At the same DP meeting on Jan 15th, the proposal for 990 Beatty St. is also on the agenda. This is the big vacant lot bounded by Nelson, Beatty, Expo, and The Max building. It's been vacant forever and most recently, Concord has been using for storage of its construction equipment on The Arc and One Pacific. Here is the description again:
The department of Non-Market Housing Development and Operations within the City of Vancouver has applied to develop this site with a 28-storey mixed-use. This proposal includes:
https://www.shapeyourcity.ca/990-beatty-st?tool=qanda
283 social housing units, a fire hall and daycare.
A Floor Space Ratio of 7.54
An approximate floor area of 21,732 m² (233,924 sq.ft.)
An approximate height of 85.4 m (280 ft.)
Two levels of underground parking, accessed off Expo Boulevard
I love the Fire Hall being a part of it, otherwise the building is meh, just like 1090 Expo. But I am not that mad, these will provide a massive injection of affordable housing and density. I have such a detest of surface parking and empty lots in downtown, it is so satisfying to see two huge prime lots finally get developed. Throw in 848 Seymour, and that's 3 prominent sites that have stayed undeveloped that will soon have significant towers. So many proposals of the last few years involved tearing down existing buildings, some of which are of significant size (The Empire Landmark is the biggest example of one that actually happened, but project proposals like 1450 West Georgia, and all of the Alberni St. proposals, involve taking down some fairly tall buildings). I know that is a reality for a city like ours now, and tearing down buildings that are still useful is going to happen, but I just have a weird annoyance when buildings are demolished for development, while empty lots still exist. I know the properties are unrelated, and there's no direct relationship between developing one project through demolition and leaving vacant lots elsewhere, it just rubs me the wrong way. Hence why I am happy to see projects such as the Coal Harbour Elementary, 848 Seymour, 1090 Expo, 990 Beatty, 601 Beach Crescent, and probably more I'm forgetting. These aren't all the best project from a quality or design standpoint, but I just love seeing the parking lots or vacant lots disappear, which all of these projects will do. I'd much rather see all of the remaining parcels get developed before tearing down some significant buildings (1450 Georgia tearing down the Georgian Towers is to me the most jarring, that is a tall and substantial building, and I can think of so many other that should come down before it). Examples of proposed and already completed projects that have reasonable demolition of existing buildings (and what was demolished):
Burrard Place (parking lots and a dealership building)
Vancouver House (small old buildings)
Grosvenor (Il Giardino and some one-story old crap)
The Stack (a glorified parkade with some office)
The Butterfly (a big parking lot, several SF houses, and a small apartment block)
Curv (two very small apartment buildings)
The hotel beside the Exchange (an old single story commercial space)
601 W. Hastings (a glass rotunda lol, one of the best replacements)
Deloitte Summitt (a car rental)
1317 Richards / 508 Drake Street (a rundown 2 storey office with Ismaili mosque, and surface lot)
1515 Alberni (a small retail space and open areas)
Park by Anthem (a former Chevron)
The Block by Amacon (a tiny restaurant demolished, and a heritage building retained and integrated into the development)
1210 Seymour (a tired single story block of random commercial)
Jubillee House (a tired single story block of random commercial)
A couple of tear downs were fairly significant, and even though they were overall improvements, the scope of demolition was a lot:
-8X on the Park (a decently-sized 4-storey apartment complex built in the late 80s. So definitely an improvement getting a distinctive high rise over the old building, but I just remember thinking at the time that the existing was fairly large and not that old, especially at a time when buildings from the mid-1980s were considered too "new" to tear down already)
-Bentall 6 (an 11-storey office building) - Similar to above, the B6 tower is a major improvement, and in a perfect spot for a large office. But the scale of the demolition was significant for a city like Vancouver
-1550 Alberni (an 8ish-storey office building) - As with both above, 1550 Alberni (Kengo Kuma) is a massive improvement from the old office block, and is now a design landmark. But the demolition of such a large existing building was noteworthy
-Caredero by Bosa (a 3-storey office building). Although the existing building was only 3 stories, it was more significant and prominent than some of the dank crap like 508 Drake). And because this was demolished before B6 and 1550, I wasn't as used to seeing larger, decent buildings get demolished. So maybe looking back now, the demolition wasn't that significant, but still put it in the category of major improvement, but at a cost of demolishing something of size
Tate (a real mish mash of SF house, old apartment block, single story commercial, 6 storey office) - Same as Cardero, the new tower was a definite improvement, added height and density instead of suburban-style crap. But at the time, the scale of the demo (especially the office) seemed like a lot. Looking back I can't believe what used to be there, but now we're so used to the high-rises we forget quickly. Thank God for Google Street View in post years, otherwise I'd forget!
Lastly, I can only think of one modern-era (ie. the last 20 years) building demolition where the demolished building far surpassed what replaced it:
-Landmark on Robson (Empire Landmark). I know, I know, maybe the existing building was in need of major upgrades, etc. But it was a huge building and (for good or bad) an iconic building in this city. I remember loving to look at my mom's spiral-album style address book when I was a kid in the 80s. It was all photos of Vancouver, each page of the address book had a big high quality pic of somewhere quintessential Vancouver, and some were aerial photos). It was so cool, my first urban enthusiast moment as a very small kid lol, but I loved flipping through that thing. Anyways, my point is that the Empire Landmark was featured prominently in that, it was thought of almost as a landmark. Not up there with Harbour Centre, but definitely significant (plus the rotating restaurant, which might be tacky now but was very chic when it was built). And so in a city with very few tall buildings, the loss of something 42-storeys was very significant; the number of high-rises over 40-floors was still quite small until recently). But the worst, most unforgivable part for me is what replaced it, those two boring high rises with zero personality, and not even as tall as the previous building. The unacceptable replacement vs. loss of an icon was just hard to fathom. If they had torn it down in order to make a super tall gem, I could have let it go and considered it an improvement. But no, it's a stinker, and a loss. If you look at cities like NYC, where everything has been built out for so long, and density was already insanely high, they often demolish large, tall buildings. In the land of skyscrapers like NYC and HKG, only the strong survive, the land use demand is so high it can justify the economics of demolishing a huge, existing tower. But when that wasn't the case here, it just seemed wrong. Luckily it's the only one in this category, IMO. So one bad mistake, but overall a good trend of replacing under-utilized, vacant, and parking lots.
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