It appears as though there has been heavy public opposition to the idea of towers near Broadway and Commercial as proposed in the recently presented Grandview Woodlands Community Plan.

The preliminary plan, presented at open houses last month suggested a dozen tower sites of 22-36 storeys within a 5-minute walk of the Commercial/Main Skytrain Station.

Here is an excerpt from a recent planner update:

“We are still in the process of gathering input on all aspects of our Emerging Directions work – and many of you have already taken the time to share your feedback on the DRAFT policies.That being said, we have heard clearly from the community that there is serious concern about the extent and height of tower building forms in the vicinity of the station area. In light of this, I wanted to let you know that we will not be proceeding with the proposal as presented in the sub-area policy for Broadway and Commercial.

While we’ve heard support through the planning process for additional density in the Broadway & Commercial area, we know that community members would like to see options of building forms explored that are different than the concentration of tall towers proposed in June.”

Source: City of Vancouver

Kenstone Properties proposed new project at 1155 Hornby Street in Downtown Vancouver will likely move one step forward next week at public hearing.

Kenstone is seeking approval for a 20-storey tower which has been approved pending heritage designation of the Murray Hotel building, located at 1119 Hornby as a protected heritage property to complete the incentive and compensation package for the development next door. The hotel is listed as class ‘B’ on the Vancouver Heritage Register.

The total proposed density is 6.09 FSR. The site had been sold in 2007.

Based upon the most recent statistics from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s Home Price Index, benchmark prices for Richmond residential properties have shown minor gains since the beginning of 2013 after a long period of negative or stagnant growth in pricing.

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Source: REBGV stats. (The home price index measures the rate of change on housing prices based on resales data to obtain benchmark prices.)

For perspective, the benchmark price for single family has declined 8.4% since the peak in June 2011. After a dramatic rise in 2010, prices now sit roughly at February 2011 levels. Condos and townhouses prices have shown recent gains after a couple of years of slow or zero growth.

From a new supply perspective, there are currently estimated to be approx. 5,000 housing units under various stages of approval and development in Richmond (ie. 1-5 years delivery), most of which are either woodframe or concrete multifamily units. New townhouse construction comprises less than 7.0% of the total new units being built. New single family construction in Richmond is currently limited to small scale and single lot developments.

A 36-unit building at the corner of Nelson and Bute Streets in the West End of Downtown Vancouver has sold for $13,000,000. The building was originally constructed in the 1930’s but was fully renovated in 2010/2011. The cap rate was 4.15%. The buyer was Belmont Properties.

The City of North Vancouver has earned “an array of interesting and attractive” community benefits by swapping extra development density for community perks, but it may be impossible to know if they were worth the trade off – at least financially.

Those are two of the early findings of a study into the city’s density bonusing policy being carried out by consultants hired by the city.

The practice of trading extra developable floorspace and height above what is written in the official community plan has worked to get the city its new library and refurbished city hall, as well as childcare space and affordable housing at no cost to taxpayers, but the process has bred much consternation among critics, on council and off.

Critics of the process complain that the city’s method of negotiating with developers for community perks lacks transparency and creates confusion; that density bonusing has run amok and the city now allows projects that are too big simply to pull in more amenity investment from the developer; and that there is no benchmark to measure each bonusing agreement for value.

That last point stuck out at an informal council workshop on Monday when consultants Brent Toderian of Toderian UrbanWORKS and Jay Wollenberg of Coriolos Consulting presented the first phase of their report. The two reviewed the last 12 projects the city approved that involved density bonusing, but found not every community perk came with a price tag.

Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/news/Density+bonusing+benefits+hard+quantify+consultants/8558032/story.html#ixzz2X92bA92m