By ChangingCity

This project appeared a few weeks ago as a mystery development. It’s had an address in Mount Pleasant, a bit of a description: “To develop new mixed use building with artist studios and residential units” and a date for the Development Permit Board in September. Now it’s been to the Urban Design Panel, and we know the architects are IBI Group. As it’s proposed under zoning it can proceed reasonably fast.

…read more

Source: Changing City

A development application has been filed for 9 West Cordova (at the corner of Cordova and Carrall Street in Gastown, formerly home to Boneta) to rehabilitate the heritage building by converting 22 vacant SRA units into 8 self-contained residential market rental units that could also include office and artist studio uses on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The conversion of SRA units and heritage revitalization agreement was previously approved in 2008 after the plan was originally proposed in a slightly different form in 2007.  This time it appears that the owner, King Tiger Investments, is planning to proceed.

” [The Boulder Hotel]…started life as a 2-storey building in 1890, and later grew another at some point before 1910…. It was designed by the Fripp Brothers (Robert and Charles) for American tunnel builder turned real estate mogul A G Ferguson.” – Changing Vancouver

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