Some are blowing up their malls entirely. Others are putting towers in the parking lots while reconfiguring the shopping-centre part. Either way, mall owners are planning some dramatic changes to what are seen as those flag-bearers of bad suburbanism: malls.

I got inspired to write this story by the visit last fall of Ellen Dunham-Jones, who came up here from Atlanta to talk about the ways that American suburbs in general are being revamped. One of the places she visited was Richmond, the mall capital of the Lower Mainland, which is enthusiastically pursuing a campaign to encourage its mall owners to redevelop.

Someday, just imagine, No. 3 Road might be lined — not with football fields of parking — but stores right next to the sidewalks surrounded by townhouses and apartment buildings.

Below is the official statement out from Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. It will be interesting to see how the Vision team handles relations with the new premier, considering some of the ties between their two operations. Among the Vision types working on the Clark campaign:

– Don Millar of FD Elements, who has also done a fair bit of work for the Vision team

– Greg Wilson, a political organizer who has worked extensively with Vision

– Brad Zubyk, who was part of the Vision campaign group in 08. (He’s also partners, or whatever the word is these days, with Marcella Munro, a former Vision board member. Munro is working with the Farnworth team at the provincial level.)

– plus lots of indications that various Vision types were in contact with the Clark team throughout the campaign.

Here’s the news release

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B.C. Lottery Corporation, Paragon Gaming and PavCo are about to come out of the blocks to start fighting back against the opposition to a casino expansion that suddenly blew up in their faces the last two weeks.

That’s what I learned when I went over to BCLC’s offices today for an interview with the president I’d set up earlier in the week. Another twist to what is becoming a roller-coaster ride for the casino-expansion approval that Vancouver city council has to decide on sometime after the public hearing starts March 7. (With 120 speakers registered, my cautious bet is that it will go for several nights.)

So expect to hear a LOT more from the proponents to combat what the group Vancouver Not Vegas has been doing so skilfully, which is putting out information and marshalling supporters to their cause.

I went to the interview mainly intending just to ask: If the casino expansion isn’t passed, what will that mean? I got a lot more than I expected, including all of this.

Just in case you’re in a cave somewhere, Bob Rennie announced at a news conference this morning that 128 of the 230 condos offered for sale in this round at the Olympic village have offers on them. Details here.

In offbeat Olympic-village news, the NY Times had the strangest travel piece ever, suggesting that people come here to look at the village (okay, that part is reasonable), stay at the Fairmont Waterfront, and then … partake of the village’s nearby delights by going to a vegan/raw food restaurant on Second and some alternative club on Main Street usually frequented by 20-something hipsters. Hmm, which one of these doesn’t fit? A real Mensa test.

A quote: “Recession-slowed sales have left some blocks of Olympic Village still partly deserted, so the cultural and culinary pulse of the new neighborhood is best felt along its fringes. A gritty warren of dive bars and chop shops bumps up against experimental galleries and health-conscious dining spots.”

Some buyers sued the village last year to get out of completing their purchases. Now the village’s Salescos — those legal entities created to do the actual legal agreements — are going after those who refused to complete their purchases.

The details here.

Knowledgeable fighters of parking tickets knew that it was relatively easy to game the system in Vancouver to get out of paying a fine.

The city’s putting in a new system to change that. Details from Mr. Parking Expert, Vancouver Sun reporter Chad Skelton. A bold — or dastardly — new Vision initiative?

No. I think this was kicked off years ago by Geoff Plant, when he was working for mayor Sam Sullivan on Project Civil City.

This is what was handed out at the news conference launching the new sales effort today (with a couple of comparisons with previous sales that I’ve dug out).

BRIDGE BUILDING

Studio: 349,500 – $354,900

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I called the long-suffering guy in charge of bike lanes, Jerry Dobrovolny, earlier this week to get more information about how the bike-lane statistics are gathered, since there have been allegations by some people (and not just anonymous ones on this blog) that the engineering department is faking data.

