City passes Northeast False Creek plan
Approved 20-year proposal will create neighbourhood for 10,000-12,000 residents
John Mackie
The Province
The northeast corner of False Creek has long been something of a no man’s land. Pre-Expo 86 it was largely industrial; post-Expo it’s mostly been parking lots.
But not for much longer. After a long and sometimes tortuous special council meeting Tuesday, Vancouver council passed its Northeast False Creek plan.
The 20-year plan includes $1.7 billion in benefits for the city, which hopes to recoup most or even all of the cost from development levies and contributions from the federal and provincial governments.
Six hundred million dollars will go to affordable housing, and $360 million to “critical infrastructure” such as tearing down the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts and replacing them with a new street network.
The basic idea is to redevelop the site into a new waterfront neighbourhood with 10,000 to 12,000 residents. It will have an Indigenous name, which will be determined after consultation with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh First Nations.
Most of the new residents will be housed in 20 to 25 highrise towers that will stretch from the Plaza of Nations on the west to Carrall Street on the east.
Many will be market condos, but one area will be set aside as rental, and there will be lots of social housing in the mix — 1,800 units, which are expected to house about 3,500 people.
Strathcona activist Pete Fry has been working on a part of the plan that will celebrate Hogan’s Alley, a historic lane that was the centre of early Vancouver’s black population. It was torn down when the current Georgia Viaduct was built in the early 1970s.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, that’s for sure,” he said.
“(But) certainly there’s some great stuff in there, fantastic work on Hogan’s Alley recognition and a meaningful commitment to affordable rental housing, and purpose-built rental housing.
“That said there’s still a lot of work to be done with Chinatown, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on the arterial (road) that’s going to replace (the traffic from) Prior Street.”
NPA councillor George Affleck also thinks there are some good parts to the plan. But he fears it may be too ambitious, given that the funding will mostly come from developer contributions.
“Design is nice, but if you have no way of paying for it …” said Affleck.
“If we head into a potential recession and the development doesn’t happen (as expected) and we start working on a lot of this stuff, there’s going to be problems, as far as where is the money coming from.
“If real estate suddenly goes down by 30 per cent developers will be giving less CACs (community amenity contributions). Can this market continue? Does this assume that the market will continue to rise?
“I would say so, and I would say that’s naive, and concerning. It’s called speculation, and the city shouldn’t be playing that game.”
City planner Kevin McNaney said taking down the viaducts will cost $240 million.
“We’ve been told from Day 1 that it has to finance itself through development contributions, CACs, long-term land leases, land transactions and (other) tools,” said McNaney.
“For the overall public benefits package, we’re hoping that other levels of government with housing programs chip in, and (will also) help make Hogan’s Alley a reality.”
Parks and open spaces will account for $233 million of the $1.7 billion in public benefits. The plan also sees $180 million in new community facilities, $102 million in civic facilities, $177 million for environmental and flood protection, $30 million for child care and $15 million for heritage.
McNaney said there will probably be a nine-month “procurement process” for the contract to take down the viaducts, followed by two-and-a-half years of construction.
“We’ve phased it carefully so that there’s minimal traffic disruption,” he said.
“The first thing you do is build the new two-way Pacific, then you take down (the) Georgia (Viaduct) so you can build a ramp that connects from Beatty Street down to Pacific. Eventually the Dunsmuir Viaduct will come down as well, but you keep that up as long as you can to maintain some traffic flow during construction.”
McNaney expects the two developers in the area — Concord Pacific and Canadian Metropolitan Properties — will be proceeding with rezonings “in the coming months.”
“It gets time to get through rezoning and development permits,” he said, “so (it will be) a couple of years I would say before you see construction in the ground.”
He said the social housing in the plan will be built as the plan proceeds, but that in the interim the city hopes to start building on six social housing sites in the Concord lands.
“There are some existing sites in False Creek North from previous rezonings that we can work with the province and Concord to develop, so hopefully they’ll get built sooner,” he said.
“Then as the development proceeds, developers contribute the land and the funding for the social housing, or we use partnerships. So it’ll get built as the market housing is being built.”
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