Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Tech giant or not, the 500+ employee companies appear to regard multiple-floor solutions as sub-par.
Either way, I'd argue that this one answers the "large floorplate outside downtown" case, and that this one and that one answer the "lack of floors" case - each should be able to hold at least 50 over ten floors. One's in Mount Pleasant, another's on Broadway, the third's downtown and complying with a viewcone, so sprawl isn't a problem. |
These are actually direct examples of tower sprawl.
Especially with Amazon needing to lease
additional office space from the Deloitte summit tower on-top of them taking up space in the Post. Again, I don't know the details of the contracts surrounding The Post but
its construction was restricted by a view cone and I would argue that this would be a leading reason to cause Amazon to have to spill over into another tower to take up space in order to operate. The view cone, in this case, was an arbitrary city policy that inconveniently placed a phenomenal regional opportunity in jeopardy because Amazon wasn't able to occupy the infrastructure that they needed within one building. We're quite frankly lucky that Amazon was open to occupying more than one building, and that they found this specific location to best suit their needs otherwise we wouldn't see the Post develop the way that it is since they are the anchoring tenant IIRC.
As for the
Hootsuite location you mentioned - good for them! I completely forgot about that one! Thank you so much for pointing it out because, if I did my calculation correctly, they only needed a total of 140,791 sq ft of space (because I am assuming that they will use it all, industrial included I guess, just to be generous). That specific location worked for Hootsuite whereas Amazon will take up 416,000 sq. ft. of office space at the Post, and they evidently needed more space since they are bleeding over into the Deloitte tower. No developer is going to place all of their eggs into one basket (just to simplify it) and, even though Amazon is a tech giant, the developer only leased out to them one
third of the total office space offered in The Post even though Amazon was probably asking for more space from the developer. Again, I don't know the details of the tenancy deal but adding more height to this specific development (as an exception to the view cone) could have been able to accommodate Amazon in its entirety without having the company needing to split off into two different buildings. This would have increased the COV's office vacancy rate to a healthier level in a sustainable way without having to risk the metro region from losing out on a huge tenant.
Even a (large) business that has 500+ employees will only be able to negotiate a certain select amount of space in an office building from a developer. If Amazon (a tech giant) was only able to negotiate a
third of the total office space available in The Post, a "smaller" business of 500+ employees would have even less negotiating power for more sq. ft unless the developer was able to revise and adjust their building to offer more sq. ft. <-- I'm open to being wrong on that process though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
A reminder that Mount Pleasant's 8 million is a 33% increase in office space once fully built out. Even one seventh of that puts us well over 9%.
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A reminder that the Mount Pleasant re-zoning has not been approved and is therefore not guaranteed yet (I am hopeful though!). And also that office demand in the COV doesn't seem to be slowing down even in lieu of a pandemic, and I suspect that office demand will keep pace with all of the office developments in the region. Once this rezoning does come into play, it will probably not exceed the office vacancy rate (to 9%) because the office vacancy rate is based on office vacancies in 2020. I think that you are assuming that our office demand levels are stagnating at their current levels when these developments come into play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
I'll admit that Oakridge and Hastings are a bit too far from downtown, but everything between Arbutus/Broadway/Commercial will eventually be downtown, so I'm not sure where we're going here.
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The land east of Senakw has a bunch of view cones that come into play. So even when we do drag downtown off of the peninsula, we still have to deal with the same problem that stifled the downtown development on the peninsula for the last 50+ years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
You did not, that's correct. What you said was that the suburbs might outpace downtown in growth, and I'm saying that as long as they won't touch homeowners, they've got even less room than the CoV does.
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Are you able to quote me on this by any chance? Just reviewing my recent posts and I can't quite seem to find any of me mentioning the suburbs outpacing downtown in office growth
(happy to be wrong lol) . I thought that I was carefully debating from a perspective of making the COV (specifically) a strong contender to attracting larger employers in the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Right, but I'm asking whether or not Gilmore/Lougheed/etc were marketed to blue or white collars, and whether or not they're able to buy. AFAIK these projects are more about prestige than affordability, so if they're likewise catering to offshore elites that won't come anymore, they risk the same consequences.
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It's kind of a big problem in the region right now when it comes to housing. Although I'm not focusing on housing
(and I have never focused on housing in the last few posts, other than maybe being derailed a few times) being the driving force for getting city policies reviewed: I'm focusing on reviewing city policies that affects the infrastructure to attract employers - being the driving forces of change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Yes, and just like office planning, the viewcones need to be considered 20, 50, 100 years into the future. Get rid of three quarters of them, by all means, who needs 'em - but the last quarter is going to be priceless.
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And we haven't reviewed them in the last 30+ years. Soooo... it's overdue and we have an immediate need (and a long-term need) to attract employment in the COV. I done got corrected by Changing City below
.
I think that it's clear that we do agree that most of the view cones could get the adjustment right away. However that's not the case currently and the current model of view cones is arguably out dated since larger tenants are considering the COV as a city to set up in but they end up with needing to split their businesses across several buildings if they want to set up in the CBD as we see with Amazon. The
current view cones did not allow that in Amazon's case and if it weren't for the other factors that made the COV an attractive option for Amazon, we could have lost out on an opportunity that was going to bring 6000+ well paying jobs to the region because they wouldn't have been able to be properly housed in the infrastructure that they needed.
