Burnaby Updates

[jollyburger]

Do you think graveyards are parks or something?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Seems pretty dubious anyway: a SkyTrain would probably have a station on Boundary and skip all the in-between, in which case there’s no rationale to develop a graveyard.

[ecbin]

Do graveyards actually ever get moved? Other than the past where people built over the burial sites of First Nations I've never heard of graveyards being moved. What are the actual logistics for this kind of thing?

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by ecbin

Do graveyards actually ever get moved? Other than the past where people built over the burial sites of First Nations I've never heard of graveyards being moved. What are the actual logistics for this kind of thing?

I mean are they just going to dig up 20,000 remains and dump them into the ocean?

[fredinno]

Originally Posted by ecbin

Do graveyards actually ever get moved? Other than the past where people built over the burial sites of First Nations I've never heard of graveyards being moved. What are the actual logistics for this kind of thing?

New Westminster High School was originally a cemetery. The graves were moved to other cemeteries in the region.

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

Well, yes, in the case of a possible UBC extension line they wouldn't need to go underground for slope issues, as they would be forced to for the North shore-Brentwood-Metrotown line.

Why though? The slope isn't that bad unless you're going up the North Shore itself to Lynn Valley.

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

there will not be development of grave yards. that wont happen. period.

Well, there should be discussion of it the same way there were for the golf courses.
The VPB rejected the proposal- probably because Vancouver golf courses actually overperform, not underperform most golf courses in Canada.

The only one that was really worth it was Langara (and maybe University Golf Course)
Maybe Coquitlam Golf Course could make a nice big park, but theses golf courses are still widely used.

The Cemeteries don't necessarily have to be so close in to the city, and they're not really adding much value.
We're getting rid of most of the gravel pits (slowly) and moving them out of Metro Vancouver due to the demand for lands, so this is an extension of that.

IMO though, the only one that's very likely are the Brentwood graveyards. Brentwood has a lack of park space, and there's not really much room outside the cemeteries or on the opposite side of the rail tracks to build it.

Willingdon Heights sort of qualifies, but it's still a bit far from the center of Brentwood, and it could still use parkland.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by fredinno

Well, there should be discussion of it the same way there were for the golf courses.

okay. sure. golf courses arent full of bodies with living loved ones to say no. golf courses dont make the developer market a project that will be in the media for forcing peoples loved ones bodies to be moved against their will. golf courses dont come the spiritual aspect of living on a former site filled with dead bodies. many people dont want to live where there was a graveyard.

so, as i said before, it wont happen. this is just some weird fantasy talk that serves no purpose because it will never, ever, happen. no developer wants to deal with this. there is a lot more land available without this headache.

[fredinno]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

okay. sure. golf courses arent full of bodies with living loved ones to say no. golf courses dont make the developer market a project that will be in the media for forcing peoples loved ones bodies to be moved against their will. golf courses dont come the spiritual aspect of living on a former site filled with dead bodies. many people dont want to live where there was a graveyard.

so, as i said before, it wont happen. this is just some weird fantasy talk that serves no purpose because it will never, ever, happen. no developer wants to deal with this. there is a lot more land available without this headache.

Again, this is why I proposed graveyards to be made into parkland (and converting existing parkland into condos instead).
No one's having to market a condo on the graveyard.
You're turning the graveyard into a public space and (generally) increasing the amount of public space overall in the process.


This is also what's most likely to happen to the lands freed by the upgrade to the New Westminster Secondary School- as the idea of turning it back into a graveyard is just silly.
Though, considering New Westminster's history, it'll probably remain fallow for the foreseeable future.


Also, it's common for burial lots to be removed and recycled after a specific period anyways, and you're not throwing the bodies into the trash, you're moving them away from the city.

This is the reason there's not been any new large graveyards since the first half of the 20th century despite massive population growth.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by fredinno

......

Why though? The slope isn't that bad unless you're going up the North Shore itself to Lynn Valley.
.......

There's no way skytrain cars can climb that slope between BCIT and the Metrotown Ridge.

You can have the line above grade from the north until around that point, after which they will almost inevitably be forced to go sub-grade after that.

You're thinking the slope isn't that bad because you drive up it in a car or ride a bus that can climb it.

