[DefendGrandview-Announce] A "Neighbourhood Centre" Is About to Eat the Heart Out of East Vancouver

[Joseph Jones]

*Please Redistribute Widely*

*A "Neighbourhood Centre" Is About to
Eat the Heart Out of East Vancouver  . . .

What will you do when the City of Vancouver
comes to take out your neighbourhood?

Will then** be too late?
*

More Information: Joseph Jones  /  jjones2340 at gmail.com  /  604-433-2764


*Introduction*

City planning seems boring – until it happens to you and the neighbourhood
you live in.

When Vancouver's first neighbourhood centre got going at Kingsway and
Knight<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/neighcentres/kingswayknight/index.htm>,
back in 2002-2005, I said to myself, that is a ways down the road, and
whatever happens there shouldn’t impact me much. Besides, Vancouver is an
excellent city, and planners know what they are doing. How naive I was. How
much I have learned since.

Even the people who lived right in that first neighbourhood must have
thought the same way. They barely responded to the City survey, and their
1600 single-family properties got flipped over into two brand-new
experimental zoning categories. (Word has it that 6800 survey forms were
distributed to the Kensington Cedar Cottage neighbourhood and 205 were
returned, with 105 favoring the mass rezoning and 100 opposing it.) Then
they got hit with serious property tax increases (temporarily mitigated
after the fact<http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20070724/documents/a20.pdf>
).

Take a walk around King Edward Village and decide for yourself about how
improved that neighbourhood is now, and how much extra you'd want to pay to
live in the area. Especially notice

   - Service-lane traffic running through and parking in the "courtyard"
   - TD Bank turning its back to Kingsway
   - Large retail spaces still unoccupied
   - The amenity payback to the community already half-expired
   (ten years of free lease on the space for the relocated library)


*Backstory*

The idea of neighbourhood centres in Vancouver goes back to
CityPlan<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cityplan/cityplan.htm>.
After CityPlan was adopted in 1995, local committees in nine large
residential areas of Vancouver produced community
visions<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cityplan/Visions/index.htm>.
Naive local-area residents told city planners what they thought could
improve their neighbourhoods and trusted that the future would bring
something better.

City planners amalgamated those results into a project of nineteen
neighbourhood centres<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/neighcentres/pdf/localarea.pdf>to
blanket Vancouver.

Each community vision included directions to "create or strengthen" one or
more neighbourhood centres. In total, nineteen neighbourhood centres with
loose boundaries were proposed. If the boundaries that have outlined Norquay
for most of the planning get overlaid onto the seventeen future
neighbourhood centres, this is what Vancouver would look
like<http://www.vcn.bc.ca/norquay/nrqx19.pdf>
.

Planners have been using the Neighbourhood Centres Program to "implement"
all housing directions from community visions. Distorted by brand-new or
unrevealed planner and developer agendas and interpretations, the proposed
Norquay Village Neighbourhood Centre intends:

   - To eliminate huge areas of zoning for single-family residence
   - To replace the affordable rentals enjoyed by 32% low-income families
   with market-affordable new construction for people who can afford
   half-a-million or so
   - To feed developer appetite for condo and strata construction
   - To increase population without coordinated upgrades to livability
   infrastructure
   - To expand tax base with minimal investment in the neighbourhood
   - To facilitate and accelerate gentrification through new housing types
   - To impose maximum possible height and density on arterials
   - To dump heritage density transfers across neighbourhood boundaries


*Anguish Is Spreading across Vancouver about Visions and Plans*

Neighbourhoods outside of the original nine community vision areas (notably
the Downtown Eastside <http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/ccap-reports/> and
the West End <http://www.westendneighbours.ca/>) have shown recent interest
in having a vision or plan to spell out what city planners can do to their
neighbourhoods. However, experience with the last of the nine visions (still
underway in West Point
Grey<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cityplan/Visions/wpg/index.htm>)
shows that planners seem determined to manipulate community visions to
promote the changes that they have already decided on. The list of
discontents with Vancouver "planning" multiplies by the month:  Little
Mountain <http://www.my-calm.info/>, Hastings Park <http://hastingspark.ca/>,
Northeast False Creek <http://www.falsecreekresidents.org/>, Cambie
Corridor<http://www.rpscvisions.ca/webpages/content.cfm?contentID=1>,
Arbutus Ridge <http://arcca.info/>, East
Fraserlands<http://www.straight.com/article-274221/vancouver/fraserlands-heats>,
Grandview Park <http://defendgrandview.wordpress.com/>, Broadway Corridor,
Marine Gateway.


*Norquay on the Edge*

Norquay <http://www.vcn.bc.ca/norquay/> just entered year five of its
struggle with city planners. Since July 2009 planners have reduced
communication with their official Norquay Working Group to occasional
reportbacks. Three upcoming Open
Houses<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/neighcentres/norquay/pdf/NV%20Newsletter%20No.%206_English.pdf>are
supposed to finalize a draft plan slated to go to council in fall
2010.

The notorious unaccountable Open House procedure lets city planners take in
all sorts of comments (especially from savvy developers) and then claim to
have consulted the community and to have heard "voices" that call for newer
and denser and taller. The city planning website says, "Your feedback is
needed to help refine the draft plan." Despite extensive investment of time
and effort by the official Norquay Working Group, that draft plan was drawn
up in a back room without community resident involvement.

In 2006-2007 city planners force-fed steroids to the original CityPlan Norquay
neighbourhood centre <http://www.vcn.bc.ca/norquay/nrqexp.pdf>.

