Besides building a lot of rental units around the Rogers Arena, the Aquilini empire is also being required to put in 200,000 square feet of office space as part of the city’s drive to create new “job space” downtown.

Nearby Canadian Metropolitan Properties is also going to have to build a whack of office if it wants to get its condos. My story today looks at the ups and downs of creating a new office precinct in an area relatively distant from the central business district.

I’m hearing from multiple people that the city is about to launch a revised website that removes thousands of pages that are now available. There is also some chatter of giving new or slightly different names to various neighbourhoods.

For all who care, you should go on the site now and get screenshots of the pages you tend to visit the most, so that you can contrast and compare with what’s available after.

I know that I, personally, count on being able to access a couple of things. One is the planning/development section where I can get details of all rezonings and major projects, including complete access to every document submitted by the applicant. The other is the finance department and its financial documents.

But I hear that a lot of information now available about neighbourhoods may also be disappearing. I don’t look at that as much, so I’m not even sure what’s there.

Counting on all of you to keep me posted on what the differences are, what you value about the current site, etc.

Take a close look at this idea. It could be a reality.

Many design competition entries are fanciful exercises that don’t go anywhere. But this one has a high-powered team, if you’ll notice,  and I have heard this idea being talked of favourably around city hall at various points.

He lives in the city. He walks his dog everywhere here. He’s looking forward on helping Vancouver achieve its affordable-housing goals. He starts his job Aug. 27.

My little Q and A with Brian Jackson.

I’m a fan of vacation rentals. I’ve stayed in them all over the world, from Hornby Island and Portland to Bologna and Chicago. The good ones are the next best thing to home exchanges for getting into regular neighbourhoods. (There are some not great ones, for sure. I’ve had the odd less-than-stellar experience, which is part of the gamble that you take in this kind of renting.)

But I’ve also noticed that they create consternation in many cities, among residents, hotel operators, affordable-housing advocates and more because of their potential impact on all of the above.

I decided to look at Vancouver (where, yes, I’ve even stayed in a vacation rental here when I was having my floors re-done, which let me experiment with being a hip person with modernist furniture at the Jacobsen) to see what things are like here.

The lack of local concern was striking. Hotel operators are a lot more concerned about the impact of customers constantly bidding for the lowest price on the internet. Residents, even people who live on the same floor as vacation rentals, seem remarkably tolerant — perhaps a function of our transient, diverse, live-and-let-live city.

The only complaints I could gather were from bed-and-breakfast owners, who are suffering from other problems too. Did you know that the City of Vancouver technically restricts them from renting out more than two units in one property, even though they have to comply with a welter of city bylaws that cost them a fair chunk of money.

All of which is good, more or less, for local property renters, as the numbers seem to be growing all the time. (Just in the week that I was researching this story, the airbnb local listings went from1,243 to 1,258.) And for the vacation renters themselves, who continue to flock to them.

It was confusing yesterday to see most media outlets report the big news out of council as the city’s plan for a “super-road,” something that has been in city documents for over a month.

This was the slideshare the city posted May 28, which provided the framework for the public open houses in June that the planning and engineering staff then reported on yesterday. The whole point of the slideshare and discussions was to talk about the super-road idea, and the way it would absorb the viaducts’ traffic.

The real news, which business groups were watching closely, was that Mayor Gregor Robertson issued a big, fat: “We’re not going to do anything too fast and let’s take a closer look at a whole bunch of things” statement. That was a relief to several parties.

