Quote:
Originally Posted by fredinno
It should be possible to increase the height of the mall to 4 stories (1 above-ground, 1 below-ground, + 2-3 underground parking stories- with provisions to turn one of the parking stories into shopping- going above 3 stories above ground makes it too difficult to get to from the ground floor and Skytrain), develop the airspace on top of the mall into a park, then move Bonsor Park to the malltop site (like Oakridge). Then give the rest of the mall + the old Bonsor complex to Concord to develop into condos with conventional road tarmacs
See land to be redeveloped:
The bus loop airspace and Kingsway parking lot frontage would be made a part of the rebuilt mall, while the plaza at the Metrotowers would become Metrotower 4.
This accomplishes what Burnaby Council wants, while preserving the mall and increasing the amount of community/park/event space and developable land dramatically, and allowing Metrotown to feel more like a true 'downtown'. (As it stands, the current plans would not be viable for Metropolis at Metrotown to survive.) |
You're conflating a lot of stuff, mixing up ownerships and over-simplifying things that are more complicated that you seem to suggest.
So, to get Oakridge out of the way, the developers/owners (Quadreal/Westbank) own everything within their property lines - which includes the current park above the plaza they are developing that will be partially open to the public.
So it's technically not a "public" park in the same sense that Bonsor or Central Park in Metrotown are.
Which brings us to the tangled mess that is the mall at Metrotown and the surroundings.
The mall itself is owned by Ivanhoe Cambridge along with (through some weird rights-of-way mishmash situation) the bus loop even though they technically don't control what happens there, it's Translink.
Bonsor Park is city/public property run by the parks department, so they can't just pass over ownership or swap its location for a new location without some municipal acts.
And Concord doesn't own anything that isn't in or within their property lines (their current redevelopment area of the north side surface parking lot and the old Sears store), and their redeveloping anything out of that region would involve them buying it out just as with any real estate property (assuming it's actually available for purchase for private ownership.
To be able to achieve what you're proposing would involve a lot of deal-making and property changing hands - including public property - a lot of which would no doubt get public pushback (the Bonsor Park part, for obvious reasons) - enough to probably render it unfeasible.
One could (as Ivanhoe Cambridge are doing now) propose parts of all of it as part of a Master plan vision for redevelopment of the area with the clear understanding that major stakeholders are not necessarily or currently party to such a proposal and realizing that those parts of the proposal may never see fruition.
At the end of the day, what a private developer or owner chooses to do or not do with their site is their business and is not beholden to what a City's long-term planning vision may be (....although it helps to play nice.)
With exceptions.
(...see below)
EDIT :
Incidentally, it's worth noting Ivanhoe Cambridge HAVE already prior proposed relocating the bus loop to south of Beresford as part of a plan to add a Metrotower IV, which was met with strong pushback and essentially a firm "No" by the City.
Remember that the bus loop is technically on their property, but that doesn't mean they can just up and decide to relocate it and plonk a tower on there.
That's just how complicated stuff is there.
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