General Vancouver Updates

[GenWhy?]

I personally cannot speak to that, if that is the case for this particular delay with your acquaintance.

The comment on the sprinkler permit is interesting as we applied for one recently and got it approved and on our way quite quickly (less than half the time of your acquaintance). Process mainly being our engineer doing the drawings and having a back-and-forth with the City.

Maybe the bigger projects are clogging the system at the loss to TI permits and renos. I dunno.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

I personally cannot speak to that, if that is the case for this particular delay with your acquaintance.

She's in an un-sprinklered CRU. So its not her issue.

The comment on the sprinkler permit is interesting as we applied for one recently and got it approved and on our way quite quickly (less than half the time of your acquaintance). Process mainly being our engineer doing the drawings and having a back-and-forth with the City.

That's interesting - did you see the letter being circulated and signed by a bunch of GC's and sprinkler contractors urging the city to act on how broken the system is?

H&M in Pacific Center waited something like 6 months for a sprinkler permit. The whole thing is a joke.

Maybe the bigger projects are clogging the system at the loss to TI permits and renos. I dunno.

I thought of this, and if its true, its even more infuriating. Create a separate team to focus on stamping TI's nearly over the counter to enable business to carry on.

If a project comes to the city with all engineer schedules, the City should keep it mouth shut and issue the permit. The onus is on the engineers to ensure compliance, or they wont release the Schedule CB.

Again, I would complain to the council about this, and I have in the past, but Vancouver doesn't actually acknowledge real issues that effect people daily, rather focus on esoteric problems that are completely out of its jurisdiction that don't have measurable outcomes of success.

[jlousa]

A neighbour, building out a daycare in an existing building next to my of my sites has been struggling thru COV permit hell, they have passed the 2yr mark and are still a yr away from opening. No idea how they are making their lease payments. I won't blame regulations as the factor, but think there is something rotten in Denmark.

[Ailurus]

My own experience with CoV permits is that it is a combination of two things:

• Understaffing, and
• specific troublemaking city officials who can't be effectively "pruned" due to politics/unions/whatever

I honestly think that simplifying it down to "over-bureaucratization" or something similar doesn't really cover things.

To give an example related to the sprinkler discussion we're having, when I was last working on CoV projects, there were only two sprinkler plan checkers in the entire City - one of which was a troublemaker. And I believe the City goes through upwards of several hundred sprinkler permits per year.

One (unnamed) project I worked on was a shining example. Here's what happened:

• Sprinkler permit application gets submitted shortly after the first stage of the building permit is issued.
• Neither of the 2 plan checkers gets around to it for months, but when it comes time to get the permit, the lead plan checker reviews it and sends back some reasonable review comments.
• Sprinkler engineer turns around a response quickly, and submits his revised drawings
• The plan checker wants one or two comments re-addressed, but says the permit will get released within a day or so of receiving these. However, he's going on vacation later in the week, so he will hand the file over to his backup plan checker to "once-over" the last pieces and release the permit
• While the lead plan checker is on vacation, the backup (read: troublemaking) plan checker does an entire re-review of the drawing set and sends back a new deficiency list with about 50 new and totally batsh!t crazy/irrelevant review comments. Things like "Your flow calculations are off by 0.1 GPM, please recalculate the entire system", or "Please use a different symbol for the sidewall sprinkler heads because I can't see them"
• Higher-ups in the building department can't overrule or contradict the idiot plan checker for political reasons
• It takes the sprinkler engineer considerable time to address all the comments because most of them are complete nonsense
• Plan checker receives the revised drawings, and immediately puts them at the bottom of his 8-week backlog and refuses to expedite them
• After 8 weeks, the idiot plan checker sends back his review of the revised drawings. Only about half of the revisions are "to his satisfaction".
• Owner goes nuts and calls a meeting at City hall. We meet, and it's clear that every other city official in the room absolutely hates his guy, but can't do anything about him.
• Sprinkler permit is finally released about 6 months late.

And this seems to be the norm.

By contrast, I've had other project go very smoothly simply because they with came in during a lull in City workload, or they just didn't encounter any of the "troublemakers".

Anybody in this forum done work in Abbotsford? If you have, you can probably relate to this, as they were at one point facing a very similar problem with permits being backlogged simply on account of one bad plan checker gumming up the entire system.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by Ailurus

My own experience with CoV permits is that it is a combination of two things:

• Understaffing, and
• specific troublemaking city officials who can't be effectively "pruned" due to politics/unions/whatever

I honestly think that simplifying it down to "over-bureaucratization" or something similar doesn't really cover things.

