20 Storey Rental building nixed by City of Vancouver
Shining a light on Vancouver’s shadow debate
Dan Fumano
The Vancouver Sun
Opinion: Of course, nobody wants to live in permanent darkness. Meanwhile, most people agree Vancouver needs more rental homes. Balancing those pieces isn’t easy.
How much is a ray of sunshine worth?
It sounds like a metaphysical question, but city hall weighs such matters. City staffers and political leaders say they want to boost rental housing construction, but an unknown number of prospective rental homes never see the light of day because of concerns about shadows.
The city’s planning department recently kiboshed Reliance Properties’ proposal for a 26-storey apartment building at 837 Beatty St. The proposed development was never made public, because it died during the pre-application phase, the early part of the rezoning process where the proponent holds discussions with city staff before filing a formal application.
A major reason city staff wouldn’t support the 26-storey proposal, said Reliance president Jon Stovell, was shade: During certain times of the day during parts of year, the building would cast shadows across the street onto Terry Fox Plaza outside B.C. Place.
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So instead of about 150 secured market rental homes built by an established local developer in a walking- and transit-friendly downtown location — a not insignificant number considering the city fell 822 homes short last year on its annual target of 2,000 rental approvals — Reliance now aims to build a five-storey retail and office building on the site instead.
Shadowing problems have also led Reliance to indefinitely postpone a planned 25-storey, 158-unit rental tower at Davie and Hornby, Stovell said.
In their first 18 months on the job, Vancouver’s current council approved 32 rezoning applications for market rental projects, totalling 2,412 units — and they’ve rejected only one. But the public doesn’t know how many potential projects like this are abandoned or fundamentally changed at the pre-application stage because these early discussions are all private.
In fact, the mayor and council typically wouldn’t even know, Stovell said, suggesting it might be worth council reviewing “what the costs and broader community benefit implications (are) of some of these rigidly enforced urban design criteria.”
“You need to measure the benefit being forgone versus any harm being caused.”
Stovell says two major hurdles for bigger buildings are shadow considerations and “view cones,” which are areas where the city limits development to protect views of the mountains and water.
But there’s a difference between those two, Stovell said: While you sometimes hear developers debate the merits of protected view corridors, “you don’t hear them arguing about the actual rules — there’s no doubt about the rules.”
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When it comes to rules on shadowing, Stovell said, there appears to be a lack of clarity and consistency. Vancouver also seems to be getting stricter about shadows, he said. While public parks and plazas historically received top consideration for light considerations, some recent projects have been derailed because of potential shadows on retail spaces and sidewalks.
Vancouver seems to be more rigid about shadow considerations than other B.C. municipalities or even other major North American cities like Toronto, Chicago or Seattle, said Duncan Wlodarczak, vice-chair of the B.C. chapter of the Urban Land Institute, an international real estate research organization.
And it’s not just shadowing, Wlodarczak said, who is also Onni Group’s chief of staff. There are other urban design principles being considered, heritage values, tree retention and sustainability. “You bump into all these competing priorities.”
Wlodarczak, Stovell, and other developers don’t want to throw shade at city staff, who, they say, are just doing their jobs and following policy. But there seems to be a disconnect between what many politicians publicly say is far and away their top priority — producing more of the “right supply” of housing, particularly rentals — and all the competing priorities and hurdles developers encounter in the process.
“With a seeming lack of clarity, it slows down the process, and we see less housing built … and we see projects that could have been more affordable become less, and rental housing that became market condos, because the form overcame the function,” Wlodarczak said. “And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t think it aligns with what the political discourse is in the city right now.”
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Michael Naylor, Vancouver’s acting assistant director of rezoning, said comments about a lack of clarity on shadowing policies are “totally fair.”
“It’s a bit of a hodgepodge,” Naylor said. “We recognize there are some issues and it appears we’re really inconsistent with it.”
The city is reviewing its shadowing policies with the aim of making it more clear and consistent, Naylor said.
However, Naylor said, shadows, light and broader livability considerations remain important. And while shadowing was a major reason city staff weren’t inclined to support Reliance’s 26-storey Beatty tower, it wasn’t the only consideration, he said.
The proposed tower also ran up against the city’s long-standing livability standards, which typically require 80 feet between residential towers, Naylor said, and there were heritage considerations, because Reliance’s tower proposal would only retain the facade of the two-storey, 1911-built warehouse building.
Another local developer, Amacon, was recently approved for a 29-storey hotel and condo development across the alley, but because the tower is further west, it won’t cast as much of a shadow on the plaza, Naylor said.
“You could take the attitude: ‘Livability be damned, let’s just cram the housing in.’ But we don’t really want to do that,” Naylor said. “We want to be sure that, as we bring on new residential buildings, that there’s still open space and light.”
Of course, nobody wants to live in permanent darkness. And of course, developers want to build as big as they can. Meanwhile, most people agree Vancouver needs more rental homes.
Balancing all those pieces isn’t easy, Naylor said. “It’s a challenge. All the time.”
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