Posted Nov 26, 2008, 9:37 PM
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testify
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: san francisco and montreal
Posts: 1,319
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from the courier, some good background on the process around a densification scheme in an area that badly needs it. the usual hubbub follows, of course, and the scales will doubtless lack the height the area needs, but this is definitely progress.
Quote:
Residents wary of proposed neighbourhood centre
City hosts upcoming open house on East Side project
Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier
Published: Wednesday, November 26, 2008
As planning for a neighbourhood centre around Kingsway between East 27th and 41st avenues ramps up again, so do concerns of some local citizens.
The city is holding an open house on the project Nov. 29. The Norquay Neighbours citizen group has called a residents-sponsored meeting for Dec. 3.
"Part of this is considerable distrust and we intend to monitor and make as public as possible every step of the process," he said.
Grant Miller, a city planner who handles neighbourhood centres, said a city outreach worker has been talking with local business owners whose first language isn't English to make sure they're involved in the planning.
Participants at the Nov. 29 meeting will learn about potential plans for the area around Kingsway that extends east to Killarney Street and west to Gladstone Street. They can sign up for workshops slated for early 2009.
At one workshop, members of the community will be asked how parks, streets, playgrounds and pedestrian connections could be improved.
Another workshop will focus on housing on the residential streets that surround Kingsway and plans for rezoning. In response to comments made by neighbours in previous consultations, the city is considering zoning for low-rise apartments near SkyTrain stations, as well as rezoning for duplexes, coach houses and clusters of small strata-titled houses over multiple lots. It is also considering rowhouses on shallow properties.
The "Kingsway Area" workshop will explore how the busy thoroughfare and the areas adjacent to it should be reshaped.
Miller said the city hasn't decided whether it will influence development by rezoning multiple blocks along Kingsway, which would see developers simply applying for development permits, or by developing land use policies that would see developers applying to rezone for bigger projects. How the Kingsway area will be shaped will depend on the preference expressed by the community.
Jones worries mass rezoning of the neighbourhood he's inhabited for 28 years could result in "an urban monoculture."
"If you take a large area and try to treat it all the same, you will lose the flavours that varieties over time put into a neighbourhood, the things that have made Main Street and Commercial Drive such pleasant places," he said.
He also worries about unintended consequences of area rezoning.
"Developers will naturally build to the most advantageous economic use and we saw the problems that that produced with Vancouver specials, 20, 30 years ago," Jones said.
Jones is pleased to see that the city appears to be taking community outcry about housing types into account.
Miller said the city will pay more attention to retaining the unique characteristics of housing in the area, even though there are fewer heritage houses in the Norquay area than in the first neighbourhood centre, at Kingsway and Knight.
Miller expects staff will make recommendations to council for adoption following the workshops, but he wouldn't say when he expected this to occur.
The city's open house happens at the Renfrew Park Community Centre, 2929 East 22nd Ave., in Room 110 on Nov. 29 from noon to 4 p.m.
Norquay Neighbours' meeting is planned for the same community centre from 7 to 9:30 p.m., Dec. 3.
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) and the parking is indeed off 8th. But when I was there the parking was free for Mon and Tue. Not sure the deal now. The store sure is massive now but an absolute zoo!
Most of you will know this site as the former Bar Code. Sad to see it go... but progress is progress.
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