A train car (let alone 4 or 5 coupled together) is an entirely different beast and proposition, with much different mass and track friction issues.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by fredinno

Again, this is why I proposed graveyards to be made into parkland (and converting existing parkland into condos instead).
No one's having to market a condo on the graveyard.
You're turning the graveyard into a public space and (generally) increasing the amount of public space overall in the process.

And in order to do that you would have to exhume and move the buried bodies from what you're proposing to turn into parklands, no?

This is where the problem lies with your idea.

Or are you envisioning that you're going ot have a park built on top of what used to be corpses of people's bodies, where people will be able to play, frolick and literally dance on the dead?

How do you think the families and living relatives of those deceased are going to react to such an idea?

Originally Posted by fredinno

......This is the reason there's not been any new large graveyards since the first half of the 20th century despite massive population growth.

Or it might have more to do with the fact that a significantly whole lot more people opt for cremation or burial at sea nowadays - which is far less financially imposing on their living relatives taking care of the funeral - rather than expensive cemetary lots.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by fredinno

It would, but I'm not sure people would be fine with them removing land from the main park in Metrotown without adding more space elsewhere.

IF they build on the Civic Square, I sure hope they leave the area bounded by the flower gardens (the space in front of the mini amphitheater) alone. That space is especially well used in the summer with live music, movie nights, etc. Although Central Park is very close, the Civic Square and Maywood Park are very well used and will be needed to serve the demands of 000s of additional residents in the near future.

Perhaps, as you suggested, city hall could be built on top of the library (with all the water damage and subsequent renovations in the past year, I am not sure if the library is set to be replaced anytime soon?). But I think another option would be building along Kingsborough and perhaps along McKay (although the sunbathers will be annoyed if the entire east lawn is built on).

Originally Posted by ecbin

Do graveyards actually ever get moved?

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean are they just going to dig up 20,000 remains and dump them into the ocean?

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

no developer wants to deal with this.

Yes, graveyards do get moved and built on and it's happened in other North American cities with geographic constraints.

San Francisco banned burials in the city in 1900 because the cemeteries were out of room, considered a health hazard and — more than anything — sat on prime real estate. In 1912, San Francisco announced that it would do more than ban burials. It would kick out the dead.

In the end, more than 150,000 bodies were moved from San Francisco to Colma, where farmland was turned to graveyards, the fertile soil now mostly covered in green, carpetlike grass. The number of people who die in San Francisco and spend eternity in Colma grows every day.

[djmk]

this current conversation is hilarious

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

Yes, graveyards do get moved and built on and it's happened in other North American cities with geographic constraints.

I mean provide a modern example of that and then you can make a case for it. But dragging out something from the early 1900s doesn't seem relevant.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

.......


Yes, graveyards do get moved and built on and it's happened in other North American cities with geographic constraints.

To be fair (and a bit more accurate) Vancouver, for all it's housing crisis issues and affordability problems, isn't suffering the same dearth of land or prime real estate to build on, that would necessitate evicting the dead in graveyards, that those examples and other cities were suffering at the time.

It just happens to have...or have had....terrible zoning policies for the longest time that haven't helped in the past, and which more recent OCP's have began addressing in more substantive ways to allow more efficient use of the land that's available for development and could be available in the future.

In this discussion for instance, two of the graveyards and cemeteries being talked about as candidates for relocation or removal don't even sit on the type of land that would be able to be developed into high density multi-family residential or high-rise condos.
They sit on SFH zoned areas, so what exactly would be gained by moving them?
More SFH lots for single homes?

Unless the city changed the zoning and OCP designation (which isn't going to happen without a ton of justifiable pushback in a lot of those cases) then it's a moot thing to even consider.

Even the idea or notion of turning them into parklands, public parks and instead using parks in other areas for development in exchange still doesn't fly.
One of the cemeteries sits right adjacent to the one of the biggest forested suburban parks in the region, so it's not exactly like there's anything (more) to be gained from making that park area even bigger, and for the other pockets of parks that one would then "substitute" to allow development, aren't you then not hurting the surrounding communities that are served by those parks just so they have to drive halfway across the city to get to a new park (formerly graveyard)?

That doesn't make sense,....to me anyway.


