Rupert - Renfrew Area Updates

[Migrant_Coconut]

Any time Metro Van gets something thirty floors or higher, there's a 99.9% chance it used to be a strip mall or warehouse with little to no adjacent residential.

[officedweller]

Introduction from the 1987 Broadway Station Area Plan:

[GenWhy?]

That Sation Plan, isn't that what we call the Norquay Plan now? I'm not that old so I've definitely never see that old station plan before.

[twoNeurons]

Interesting stuff. The Italian Cultural Centre was going to go ahead and get Bosa to redevelop their lands between Slocan and Nanaimo. It was going to be a mixed-use commercial/condo development, but the Italian community shot it down.

It has a giant parking area ripe for redevelopment.

Kind of annoying that they exclude the one residential SFH block between Renfrew and Kaslo south of Broadway. If they decided to include that, prices for that land would skyrocket... but now, it will be slowly bought up by developers while it's zoned as SFH and at a future time (sooner rather than later, I would think) they'll petition to upzone it. It's the perfect place for some mid-rises on the hill facing south.

There's also a government building on Grandview/Kaslo that has a sign up building a low-rise mixed use building.

In any case, this is a welcome change and I don't think it's too late, I think you had to wait until market forces started to really look at the area and you needed to have the broadway tech centre built out first before you looked at planning the rest of the area.

This area is more desirable than the Gilmore area IMHO, being within walking distance of Commercial Drive.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

There's also a government building on Grandview/Kaslo that has a sign up building a low-rise mixed use building.

https://rezoning.vancouver.ca/applic...whwy/index.htm

[Feathered Friend]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

https://rezoning.vancouver.ca/applic...whwy/index.htm

I don't know all the details about it, but everything I've heard says that project is dead.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Kind of annoying that they exclude the one residential SFH block between Renfrew and Kaslo south of Broadway. If they decided to include that, prices for that land would skyrocket... but now, it will be slowly bought up by developers while it's zoned as SFH and at a future time (sooner rather than later, I would think) they'll petition to upzone it. It's the perfect place for some mid-rises on the hill facing south.

The study area includes SF homes as they're within the station areas, but we have to wait until Q1 2022 to see what their direction is. The highlit areas on the diagrams I think people see are just previous special designated areas already within the study boundary.

[WarrenC12]

Burnaby is still kicking people out of low rise affordable apartments to make way for new towers.

[Changing City]

In case anyone is interested in numbers, the Metro Vancouver Housing Data Book lists all the demolitions data for 2008 to 2018.

Ground oriented - 10 year annual average
Vancouver 793
Surrey 514
Burnaby 370
Richmond 287
Delta 118
N Vancouver District 115
Coquitlam 100
West Vancouver 100

Obviously some are replaced with new ground oriented homes, but many are redeveloped as apartments.

Apartment demolitions - 10 year annual average
Vancouver 218
Burnaby 101
City of North Vancouver 22
New Westminster 15
Coquitlam 13

So in the decade to 2018 it would seem that not that many apartments were redeveloped overall. That's probably a bit higher now, but Metro haven't published a Data Book since 2019.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Thanks for the info. Although a plan that's basically "medium density to replace low-density res, laneways and basement units everywhere else" sounds awfully familiar...

Johnston, meanwhile, said he’s supportive of changing the types of housing stock in the city but fears some are resistant to that change and instead prefer having single-family neighbourhoods unaltered.

He also hinted that too much change in any direction could be political suicide come next year’s election and cause massive turnover around the council table.

“I don’t think we want to go that way. I don’t think that it’s good for the community, and I do think we need to make sure that the public is aware of the process and how it impacts their neighbourhoods,” Johnston said.

Both councillors were assured by planning staff that any substantive change – whether it be around laneway homes, duplexes or any other large policy shift – would come back before council and be subject to further public consultation.

Yeah, it's safe to say that in terms of de-suburbanization, Burnaby's just about where Vancouver was ten years ago.

[Feathered Friend]

As debate swirls around the future of the Millennium Line’s western terminus, the start of a process to reimagine the area around two of its #EastVan stations met a more subdued response. Still, as these comments show, there was a diversity of opinions.