To give an example related to the sprinkler discussion we're having, when I was last working on CoV projects, there were only two sprinkler plan checkers in the entire City - one of which was a troublemaker. And I believe the City goes through upwards of several hundred sprinkler permits per year.

One (unnamed) project I worked on was a shining example. Here's what happened:

• Sprinkler permit application gets submitted shortly after the first stage of the building permit is issued.
• Neither of the 2 plan checkers gets around to it for months, but when it comes time to get the permit, the lead plan checker reviews it and sends back some reasonable review comments.
• Sprinkler engineer turns around a response quickly, and submits his revised drawings
• The plan checker wants one or two comments re-addressed, but says the permit will get released within a day or so of receiving these. However, he's going on vacation later in the week, so he will hand the file over to his backup plan checker to "once-over" the last pieces and release the permit
• While the lead plan checker is on vacation, the backup (read: troublemaking) plan checker does an entire re-review of the drawing set and sends back a new deficiency list with about 50 new and totally batsh!t crazy/irrelevant review comments. Things like "Your flow calculations are off by 0.1 GPM, please recalculate the entire system", or "Please use a different symbol for the sidewall sprinkler heads because I can't see them"
• Higher-ups in the building department can't overrule or contradict the idiot plan checker for political reasons
• It takes the sprinkler engineer considerable time to address all the comments because most of them are complete nonsense
• Plan checker receives the revised drawings, and immediately puts them at the bottom of his 8-week backlog and refuses to expedite them
• After 8 weeks, the idiot plan checker sends back his review of the revised drawings. Only about half of the revisions are "to his satisfaction".
• Owner goes nuts and calls a meeting at City hall. We meet, and it's clear that every other city official in the room absolutely hates his guy, but can't do anything about him.
• Sprinkler permit is finally released about 6 months late.

And this seems to be the norm.

By contrast, I've had other project go very smoothly simply because they with came in during a lull in City workload, or they just didn't encounter any of the "troublemakers".

Anybody in this forum done work in Abbotsford? If you have, you can probably relate to this, as they were at one point facing a very similar problem with permits being backlogged simply on account of one bad plan checker gumming up the entire system.

Wow, it seems like the problem is more deep-rooted than I thought. Thanks for sharing this!

[scryer]

Originally Posted by Ailurus

My own experience with CoV permits is that it is a combination of two things:

• Understaffing, and
• specific troublemaking city officials who can't be effectively "pruned" due to politics/unions/whatever

I honestly think that simplifying it down to "over-bureaucratization" or something similar doesn't really cover things.

Thank you for sharing!

Although I would personally argue that this is an example of excessive bureaucratization in the sense that the system is actually designed to send people in circles depending on who is on shift at city hall; I think that we can agree that the bureaucratic steps in this case were used to hide this problematic employee's actions and provide them a good ol' fashioned power trip.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by Ailurus

My own experience with CoV permits is that it is a combination of two things:

• Understaffing, and
• specific troublemaking city officials who can't be effectively "pruned" due to politics/unions/whatever

I honestly think that simplifying it down to "over-bureaucratization" or something similar doesn't really cover things.

To give an example related to the sprinkler discussion we're having, when I was last working on CoV projects, there were only two sprinkler plan checkers in the entire City - one of which was a troublemaker. And I believe the City goes through upwards of several hundred sprinkler permits per year.

One (unnamed) project I worked on was a shining example. Here's what happened:

• Sprinkler permit application gets submitted shortly after the first stage of the building permit is issued.
• Neither of the 2 plan checkers gets around to it for months, but when it comes time to get the permit, the lead plan checker reviews it and sends back some reasonable review comments.
• Sprinkler engineer turns around a response quickly, and submits his revised drawings
• The plan checker wants one or two comments re-addressed, but says the permit will get released within a day or so of receiving these. However, he's going on vacation later in the week, so he will hand the file over to his backup plan checker to "once-over" the last pieces and release the permit
• While the lead plan checker is on vacation, the backup (read: troublemaking) plan checker does an entire re-review of the drawing set and sends back a new deficiency list with about 50 new and totally batsh!t crazy/irrelevant review comments. Things like "Your flow calculations are off by 0.1 GPM, please recalculate the entire system", or "Please use a different symbol for the sidewall sprinkler heads because I can't see them"
• Higher-ups in the building department can't overrule or contradict the idiot plan checker for political reasons
• It takes the sprinkler engineer considerable time to address all the comments because most of them are complete nonsense
• Plan checker receives the revised drawings, and immediately puts them at the bottom of his 8-week backlog and refuses to expedite them
• After 8 weeks, the idiot plan checker sends back his review of the revised drawings. Only about half of the revisions are "to his satisfaction".
• Owner goes nuts and calls a meeting at City hall. We meet, and it's clear that every other city official in the room absolutely hates his guy, but can't do anything about him.
• Sprinkler permit is finally released about 6 months late.