It's also worth noting that a lot of the cases and examples of graveyards being moved for developments come from anywhere from 50 to 100 years ago or more.
It would be a much more difficult proposition today with the way public discourse gets shaped by local politics, optics, messaging and perceptions.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

I believe this was one of the primary reasons why they were doing it (aside from the current building being more or less out-of-date and under serving their current requirements).

They wanted something more accessible (to the general public) and the most accessible location would be somewhere close to a major transit hub, which the Metrotown Skytrain station and Bus loop happen to be.
(second only to Waterfront Station in Downtown now as the most frequented for boardings and foot-traffic having overtaken Commercial Broadway during the pandemic period).

Which is why it was a bit baffling to read some of those Nimby complaints about traffic congestion, when part of the idea for the relocation is they want to be somewhere where one doesn't have to or need to use a car to get to them.
The current situation is the opposite wherein it's less convenient to get there for non-car drivers.

Vancouver's City hall doesn't need to be downtown because it's literally next door to a major transit hub themselves, and for that reason it's more convenient and accessible than the current Burnaby City Hall is to Burnabians (...is that word?).

The city owns the building across the street that attaches to the pedestrian walk. Also has a huge land mass to build on where it is currently. So really odd they would move to be closer to metrotown

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

Yes, graveyards do get moved and built on and it's happened in other North American cities with geographic constraints.

um.... that was 111yrs ago...

i wonder what you would say if i brought up 1950s/60s arguments to support freeway and suburban sprawl growth. those arguments would STILL be 50yrs more modern than yours.

but in the end, we have more than enough land around all these existing SkyTrain stations to develop. we even have land for park space that can be dedicated. this is such a ridiculous conversation. like holy crap.

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean provide a modern example of that and then you can make a case for it. But dragging out something from the early 1900s doesn't seem relevant.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean provide a modern example of that and then you can make a case for it. But dragging out something from the early 1900s doesn't seem relevant.

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

um.... that was 111yrs ago...

i wonder what you would say if i brought up 1950s/60s arguments to support freeway and suburban sprawl growth. those arguments would STILL be 50yrs more modern than yours.

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

It's also worth noting that a lot of the cases and examples of graveyards being moved for developments come from anywhere from 50 to 100 years ago or more.
It would be a much more difficult proposition today with the way public discourse gets shaped by local politics, optics, messaging and perceptions.

SF is an old example, but of course relocating graveyards is not a common practice. I never suggested the practice was commonplace, just that it has happened in recent history.

I don't think Burnaby will make any move to relocate their cemeteries. As Spr0ckets says, there just isn't sufficient demand. But the way humans treat their dead has morphed over time, and if mass burials and family tombs were once popular but are now out of favour who is to say that grave recycling or relocation couldn't happen in Canada in the future?

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

i wonder what you would say if i brought up 1950s/60s arguments to support freeway and suburban sprawl growth. those arguments would STILL be 50yrs more modern than yours.

I would say that how we treat our dead is a social construct but unsustainable growth is a matter of simple math.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean provide a modern example of that and then you can make a case for it. But dragging out something from the early 1900s doesn't seem relevant.

It's a smaller cemetery, but in Denver they recently reinterred a church cemetery to make way for housing development.

https://denverite.com/2022/07/07/as-...ral-boulevard/

[Migrant_Coconut]

Again though, what's the motive to rezone Ocean View? Can't be TOD, because the SkyTrain'll likely skip Imperial & Patterson, and it can't be general redevelopment, because there's literally hundreds of SFHs nearby that won't create as much toxicity.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by cairnstone

The city owns the building across the street that attaches to the pedestrian walk. Also has a huge land mass to build on where it is currently. So really odd they would move to be closer to metrotown

I mean,.....I don't think the issue was (solely) that they were lacking for land or space on which to expand and build a bigger building and facilities.

There's also the fact that their current location isn't as easily accessible to the general public that might not have cars or be able to drive there.
And a city hall should be accessible to everyone, if nothing else.

Metrotown being the location where the largest Transit hub outside of Downtown Vancouver is, ticks one of the boxes in positioning a new City hall in a place that would theoretically be more accessible to anyone from the region who wouldn't necessarily be able to drive to get there.

Of course this is but one of several rationales they may have for wanting the move, but it's makes for a compelling argument in their favour.