Many of the 25 people we saw at the Thunderbird Community Centre were glad for the opportunity to ask staff questions in-person, & you still you have a chance to comment too. You can leave your thoughts, or attend a virtual event at the link below.

https://shapeyourcity.ca/rupert-renf...tion-area-plan

As for us, perhaps the most interesting thing we learned was that the blocks around the Expo Line's Nanaimo #SkyTrain station aren’t expected to undergo any change under this policy. Instead, they’ll be incorporated into another planning process sometime in the future.

https://twitter.com/City_Duo/status/...OvA8rUeIlZwkwQ

[Lexus]

2022, July 27

2500-2600 blk Renfrew Street west side

Untitled by Lexus LX570, on Flickr

Untitled by Lexus LX570, on Flickr

[GenWhy?]

"Rupert/Renfrew neighbourhood densification is also the conversion of industrial to commercial/residential."

It is not.

[WarrenC12]

Wow Vin is outdoing himself in being spectacularly wrong across multiple threads this week. Bravo! Not an easy achievement with his track record.

[Feathered Friend]

Given the activity at the Vancouver Technical Secondary School on Saturday, it wasn’t surprising to learn more people have engaged with this phase of the Rupert & Renfrew Area Plan than the entire previous stage. There’s also some clear consensus desires shaping up too.

More retail stores, & safer pedestrian connections were top of mind, as few seemed concerned about preserving the neighbourhood as it exists today. That said, the engineering department’s willingness to forgo requiring any parking stalls in the multi-plex areas caused some angst.

Conversely, those professionals were more worried that this planning process was getting ahead of their ability to study the capacity of the sewer system downstream of the Nanaimo Station area. As a result, those blocks might be cut out of this plan, & included in a later one.

Of course, you won’t have to wait until then, as there’s another open house today at the Renfrew Public Library & the online survey for this community design process is open until February 28th, 2023. You can find the latter at the link below.

https://www.shapeyourcity.ca/rupert-..._tool#tool_tab

https://www.instagram.com/p/CodVe31v...IT4I9eoGGOiWvQ

[Lexus]

2023, Feb 24

Untitled by Lexus LX600, on Flickr

Untitled by Lexus LX600, on Flickr

Untitled by Lexus LX600, on Flickr

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Lexus

2023, Feb 24

Untitled by Lexus LX600, on Flickr

Thanks!
Those sites are for these two buildings:

2543-2583 Renfrew Street & 2895 East 10th Avenue
2603-2655 Renfrew Street

Originally Posted by Feathered Friend

https://council.vancouver.ca/2019121...licyreport.pdf


https://council.vancouver.ca/20191105/documents/p5.pdf

https://cityduo.wordpress.com/2019/1...-rental-homes/

[GMD]

It is good to finally see some new housing in this area. It was always so ridiculous to have a cluster of offices surrounded by single family homes so that it was impossible for anyone working in the offices to ever live nearby.

[ecbin]

Originally Posted by GMD

It is good to finally see some new housing in this area. It was always so ridiculous to have a cluster of offices surrounded by single family homes so that it was impossible for anyone working in the offices to ever live nearby.

100% but why so short? Is there some sort of issue with the land (peat bog?) or did the city, as they often do, prioritise minimising NIMBY complaints? If the land can support it these should be 20+ story developments.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by ecbin

100% but why so short? Is there some sort of issue with the land (peat bog?) or did the city, as they often do, prioritise minimising NIMBY complaints? If the land can support it these should be 20+ story developments.

2525 Renfrew was submitted in 2015, and approved in 2016 (as 2894 E Broadway). It's taken from then until now for the developer to fund the project and move ahead with the 4 storey building.

The two 6 storey buildings being built further south are also rental, and wood-frame. Unless the developer builds with mass timber (which apparently costs pretty much the same as concrete), then six storeys is the maximum permitted under code. The economics of developing, especially in East Vancouver, tends to favour less expensive construction.

The exception is at Joyce Station, Westbank took the lead on building two towers, firstly condos and now rentals, in much taller towers, and presumably that has worked out for them, but they have much deeper pockets than the developers building here. There's a third tower there too, but that has a different developer and appears to have stalled before a public hearing.