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Posted Dec 6, 2023, 12:29 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 14,691
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You have to be pretty stupid to blame the lack of walkability around Lougheed Highway and Kingsway on new housing developments. I mean you could make a case that it hasn't made it that much better but it seems like a stretch to blame it on redevelopment of mostly parking lots and other underutilized land. Throw in the fact there's been minimal development along Kingsway.
Quote:
Douglas Todd: Massive Brentwood towers trigger questions about Burnaby planning
Opinion: The 40- to 60-storey modernistic towers rising up around Burnaby's Brentwood town centre are not well integrated with the community, say critics.
"It’s a faceless monolithic block to me,” says Bimal Parmar, describing Concord Brentwood's four new towers as they are seen by drivers moving west along Lougheed Highway.PHOTO BY DOUGLAS TODD /sun
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Long-time Burnaby resident Bimal Parmar had a disturbing vision when he was driving west on Lougheed Highway toward Boundary Road to attend Akali Singh Sikh Society gurduwara.
As he moved in six lanes of hectic traffic under the concrete SkyTrain rapid transit line, feeling buried at the bottom of an urban canyon formed by about two dozen highrises around Brentwood Town Centre, the setting sun was creating an orange glow, which reflected off all the windows.
“It almost reminded me,” Parmar says, “of a scene from the dystopian movie Blade Runner.”
Even though Parmar, a 60-year-old software developer and house inspector, remembers the Brentwood Mall when it was the hub of a “sleepy” retail neighbourhood, he generally supports government efforts to increase housing density — to possibly help out young people struggling in unaffordable Metro Vancouver.
But Parmar worries the new Brentwood Town Centre conglomeration of 40- to 60-storey concrete highrises, most of which have been erected in the past decade, is not really connected to or serving the wider community. And it’s not creating a walkable neighbourhood.
While some new tower dwellers are obtaining panoramic views from their often-pricey condo balconies, the roughly two-kilometre stretch along the Lougheed thoroughfare is often loud and congested with cars and trucks, he says. Many towers don’t really connect to pedestrians at ground level.
The dramatic pace of construction occurring at Brentwood Town Centre recently hit home for many when a photo in the Burnaby Now newspaper was widely distributed on social media. It shows four new highrises in the process of being completed almost a kilometre east of the Brentwood Town Centre SkyTrain station and adjacent mall.
The shot, by Cornelia Naylor, shows how drivers heading west along the Lougheed Highway, near Delta Avenue, are now being confronted by four towers of 40 to 50 storeys each, which create a vast, stark wall of glass and metal.
Concord
A UBC professor laments how Metro Vancouver tower developments such as Concord Brentwood “operate as isolated real estate investment islands, poorly integrated with surrounding neighbourhoods.”sun
“What is this? It’s a faceless monolithic block to me,” Parmar says, as he stands on Lougheed Highway, gesturing toward the four new highrises.
“I was initially intrigued to see the first two towers go up a couple of years ago, since they came with a central pillar at the br,” Parmar said, noting how the towers’ architect attempted to make the soaring structures appear less overwhelming at ground level.
“But then the next towers were built and it just started looking like a fortress.”
The complex that Parmar is describing on the south side of Lougheed Highway is called Concord Brentwood. When completed, it will include 10 towers.
Already partly occupied, it is being constructed by Concord Pacific, Canada’s largest development company. It’s best-known for buying the former Expo 86 lands from the then-Social Credit government and erecting scores of apartment towers in Vancouver’s Yaletown along a waterfront promenade on False Creek.
Concord Pacific’s city-changing False Creek project has sometimes been praised for integrating a forest of apartment towers into the downtown core, contributing to a livable community. That is why Concord’s latest “master-planned” tower project has been dubbed “Yaletown comes to Burnaby.”
There are some narrow view corridors between the existing towers on Concord Brentwood’s 26-acre site, which includes partly finished concrete plazas and plans for a lagoon and park. But Parmar fears the self-contained development, with concierge service, doesn’t offer much to current Burnaby residents.
It also requires the eventual 4,600 inhabitants of Concord Brentwood, he says, to endure an 800-metre walk along a roaring highway to get to the SkyTrain station.
In addition, Parmar is among those questioning why Concord Brentwood’s often small units are on the market at more than $1,200 per square foot.
Concord Pacific officials could not be reached for comment.
University of B.C. urban landscape professor Patrick Condon says he has “long argued in favour of developments that capitalize on public transit investments. And Brentwood certainly does that.”
But the author of the book Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, adds, “I was also hoping we would get housing that was affordable for area wage earners, and was designed to integrate into surrounding neighbourhoods. I was inspired by the success of Yaletown in this regard.”
Condon believes Concord Brentwood, plus Vancouver’s vast Oakridge Park luxury condo development, “are, sadly, very unaffordable. And they operate as isolated real estate investment islands, poorly integrated with surrounding neighbourhoods.”
Concord Brentwood
A former Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. official doesn’t think the massive project emerging at Concord Brentwood much resembles its pastoral architectural renderings.PHOTO BY CONCORD PACIFIC /PNG
Vancouver’s Sean Cassidy, a former Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. official and real-estate investment banker, doesn’t think the massive buildings emerging at Concord Brentwood resemble the idyllic architectural renderings originally distributed by the developer.
And given that the City of Burnaby has zoned the Willingdon Avenue and Lougheed Highway region for ultra-high density, and its land costs are moderate compared to Vancouver, Cassidy said the $1,200-per-square-foot Brentwood units contradict those who claim mass upzoning is the route to affordability.
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For his part, Parmar compares what is happening to Brentwood Town Centre to what has sprung up over the decades at Burnaby’s congested Metrotown, which has seen a giant mall and scores of highrises erected along traffic-packed Kingsway.
“Other than a busy shopping mall, Metrotown doesn’t provide many benefits to the wider community,” Parmar said. “How many people do you ever see walking along Kingsway? The mall is packed, but the street is empty. Burnaby is a suburb that’s trying to become a big city. And in many ways it’s failing.”
Despite his criticism of the way Burnaby is going, Parmar does appreciate what is happening to at least one neighbourhood. He likes the kind of moderate residential and commercial development the city’s politicians and planners are allowing to occur along Hastings Street in North Burnaby.
Expanding on the medium-density residential community that existed before, Parmar said Hastings is evolving into a vibrant streetscape for walking, shopping and enjoying a coffee.
He is not alone in wishing a similar human-scale community could emerge at Brentwood town centre
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https://vancouversun.com/opinion/col...rnaby-planning
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