And this seems to be the norm.

By contrast, I've had other project go very smoothly simply because they with came in during a lull in City workload, or they just didn't encounter any of the "troublemakers".

Anybody in this forum done work in Abbotsford? If you have, you can probably relate to this, as they were at one point facing a very similar problem with permits being backlogged simply on account of one bad plan checker gumming up the entire system.

Thank you for sharing.

I want to really put a fine point on this for all here; think about the real world impact of this one staffers decisions.

The costs incurred by a business, the cost incurred by sub trades, the delay, the inconvenience. Its surreal.

Also consider this - why is the City even getting this in depth of a look at any one building system?

If the system has been engineered, Schedules issued by a licensed BC engineer, the Cities only responsibility should be to stamp the drawing and keep a record of the work. Then inspect to ensure work was done in accordance with the drawings. But not even, because the engineer has to inspect anyway to be comfortable enough to issue a CB.

This is all illogical and its not ok. Were creating an unreasonable level of regulatory burden, and regulations that ignore the spirit of their purpose.

These people are supposed to be accountable to us, they're are literally called public servants.
Were not NYC, were a small City still with a disproportionately out of control building department.

Super frustrating.

[Feathered Friend]

https://council.vancouver.ca/20210713/documents/phea3modelphotos.pdf

July 13th, 2021 Public Hearing – Vancouver Teachers Face One Bad Apple, While Fairview Waves Too Close To Perfection
Public Hearing – July 13th, 2021

I still remember how excited I was when summer break rolled around, and this public hearing has the same vibe as it will be the last one until late September. Those experiences as a young woman are also why I am writing our usual primer instead of Darren, as we agreed I could better relate to this agenda. Then again, most people should be able sympathize with Item #1, as it basically puts a few city policies through Grammarly.

The red squiggles that highlight mistakes can be frustrating, but those opposed to Item #2 feel its wavy ribbons are too “extravagant” for these 153 below-market homes. Others in this small, vocal group fear this mix of elderly ladies, mothers, and working class women will harm the safety and privacy of similar individuals in the area. Yet, there is far more supportive voices, and some want city council to force the applicant to build it in their neighbourhood instead

Bluntly, that is not realistic, and is likely a tactic to fight against a proposal by BC Housing near another school, and the future Arbutus SkyTrain station. However, as someone who almost became a teacher I think most recognize the important of creating homes and training spaces for future educators, which is why Item #3 has only drawn one person’s ire. We expect this night will similarly see few speakers, meaning your voice could make a real difference.

Backlash Expectations

Item 2 – 546 West 13th Ave – Low
Only a select few feel this is the wrong place to expand housing for women and children

Item 3 – 2929 Commercial Drive – Very Low
Only one individual wants to give this proposal a failing grade

https://cityduo.wordpress.com/2021/07/12...-fairview-waves-too-close-to-perfection/

[officedweller]

Oak & 64th
4 buildings

231-Unit Condo Project Slated for Oak Street Site
The proposal calls for the development of three buildings of 6 to 8-storeys in height, and includes:

231 condo units;
1 studio, 106 one-bedrooms, 102 two-bedrooms & 22 three-bedrooms;
11,000 sq ft of ground floor retail space;
A total density of 3.10 FSR;
Building heights of 70 ft, 75 ft. and 95 ft.;
272 vehicle parking spaces and 497 bicycle parking spaces.

https://vancouvermarket.ca/2021/07/14/231-unit-condo-project-slated-for-oak-street-site/



https://vancouvermarket.ca/2021/07/14/231-unit-condo-project-slated-for-oak-street-site/


https://vancouvermarket.ca/2021/07/14/231-unit-condo-project-slated-for-oak-street-site/


https://vancouvermarket.ca/2021/07/14/231-unit-condo-project-slated-for-oak-street-site/

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

1 studio? that seems like a weird # of studio's... is there some requirement they need at least 1 or something?