At the end of the day it will rest on shoulders of a future generation to determine whether they value the views of the mountains more or if they value optimizing the CBD for economic viability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Because in politics (and life in general), there's a finite amount of effort. Push too far, too fast, and you don't have enough for anything else.
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Are we just talking just plain human energy or money when it comes to effort? Because last I checked, I pay these councilors (and voted them in) to have these tough discussions and to make actual progress; not to have political schemes pop up left and right and to have actual issues buried in bureaucracy. Whether these councilors like it or not, they have been ushered into the age of accountability and it's not like their job security has been affected by the pandemic. So if the effort is just buried in bureaucracy, in a perfect world, we would be apt to implement changes to make politics more convenient. But I digress.
As citizens, we owe it to ourselves to demand politicians to work
for the people, and not for their own special interests. A prosperous future for the COV is indeed something that is guarded by these politicians and the city policies in place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
You also risk voting in a mayor and council full of Hardwicks, Carrs and Swansons; Port Moody's already halfway there.
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Hardwicks, Carrs, and Swansons will have little lovely legacies as gatekeepers driving Lower Mainland refugees to other locations in Canada. All pettiness aside, we cannot control who the people vote for
(unless you count with Dominion) but I do understand your point here on the public's mentality with a sudden rush of towers. However, downtown Vancouver already has these towers and it isn't unfamiliar territory to them like it is with Port Moody.
My other counter to this is that there are going to be several projects that will change the public mentality towards densification and towers in the near future, perhaps even usher in a renewed pro-development, pro-economic mentality. We will see these mentalities shift with Senakw and with The Post after they start operating. We already have significant projects either U/C or proposed that will challenge these NIMBY mentalities. My point has always been: what comes after that, and how do we cut the red tape for future generations to be able to live in the COV prosperously. One of the most glaring pieces of red tape are these view cones among other development restrictive policies dictated by the city/region. These city policies have affected recent developments such as Amazon needing to split itself into two different towers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Pick your fights. Remember that SSP, Reddit and all the various blogs only represent certain "obsessed" opinions; if you're the average Vancouverite, then right now you don't know jack about the red tape - just that it's "necessary" and its opponents are plutocrats.
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There is a way to wake people up to the limitations of red tape and how it effects their lives and their children's lives. And I do have faith that it is possible through the use of imagery, story telling, and other digital marketing tactics. And I think that more people are waking up to how politics has a lot of influence over their lives with the recent pandemic. They just need something less serious
(like less serious than their health and well-being) to focus on to start waking up. I would definitely not use the same tactics here to try and educate the public, if that was something that I was interested in doing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Especially when there's room within the red tape to deliver more than enough housing and jobs.
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Right now, yes. But what about beyond the next 10+ years
after Amazon is in operation? Again I'm only speaking on employment space here but we owe it to future generations to cut the red tape now so that they don't have to go through 4+ years of administrative humming and hawwing to solve for a problem that they needed solved yesterday. Just because we cut the red tape, it doesn't mean that it is viable for a 500+m Towner to spring up overnight; rather we remove the city
restriction that was put into place in hopes of attracting a developer that can secure larger tenants that pay wages suitable for the region when the time comes. The removal of the city restriction can then be used to attract more opportunities to the COV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
So let's do that in the meantime. By the time we've maxed out that space, the red tape will seen as a barrier, and there'll be enough awareness and pressure to clear it.
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Which we have already been doing that approach for the last 50+ years. And now we have an office shortage and housing shortage that face various development stifling policies. To me this clearly spells out that we need to do something different to cultivate a prosperous future for younger generations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheba
I wanted to jump in again. Outside of the CoV there's the rest of the region, which in the past was primarily bedroom suburbs to CoV and downtown Vancouver. Since then there's been a pivot to the region turning into a variation of garden cities. From Wiki: The garden city movement is a method of urban planning in which self-contained communities are surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture.
Now obviously we don't have greenbelts surrounding each city in the region (the original idea is from the UK over 100 years ago... ) but a lot of the same ideas are being used - try to have a lot of the needs of people contained within each city instead of them having to leave and travel downtown every morning and back home every night. You can see this with the cities all having their own downtowns and retail centers. This will inevitably lead to what some could consider tower sprawl. |
Just to be clear: I'm not against tower sprawl in the metro region at all if it's for the right reasons
.
I'm totally going to digress here but the most sustainable city model though is one that promotes a work from home culture as that reduces the carbon footprint even more significantly by reducing commuting efforts. But that kind of a business model isn't right for every business, nevermind every kind of employee.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheba
Now those ideas inevitably lead to downtown Van and it's CBD not being as important as it used to be. I know some people don't like to hear it, but the CoV is not Rome. The region is becoming more dispersed and that's ok.
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I also think that some people assume that the CBD is not going to continue to develop in the future beyond the next 10+ years and that office demand will remain at the same 2020 levels in the future. My whole point of posting these essays
(lol, I do enjoy writing so it's fun for me) is that the COV isn't putting its best foot forward to grow its CBD because it has policies that stifle the infrastructure required by these employers.
I am certainly aware that the region is becoming more dispersed in terms of employment centres but my biggest criticism with the COV is that it doesn't compete at the best of its abilities; and that the development policies hold it back from being a bigger contender regionally, nationally, and globally.
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