What he said exactly, in case you are dubious about my sketchy translation above, was (from the city’s news release):

The Mayor included the following measures among his priorities:

·         Making immediate traffic improvements  to Prior Street, including re-instating parking and exploring speed bumps and other calming measures, to make the street safer for local residents

·         Pursuing the Malkin connector to divert traffic, including heavy industrial, off residential streets of Strathcona and Grandview Woodlands and onto designated routes

·         A timeline for deliverables for local residents, including expanding park space and affordable housing, as well as options for phased or partial removal of the viaducts, as opposed to one single removal

·         Incorporating any removal of the viaducts with the City’s Economic Action Strategy goals of increasing job density, particularly in the clean technology and digital media industries, in False Creek flats and along Great Northern Way

·         Ensuring that the flow of commercial goods is a priority and that the needs of the business community are considered, as outlined by the Vancouver Board of Trade

So what’s interesting is that he chose not to barrel ahead but get cautious, something that Geoff Meggs, the councillor who has been the most vocal advocate for the viaducts take-down, officially supported but which had to be seen as a bit of a setback.

I understand that the mayor’s caution came because it appeared some business groups were getting worried. The Vancouver Board of Trade has expressed some qualified support, but raised a lot of questions about consequences.

One group has hired former city traffic engineer Ian Adam, who was at council yesterday watching the proceedings. He said his preliminary assessment is that taking down the viaducts will cost city businesses $27 million in extra costs for delivering goods.

As well, he said the planned new Pacific Boulevard, which will have to take the 40,000 cars a day from the viaduct along with its usual traffic of 30,000, will inevitably end up being congested.

That’s quite different from what current transportation engineer Jerry Dobrovolny is saying, which is that the new Pacific Boulevard could easily take the worst-case scenario of traffic with no significant impact.

(It should be noted that Ian was always somewhat skeptical, in his time at city hall, of the newfangled, no-new-car-space theories of younger engineers like Peter Judd, who is now the head of the city’s engineering department.)

There’s a lot more public discussion likely to bubble up over this.

The city’s feedback at open houses indicated 69 per cent of people who came out were supportive of taking the viaducts down. But a new poll, by Barb Justason, gives that a bit more context. Yes, people downtown are quite supportive about removing the viaducts. Elsewhere in the city, there’s more of a split.

One strong advocate, though, who is coming out forcefully in favour of the viaducts-removal plan: Larry Beasley. The city’s former planning director made his first appearance at a public city council meeting yesterday since he left the city six years ago, just to give silent support as staff made their presentations.

Brian Jackson doesn’t start his new job as Vancouver’s general manager of planning and development for another month but everyone’s got an opinion already, surprising considering he’s been an under-the-radar planner for many.

My first quick interview with him suggests he’s got loads of personality to unleash on the city, where he happens to already live incidentally. (Yaletown, since 2006, when he moved here from California to work first with IBI on Richmond’s plans and later at Richmond itself.) More on that later, but here’s what others had to say in the first go-round.

Dear blog collaborators, especially those who bike/drive Burrard more regularly than I.

Someone sent me this question. Can you answer it?

I had a bike crash July 20, 2012 at Burrard and Pacific. I was knocked out and taken to SPH.  What has the city done since your May 28th piece mentioned COV was planning on making it harder for cars to turn right there?

“A Vancouver effort to make pedestrians safer is thinking outside the crosswalk box”
May 28th, 2012
…..”cars, in spite of signs telling them they couldn’t, were still trying to turn right from Burrard onto Pacific. The city is making an adjustment to that corner to make it much harder for a car to turn right, which should bring the crash rate back down.”

City news release here, which Bill Lee kindly posted in a previous thread as I was crazy busy (plus he included a bunch of tweets). My story in the Globe, with assessments from various people in and out of B.C., will be up on the website later.

The City of Vancouver has appointed Brian J. Jackson as the new General Manager, Planning and Development role following an international search. This senior leadership role encompasses the Director of Planning’s statutory responsibilities. Brian will join the City on August 27, 2012.

Brian brings 32 years of planning experience in the public and private sector across North America to his new role. For the last four years, he has been the Director of Development and more recently the Acting General Manager of Planning and Development for Richmond B.C. [Read more →]

This article ought to provoke some debate. I’ve often wondered whether less-dense parts of the city might not be just as sustainable as hyper-dense tower forms, as long as people could reduce car use.

But I’m wondering what missing elements there might be from this research.