Burnaby Updates

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

To be fair, most of those new lowrises were first put in application for development before the City put out their 'Downtown Core' plan - which obviously means closer to nothing on that side of Royal Oak, however it was in concert with the city's overall drive and increased push to have more density around Transit hubs.

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The Metrotown downtown south-east boundary is Royal Oak and Imperial - so everything in an immediate circle around Royal Oak Station is part of that Urban Area instead. While I would really like to see some 6 storey buildings mixed in with the 4 storey ones I suspect that wouldn't go with their 'urban village' vibe for the Royal Oak area - hell they have some row houses right near the station. They'll likely only agree to some 6 storey buildings along / near Kingsway and that's it.

The article you posted is a little further away from a transit hub and near the edge of the Royal Oak area. I still wouldn't call it a 'prime redevelopment area' but otherwise yeah I agree people shouldn't be planning on being in a place forever when they don't own it.

Anywhere within the Metrotown downtown area is still a hot area for redevelopment. It feels like the tower building frenzy has calmed down for the moment. I have no doubt there's planning going on in the background and it'll pick up again soon. In the meantime there's a bit of breathing room and some lowrise buildings are going up.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the delays on the lowrises is because there weren't enough construction crews to go around. I know with my building we've had trouble getting trades in to do repairs because why bother doing a job that'll take a few weeks or months vs working for a few years on one of the new towers going up.

Originally Posted by officedweller

Reminds me of the disparity in heights and densities between the north and south sides of West 2nd Ave. in Vancouver - which has been or is in the process of being changed.

The edges of the Metrotown area are zoned for lower buildings than what's allowed in the center. So while there will be a difference in heights it's not like one side of the street will be a supertall and the other side will be single storey houses.