Back in June 2007 Vancouver city planners were still conducting real
surveys, and Norquay residents said a strong *No* to a Draft Plan that
eliminated all single-family housing. Planners did not like that survey
result <http://www.vcn.bc.ca/norquay/nrqsrvrslt.html>. So they got an
independent consultant to say that they should disqualify the survey and
stop doing surveys!


*Who Is Next?*

Planners have recently clarified that the next neighbourhood centre process
will focus on *Hastings Sunrise North* (a 1.4 km stretch of East Hastings
between Semlin and Renfrew). Before Norquay stood in the path of the
redevelopment juggernaut, city planners anticipated 2008 starts for the
process <http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/documents/pe4_003.pdf> in both
Hastings Sunrise North and Main Street Riley Park. With Little Mountain and
Cambie Corridor now looming for Main Street Riley Park, neighbourhood centre
planning for that location seems to have been set aside. Future planning
efforts directed toward East Hastings will be the other jaw of a
gentrification vise to intensify the squeeze on the Downtown Eastside.

All of the four scheduled neighbourhood centers target the immigrant
working-class east side of Vancouver. Compare this with the chronological
sequence <http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/cityplan/Visions/index.htm>of
the community visions, and notice that the first pair was Kensington
Cedar Cottage (KCC) and Dunbar. KCC already has the first neighbourhood
centre at Kingsway and Knight, and Dunbar is nowhere on the horizon. This is
a tribute to the singularly strong residents
association<http://dunbar-vancouver.org/>in Dunbar. What planners are
out to do to Norquay clearly has no correlation
with present density<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/census/2006/popdensity.pdf>or
recent
growth <http://www.vcn.bc.ca/norquay/22localareas.pdf>, and everything to do
with vulnerability. Their aim is to take out the weaker neighbourhoods
first. Norquay appreciates the support it has received from Dunbar and other
neighbourhoods all across Vancouver in its struggle for equity and a livable
future.

The mass rezoning of Norquay is a major tactic in the Director of Planning's
strategy to eliminate single-family zoning trhoughout Vancouver.


*What Can You Do?*

Norquay now occupies the uneasy position of having been told that our
neighbourhood centre process must and will be forced to a conclusion.
Planners tell us that without a plan approved, our neighbourhood has no
protections against developer desires for density and height. We say the
City of Vancouver should not be running a protection racket.

The official Norquay Working Group has effectively been cut out of planning
since July 2009. Planners will use the three Open Houses of June 12, 14, and
16 to claim consultation and to select support from among the responses.

*All residents of Vancouver should consider responding to the Norquay plan,
because it will affect everyone's future.*

If attending an Open House is not convenient for you, the materials should
become available on the
web<http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/neighcentres/norquay/updates.htm#nv>.
At a minimum, send an email response to neighbourhood centres head planner
Neal LaMontagne <neal.lamontagne at vancouver.ca> and Director of Planning
Brent Toderian <brent.toderian at vancouver.ca>, with copies to City Manager
Penny Ballem <penny.ballem at vancouver.ca> and Mayor and Council <
mayorandcouncil at vancouver.ca>.


*Lots of Ideas  –  Choose what you can stand behind*

*Below are ideas of elements that you could include in an email or on the
Open House form. If you go through the information provided by links above,
many other ideas will come to you as well:*

This email responds to the June 2010 Open House information about planning
for Norquay.

Vancouver city planning needs to use legitimate social-scientific survey
methodology to measure the will of the community. Open House comments are
too open to manipulation, to misinterpretation, and to illegitimate input by
warped developer interests.

Only cart-before-the-horse planning would propose to mass rezone many
hundreds of homes as a starting point, long before a necessary core of
retail and community services exists at the centre of the neighbourhood.

Vancouver's midterm needs to accommodate growth do not require this planning
approach to a residential family neighbourhood that is located 8 kilometers
from city centre.

To force this kind of planning on a neighbourhood that clearly rejected mass
rezoning in the City's June 2007 survey is arrogant, and will only increase
distrust and backlash.

Over the past few decades the Norquay area has grown in population and
dwelling units at the same time that local retail has experienced serious
decline. Growth by itself may create more problems than it solves.

To upzone the affordable commercial space that exists along Kingsway seems
likely to drive out the desirable retail that still can afford to operate in
Norquay.

City planners have held up Commercial Drive as an example of what Norquay's
1.35 km of Kingsway (a dedicated truck route) might become. Why should
Norquay residents have any confidence in this kind of fantasy?

The Norquay Working Group wants to see a central shopping area focused along
East 33rd Avenue just east of Kingsway. City planners think this cannot work
and insist on their model of a Kingsway retail strip. Why, then, did
planning ever come into Norquay with a neighbourhood centre model?

Expedient spot rezoning of a few large parcels of land should not determine
the future of the Norquay neighbourhood, nor should it be used as a threat
to make residents submit to unwanted planning.

Norquay residents value the diversity that comes with organic development
over a long period of time. Top-down broadscale planning destroyed the
character of Robson Street and threatens Commercial Drive.

Planning that has deliberately excluded the City's own Norquay Working Group
is highly suspect.

No good reasons have been given for the excessive expansion of the CityPlan
boundary around the proposed Norquay neighbourhood centre.

The City of Vancouver approach to Norquay is not what I want to see coming
to my own neighbourhood. Do not do this to Norquay either.


My name is    _______________________________________________

My address is   ______________________________________________

My telephone number is   ______________________________________
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