[s211]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

1 studio? that seems like a weird # of studio's... is there some requirement they need at least 1 or something?

It's so the marketing program can say "with prices starting at $999,999!!!".

[officedweller]

Strange how that Shato Holdings building on the corner looks small now, whereas before it seemed large.


https://vancouvermarket.ca/2021/07/16/for-sale-cambie-village-mixed-use-development-opportunity/

[Lexus]

2021, July 17

Near Joyce-Collingwood Skytrain Station.

Untitled by Lexus LX570, on Flickr

Untitled by Lexus LX570, on Flickr

[dleung]

^^Nice clean design - the pixelated effect is effective against a simple/consistent glazing and structure. The "podium" is unfortunate and unnecessary though I wish they'd use that glass cladding more often instead of spandrel

[Feathered Friend]

A Green Crown Awaits Broadway’s Hallmark Attempt To Strengthen Vancouver’s Cultural Weave

901 W Broadway
Anyone who’s visited central Broadway recently knows it’s in the midst of a huge transformation, and nowhere is that more obvious than where it intersects with Laurel Street. With one corner cleared for a SkyTrain station, and another new hotel approved at a second, Hannah and I knew one of our favourite restaurants, New India Buffet, would soon move on too. That’s a relative term, since a freedom of information request hinted something was happening here back in 2018.

Sure enough, city staff at this Urban Design Panel meeting confirmed the official enquiry for this Hallmark Hotel predated the Interim Broadway Plan. It’s actually shorter than what’s currently allowed too, which thrilled one architect who was “very happy” to learn the air ambulance flight path to Vancouver General Hospital prevents it from being any taller. Granted that didn’t result in a quick decision, as several members questioned whether this design itself was appropriate in the age of reconciliation.

https://cityduo.wordpress.com/2021/07/19...to-strengthen-vancouvers-cultural-weave/

[Migrant_Coconut]

... until a landscape architect criticized them for falling in love with something that “won’t fly,” as it stepped over the property line. For them, the recommendation to ensure the intent of the public realm along Broadway and Laurel is maintained through the development permit stage didn’t go far enough.

Instead, they insisted the building should be squished down, and shifted westward, at which point city staff finally interjected.

Would I be correct in thinking it's the same jackhole over and over again?

[rofina]

this project was misappropriating First Nation’s culture with its basket weave pattern. Another volunteer claimed this style originated elsewhere, being particularly common in Germany,

Is this a joke?

Does this actually come out of real peoples mouths?

Were appropriating FN culture with some loosely resembled basket weave pattern on a buildings cladding?

I can't be the only one who thinks this insane.

I would question the mental wellbeing of the person who came up with this notion, they are certainly not fit for office or any advisory/government body.

To whom and how would one voice concerns about the UDP process?

[s211]

Originally Posted by rofina

Is this a joke?

Does this actually come out of real peoples mouths?

Were appropriating FN culture with some loosely resembled basket weave pattern on a buildings cladding?

I can't be the only one who thinks this insane.

I would question the mental wellbeing of the person who came up with this notion, they are certainly not fit for office or any advisory/government body.

To whom and how would one voice concerns about the UDP process?

Welcome to woke culture? Just wait until you get cancelled for having the courage to challenge them. Ready to lose your job?

[GenWhy?]

"We would like to thank the Panel for their comments, and we will take them into consideration"

(Applicant team proceeds as usual...)

[Feathered Friend]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Would I be correct in thinking it's the same jackhole over and over again?

I wouldn't use that term, but I will say there's only two landscape architects on the panel. Still, they are volunteers, and don't deserve hate-mail.

Originally Posted by rofina

Is this a joke?

To whom and how would one voice concerns about the UDP process?

Short answer, city council. Though I would add that the panel's membership is currently turning over, so there will be at least a couple new faces on it soon.

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

"We would like to thank the Panel for their comments, and we will take them into consideration"

(Applicant team proceeds as usual...)

In this case, the applicant responded by acknowledging it was a subject that needed to be taken seriously, and stated they would potentially work and engage with groups to build a stronger message. That said, city staff pointed out that there was no formal requirement to do so, but also stated that the panel's comments were heard, and would inform things going forward.

Take that for what you think it's worth.