Quote:
Originally Posted by SFUVancouver
My two cents: the high cost is a consequence of decades of under-funding (or no funding) for social housing and new schools. To the best of my knowledge, the Coal Harbour master plan/ODP called for a school, community centre, daycare, and social housing on this site. The land was provided to the City by Marathon during the rezoning. Funding was secured in the late 90s for the first round of public amenities and facilities (the community centre and Coal Habour housing co-op). Two decades later funding is now secured for the second round of public amenities and facilities (the school, daycare, and social housing), but the cost has been grossly inflated in the intervening decades. The social housing and daycare are being funded by CACs, so there is no direct property tax implications, and the Province is paying for the school, as it should.
It would be a betrayal of the intent of the Coal Harbour ODP and the principle of socially diverse neighbourhoods to abandon the creation of this projects at this point. And this is the last undeveloped parcel in the neighbourhood, so if not here, then where? As for selling the site and requiring the development to include the school and daycare, it's too small to build underground parking without resorting to an exotic solution like a car elevator and the land lift that would be required to deliver the public amenities (or their shells) in kind would have to be gargantuan.
If the school had been funded twenty years ago by the Province as should have been the case, and there had been Provincial and/or federal funding for the social housing, the cost of this project wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. Now because of decades of intransigence by senior levels of government, the project's costs are wildly out of proportion to prevailing norms.
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It's true that the costs are higher to build now that they were. I'm not sure they're necessarily 'wildly out of proportion to prevailing norms'. The 60 units of housing are expected to cost $36,505,000 to build. These are not all studio units - 35 of them are 2 and 3-bedroom, and construction will be more expensive as "the project is being designed to achieve zero emissions, including certification to Passive House standard". That's more expensive to build, but much cheaper to operate, and saves money over the life of the building, (for both the City, as owner, and the tenants).
The Province never made this school a priority because generally they've been putting school construction funding into seismically upgrading existing schools, or replacing them. Adding new schools, even where there's demand, has taken a back seat. This project can go ahead because, as Feathered Friend noted, the BC Hydro funds to build the school have become available as part of the deal on the new substation under Nelson Park. The City couldn't, or chose not to, build housing here until the school could be built. The school is expected to cost $31,655,000, and the childcare (which is now bigger than originally planned), $12,652,000.
Some of the childcare costs are coming from the Province, and additional grant opportunities with CMHC and Federation of Canadian Municipalities through their Green Municipal Fund are being actively pursued and may reduce the City's costs of building the housing. The decision is being taken quickly, before those funds are secured, because the School Board need completion as soon as possible so that they in turn can hand the park location of the existing Lord Roberts Annex over to BC Hydro.
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