Click here for pdf brochure.

Taken April 28th by 604 City

The City of Vancouver said Thursday it is reviewing its method of demanding extra payments from developers to help pay for non-traditional services such as daycare centres, heritage conservation, parks and social housing.

The review comes after the province issued new guidelines for how local governments assess community amenity contributions (CACs) that are tied to rezoning applications. Those guidelines were sparked in large part by concerns that Vancouver is using a method of calculation that could be seen as both coercive of developers and breaching long-standing rules against the selling of zoning in return for a benefit.

The city’s practice has been to seek what it calls “voluntary contributions” from developers that amount to 75 per cent of any profit they might generate from land that becomes more valuable through rezoning. In the most expensive of cases, that amounts to as much as $50,000 per-unit, compared to a more modest $1,200 per unit in Surrey.

By seeking “voluntary” payments the city retains a discretionary right to approve rezoning applications. The payment is different from legislated “development cost levies” that all applicants must pay for services such as sidewalks, water, roads and sewer connections. Vancouver said it obtained a legal opinion that the CACs are fair as long as they are made “voluntarily” by developers, who are told they are not a precondition of zoning approval.

The owners of a site located at 3120-3184 Knight Street (at East 15th Ave) are seeking final approval at public hearing next week for a rezoning from RT-2 to CD-1 District to permit the development of a five-storey residential building with 51 market rental units.

Currently, three rental apartment buildings, built in the 1950s, exist on the site. The buildings are three storeys in height and contain a total of nine rental units. The location of the development, on an arterial street and within 500 metres of an identified local shopping area (Commercial Drive and East 16th Avenue), qualifies the site to be considered, under the policy, for a building of up to six storeys in height.

Existing site

The application was made last year under the Affordable Housing Choices Interim Rezoning Policy (IRP), and in accordance with that policy, the application seeks increased height and density in return for all proposed housing units being secured as for-profit affordable rental housing for the longer of the life of the building and 60 years. The rezoning, if approved, would result in an increase of rental units on this site of over 400% — from the existing 9 units to 51 units.

The largest single commercial/residential development to come before the city in recent years won its approval at City of North Vancouver council Monday night, years after it was first pitched.

Concert Properties’ Harbourside development, which will place roughly 800 strata and rental units and 300,000 square feet of commercial space on the waterfront property along Harbourside Drive at the foot of Fell Avenue over the next 10 to 15 years, passed 5-2 in a late-night session of council.

The city previously held a public hearing to rezone the property on April 1 but chose to defer the vote.

The motion passed 5-2, with Couns. Pam Bookham and Rod Clark voting against – the same split on council for each step of the project over the last two years.

For the two dissenters, the issues were poor access, a loss of land that could be commercial or industrial and the project’s isolation from the rest of the city and its services.

The only ways into the area are via Fell Avenue and Bewicke Avenue, which is home to an at-grade rail crossing. TransLink has no plans to run transit to the area and so the developer has promised to run a private shuttle linking the neighbourhood with the SeaBus terminal.

Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/news/north-vancouver-s-harbourside-project-gets-council-approval-1.965173