building north of  that tulip tree, a building that is mostly rental; or perhaps to people living in the Chelsea building at 1219 Harwood.  Their suites will not be affected by an 18 storey tower because the big tulip tree would hide it from their windows.  But this tower would completely block the sun from the town-houses complex at 1245 Harwood and on the south side of 1330 Jervis St. as well, while taking away outdoor privacy in courtyards and patios for both buildings;  on Burnaby street, the top storeys of #1290 will lose their view.  All that resulting in decreased value of those concerned properties.

And for what ?  Certainly not for increasing the number of rentals in the West End.  The suites in this 18 storey tower would be way too expensive for renters who are not looking at rents reaching $3000.00 a month for a 2 bedrooms.  The tower will just be another downtown expensive condominium when there is a lack of rentals in the West End.

So you can be sure that many people in the area are extremely concerned by this project and would rather have the tulip tree chopped down and the old house replaced by any decent 8-9 story building encroaching on where the tree used to stand.  Of course it will be a sad day when this beautiful tree dies or is cut down, but because of the 40% of its root ball on the neighbour’s lot, it is doomed anyway. Fortunately there are many tulip trees in Vancouver and in the West End, they will grow too.

Sincerely

Marie-Louise Miginiac

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Following my story on the tulip tree (see previous post), I’m getting emails from some people who live in the neighbourhood. Here’s one:

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Now let’s see that guide here. I know that I have been successful a couple of times in getting tickets cancelled, but by proving I had misentered the parking-meter number on my cellphone or some such dreary evidence that I had actually paid. I never thought of claiming I was at a religious service.

I wrote a couple of months ago about the unusual dilemma the city is facing, trying to save a heritage tree in the city — a 107-year-old tulip tree . They’re willing to give the landowner six extra floors of condo space for a proposed tower next to the tree and equally old house in order for him to preserve it, but the tree’s root ball sits 40 per cent on (under?) someone else’s land and that person won’t commit to a legal agreement.

The vote is coming up this Thursday. My Globe story (with more information than my original blog post) here.