The short list of developers for the Steveston secondary site got shorter last Tuesday. Richmond School Board members have narrowed it down to three potential applicants.

“They were all very high calibre, and I was very impressed with all of them,” said board chair Donna Sargent.

The board will convene for a summer meeting on July 22 to consider the three submissions.

Last month, five residential developers were chosen over a dozen who applied to build on the 13-acre site along No. 2 Road.

Board members based their criteria on value (financial compensation the district would receive), vision (for the neighbourhood that takes into account its surroundings) and voice (ensuring the residents have a say).

Onni to stage open houses on its Imperial Landing proposal – Richmond Review.

The Onni Group will stage two open houses next week in Steveston as part of a bid to rezone its newly-constructed Imperial Landing properties.

The developer’s six low-rise buildings—built along Bayview Street on the last piece of land at Imperial Landing—feature apartments on upper floors and commercial units on the ground floor. But the commercial zoning allows for only maritime-related businesses.

Onni submitted a rezoning application to the city in March to allow more commercial uses in the ground floor space of the six buildings, which are now largely complete.

On a website dedicated to Onni’s new proposal, waterfrontrezoning.com, the developer contends rezoning the commercial space to allow a broader range of commercial retail uses “will better serve the community’s needs.”

Read more: http://www.richmondreview.com/news/214434901.html

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.

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