I'm simultaneously pleased beyond measure and disappointed with the Cambie Corridor.
I'm over the moon that the introduction of rapid transit has been followed on with such enthusiastic development activity in the cities and jurisdictions in which it operates. It's worth remembering that the line has only been open for 5 years and yet we have significant development in the pipeline in Richmond, on Sea Island at YVR, and in the City of Vancouver.
Richmond has oriented the majority of its municipal development trajectory to leverage the line. The long-term benefits of this development direction will pay long-term dividends to the residents and businesses, who benefit not only from easy access to reliable and high-quality rapid transit, but also from a contiguous, high-quality public realm and mixed-use linear residential neighbourhood along Number 3 Road. Richmond is also actively pursuing the developer-funded development of the 'future' Capstan Way station thanks to the mega development of Concord Pacific and Pinnacle International's Capstan way developments, and proximity to other large-parcel future developments that will pay DCCs to the City to reimburse the City's advancing of the difference between Capstan Way's cost and the Pinnacle and Concord's DCC contributions. All along the line in Richmond there is active development, both in the pipe line and under construction. The big plays will be the incremental infill redevelopment of Lansdown Mall and Richmond Centre, along with *many* redevelopment opportunities for the strip malls, freestanding properties, and the corridor(s) linking Number 3 Road to the Olympic Oval precinct.
At YVR, the current development of the transit-accessible McArthurGlen designer outlet mall will put upwards of a 1,000 new jobs on a SkyTrain line and help the region staunch some of the leakage of retail dollars south to the US. The airport also has realized substantial long-term strategic flexibility to the develop the terminal and MRO precincts of the airport by being able to relocate long-term parking to the extremities of the airport. In time, the eastern taxiway linking the north and south runways will be possible to pursue as a direct result of YVR having enough 'skin in the game' with its $300m investment in the line to ensure that the Canada Line right of way was built where it needed to be and at the elevation it needed to be to not inhibit its aircraft movement system goals. When the next round of terminal expansion occurs, a dedicated US trans-border terminal, I believe, it will be grafted on to the eastern end of the US trans-border hall and it will receive its own Canada Line Station. This was foreseen and the elevated single-track line planned accordingly.
In Vancouver, there is tremendous activity to assemble properties and bring them to market for redevelopment and numerous projects are under construction of nearing completion. From the Marine Drive station developments, including PCI's Marine Gateway and Intracorp's MC2 development, to Onni's forthcoming Northwest(?) project and the Concord Gardens development, to the next round of projects that will follow on, including the Buddhists redevelopment of their site on the southwest corner of the intersection that will fund the (re)development of a new Buddhist complex a block further north on Cambie.
At 57th Avenue, where a 'future' station was roughed in, a Concert-led joint venture with the Peterson Group (and likely Westbank) has bought the 8.4 hectare Langara Gardens site, which will be redeveloped and partially/fully fund the construction of the station.
At Langara-49th, the ongoing intensification of Langara College is made possible, in part, by the presence of the Canada Line and the need to provide less student parking per capita than would have been required in the absence of the line. Residential development along Cambie heading north towards Oakridge is proceeding quickly and the first project to have moved through to completion set a high bar for the quality of product that we can expect, plus that project, the name of which escapes me, created a valuable new mid-block pedestrian corridor through to the nearby park and set precedent for activating the lane with townhouse development.
At Oakridge-41st station, what can you say? One of the largest urban redevelopment and intensification projects in the country is moving forward with the heavyweights of the local real estate development community partnering with the national heavyweight for commercial real estate working together to create what will charitably be called a paradigm shift to the mall and the immediate neigbourhood. Not only has development already occurred on 41st, delivering needed seniors' housing in a modern, high-quality, tall-mid-rise built form, but the long-expected redevelopment of the Translink-owned former Oakridge bus 'barn' yard is proceeding through the conceptual planning and rezoning process. This will deliver far, far more value to Translink when it sells the entitled development-ready land, and further anchor redevelopment along the remaining sites of 41st avenue in the Canada Line sphere of influence.
Heading north to the future 33rd Avenue station, the redevelopment path for the RCMP lands, where the 'E' Division headquarters was formerly located, is clearly a high-density Arbutus Lands-like form of development, similar to the scale and density of the Oakridge Bus barn project. The major reinvestment in the BC Womens' and Childrens' hospital is a further driver of real-estate investment in its sphere of influence, and a strong trip generator for the future station.
The King Edward station precinct has also seen a lot of activity on both King Edward and Cambie, south of King Edward. The protection for the existing housing stock of residential buildings along Cambie is important to prevent displacement of a large number of renters, however in time these will reach the end of their lives and the presence of the station in modest proximity will help support their expeditious redevelopment.
The Canada Line-induced redevelopment on Cambie between Broadway and 6th Avenue has had a transformative effect on the vibrancy and pedestrian activity of the street. The game-changing promise of the Broadway extension of the Millennium line would likely be accompanied by a Cambie Corridor-like revision of the zoning and scale of the Broadway Corridor, triggering a major redevelopment wave. The Cambie and Broadway nexus of the lines will drive up land values and development expectations for the precinct and likely compel the assembly and redevelopment of persistently low-density blocks and leave the corridor forever changed.
With all of that said, my frustration with the corridor is that it is still so overwhelmingly weighted towards residential development. With the exception of islands of employment at Oakridge, Langara College, and Marine Drive, there is barely any retail, let alone significant office and institutional uses, along the corridor. This is a tremendous missed opportunity, and one that forfeits developing a new Broadway-like major healthcare employment corridor in the vicinity of BC Womens' and Childrens hospitals, and the creation of vibrant Cambie Village-like mixed-use retail corridors in between the more intense station nodes at Oakridge and Marine Drive stations. The Urban Design Panel argued strongly for retail (at least) and preferably office and institutional uses in the Cambie Corridor plan during the City's workshops with the UDP. It was acknowledged as a desirable goal, but it was felt that 'choice of use' at grade for large sections of the corridor would be sufficient. Not surprisingly, *none* of the 'choice of use' segments of the Cambie Corridor have included retail at grade. The closest thing has been live-work at grade, but you can count on one hand the number places in the city where live-work at grade has yielded quasi-retail streets.
The absence of a station at 16th Avenue is also a tragically missed opportunity, though that ship sailed long before the City got into gear for its Cambie Corridor plan. The gap between Broadway (9th Avenue) and King Edward (25th Avenue) is similar to the gaps between King Edward and 41st, 49th Avenue and Marine Drive, and Bridgeport Station and Aberdeen Station, yet all three of those had roughed-in 'future' stations at the logical midway points. The topography of a 16th Avenue station would have been challenging, but the moderately-high population density (*lots* of townhouses and apartments to the west), presence in the midst of Cambie Village, and redevelopment potential of the east side of Cambie between 12th Avenue and 16th and the large tracts of land in the vicinity of the Greek Orthodox church to the west of the 'Portico' development all mean that a station there would be viable and spatially equitable in the context of station spacing along the line.
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