As City of North Vancouver council painstakingly scrutinized the document that will dictate the next 30 years of planning and development for the municipality, one thing was certain: there was hardly a consensus on what should be done.

Council plodded through each neighbourhood in the draft official community plan, during the 90-minute debate Monday night, targeting mainly density.

Perhaps the most contentious piece of the planning puzzle is the East Third Street area. A group of Moodyville residents joined neighbour Trevor Gorety, who lives on the north side of the 700-block of East Third Street, to support six-storey midrises with commercial storefronts at ground level.

But Coun. Guy Heywood moved a wholesale change for East Third – suggesting density only take the form of townhouses.

“It’s unfortunate, but most of our OCP process seems to be taken up with the periphery of our concern, which is really the kind of style of housing in the Third Street area – as opposed to the core, where we are accomplishing the city’s main goals for affordability, density, potential amenity,” said Heywood.

He further explained, it would not be prudent for the city to allow a 350 per cent increase in density along that stretch of East Third Street, without first seeing how the area takes shape after the Low Level Road construction is completed and traffic patterns are normalized.

Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/news/city-of-north-vancouver-council-divided-over-ocp-1.1202176

The City of Vancouver should consider building a new transit line along Broadway in phases, while restricting high density to the busy commercial core to preserve the city’s character in the neighbourhoods along the route, according to a new report.

Issued by the Urban Land Institute’s Governor’s Advisory Panel, the report suggests the public should also be consulted, noting Vancouver “did not balance zoning changes with economic potential and community livability” when it built other mass transit projects — specifically the SkyTrain ahead of Expo 86 and the Canada Line for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

“Invariably, stakeholders perceived that neighbourhood impacts were overlooked or under-represented in order to fast-track major transportation projects. ‘Blanket up-zones’ were applied at transit hubs, leading to rampant speculation and dislocation of residents and businesses,” said the panel, which included experts from across North America.

“Although the panel recognizes that the market may ultimately dictate a lot of development decisions that accompany the growth in population and the increased opportunities that a mass transit line brings, it also recognizes that the local neighbourhoods and districts give Vancouver much of its charm.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Advisory+report+suggests+building+Broadway+transit+line/10027082/story.html

By ChangingCity

We first mentioned this Chinatown building three years ago. It is a 9-storey, 26 unit residential building with retail and parking at grade. The lot it’s built on is only 25 feet wide, but the building sits next to a lane, looking onto the back of a parkade.

The design, by Birmingham and Wood with ASIR Architects has a grey and yellow palette (a refreshing change from the ubiquitous Chinatown red) and a contemporary take on the Chinatown balcony/screen idea.

Construction has seemed at times to be painfully slow – the construction method is unusual (and we think it’s the first time it’s been used in the city). A series of hollow metal frames, a storey high, form the party wall with the building to the east. Reinforcing rods run vertically through the frames, and concrete was pumped into the frame, creating a solid flank wall. The outer wall was built with similar frames but those didn’t have the concrete liner.

The original design showed some greater variation on the flank wall, with yellow window surrounds. Instead there are random yellow and cream vertical panels.

We assume that once the building is occupied the owners won’t necessarily keep the yellow shutters closed …read more

Source: Changing City