“We do need to be able to stand by the accuracy of these numbers,” said Jerry, who has been on the front lines of this for the last two years. For those who haven’t seen him at meetings in person or watched on your laptops, he’s your classic engineering guy: quiet, doesn’t do anything without checking the numbers ten times, thoughtful. He’s been with the city forever (not a recent draftee from Cortes, as the critics might suspect) and was trusted enough by the previous NPA/Rogers administration to be the spokesperson for the city during the strike. “If somebody wants to do a check, we have data on an hourly basis and they can look at our numbers.”

He said if anyone has video or any other count they have done for a particular time period, he will get his staff to pull the data they have for that hour to see if it matches. He does request that people come in with hard evidence, not anecdotal reports, so he’s not going off on wild goose chases.

Since anyone can come in with any random hour from any time in the last several months, it would be impossible for the engineering staff to know which hour might be requested and to “adjust” the numbers to match.

(For all the conspiratorial types who are still in hot pursuit of a smoking gun, if my wording is unclear, his intent is to provide the information in whatever way it takes to ensure that anyone who wants to check the data will be able to do so in a way that makes them confident that they are seeing the numbers recorded at the time.)

 The department does regular checks on whether its counting equipment (wire and hoses on the road) is working properly. So staff will be assigned to monitor either a video camera trained on a particular counter (apparently there are several that are trained on particular spots along the bike lane) or to go out to the street for an hour and do a count, then compare it to the numbers the city is getting through those hoses and wires to make sure the equipment is working right.

“We collect the data continuously,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to fiddle those numbers.”

I said I’d heard that some people have claimed they’ve seen city workers stamping on the counter hoses. Others at the city have told me that might be workers testing a line to see if it’s registering properly.

Jerry said he’d have to check into whether they test by stepping on the line, but he was categorical in saying that it’s crazy to suggest that workers would be sent out to jump on the lines to push the counts up. Okay, he didn’t say “crazy.” He’s far too circumspect to ever use that word. But he was adamant that that would never happen.

I know that some of you are wondering why I’m bothering with this and thinking to yourselves, “What’s next? Is she going to start trying to provide evidence for people who think the world is flat? Who think Elvis is still alive? Just give up already, these people are hopeless.”

But I am hearing this allegation steadily and, as I said, from more than just anonymous posters. So go ahead, why doesn’t some civic-minded type go out and video-tape a particular block for a couple of hours (make sure there’s some way to guarantee the time and day) and go pay the engineering department a visit to see how the numbers match up. I’ll come along to see what happens if you’re willing.

Sigh. Here we go. City news release on cycling has updates on statistics for Hornby and Dunsmuir bike lanes. Deconstruct away

But in an effort to perhaps bring a new stream of ideas into the conversation, how about this? I’d love to hear your ideas for how, if the current lane were going to stay on Hornby, the street could be improved.

I use Hornby a lot myself. I have a YWCA membership. Shogun, the art gallery, and places across from the art gallery are favoured stopping spots for me.

Although I’m not driven to madness about the lanes, as some apparently are, they do seem weirdly complicated to me (all those lights! and curving lanes!). Plus, there have been changes made to parking along the street that don’t always seem to make sense.

For instance, on the block where I used to park in front of the Y all the time, parking has been banned in both the morning and afternoon rush periods. But, as I notice when I now hike in from the surrounding blocks, there’s never that much traffic in that section of the  Hornbystreet.

In the mornings, most traffic turns off Hornby before that block. In the afternoons, most people seem to be waiting to turn right and the parking lane is always empty.

So I personally would suggest taking away the new parking rules. And I’m hardly bitter at all about having my car towed from there a couple of months ago, since I never noticed the new signs after parking there for 13 years legally.

But maybe others would say that my idea is bad, though they’ve got other suggestions.

I’m wondering if anyone else has thoughts about tweaks that could be made.

When people like Dan Mangan and Gordon Gibson, Brian Jungen and Alex Tsakumis, and the Lutheran Urban Mission Society are all piling on to oppose casino expansion, there’s rough seas ahead suddenly for this proposal.

This news release just out from the Little Train That Could, Vancouver Not Vegas.

Vancouver, BC: A groundswell of support from people and organizations across Vancouver against the proposed expanded mega casino from Paragon Gaming and Crown Corporation BC Pavilion Corporation (PavCO), has the grassroots coalition that started the movement, elated.

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