Bob Ransford
Sun
Sustainable development in Vancouver is doomed thanks to the outlandish plans the social engineers on Vancouver City Council are cooking up for the redevelopment of southeast False Creek.
The southeast False Creek redevelopment, with the Olympic Village as its core, was supposed to create a model sustainable urban neighbourhood. It was supposed to be a place that showcased what sustainability is all about –achieving that delicate balance between economic, social and environmental objectives in building neighbourhoods.
Instead, the development of Southeast False Creek has the potential to rival fast ferries as one of the costliest failed attempts at using public dollars to build something that has never been built before.
I can hear the cry from the development industry 10 years from now when they look at this great model: “We can’t afford green building standards and sustainable development–just look at what it cost the city in southeast False Creek.”
The city originally invested more than $30 million in acquiring the 32 hectares of former industrial land south of First Avenue along the southeast shore of False Creek. The land was part of the city’s Property Endowment Fund, a portfolio of city-owned real estate used for community facilities, as a land bank for new social housing projects, or to be sold as market-driven development sites to produce profits to be re-invested in the Fund.
These profits have provided the city with a financial cushion during annual budgeting. That was the whole idea behind the Fund when it was first established 30 years ago by the farsighted politicians of the day — the city’s very own rainy-day fund.
The idea was to develop southeast False Creek using the same formula. Only this time, the development would embrace certain sustainability initiatives and a good measure of green building technology to prove to the world what really can be accomplished when “sustainability” is applied in the real world.
However, sustainability only stands up to the test when it is supported by all three pillars — economic, social and environmental.
The COPE council is about to abandon the idea of sustainability and demolish the vital economic pillar when they approve the new southeast False Creek plan on March 1.
Last summer, COPE councillors threw out the previous council’s plan for the lands, which would have produced a model sustainable neighbourhood and it would have made a profit, reinvested for taxpayers in the Property Endowment Fund. They created their own version of sustainability — a version that only exists in the unreal world of COPE-public-policy-by-dreaming where there is no understanding of the simple realities of economics.
The new plan embraces everything from five childcare centres on-site to demonstration gardens and green roofs everywhere. It limits buildings to low and medium rise only, sacrificing the lynch-pin of sustainable development — density.
Moreover, all non-government buildings on the site must achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver status in their green building specifications, even though there is no such measure yet for multi-family residential buildings in B.C. LEED-gold is the standard for all government buildings. These are just a few examples from the exhaustive list of “sustainability initiatives” directed by council.
On top of that, council changed the housing mix to increase the non-market housing component from the usual 20 per cent to 33 per cent of the total housing stock. Then they demanded that a further 33 per cent of the housing on the site be built as “middle-income housing” where half of the land cost will need to be subsidized.
The $68 million in potential profits from development of the southeast False Creek lands won’t go back into the Property Endowment Fund to sustain it in the future. Instead, council is directing these funds back into the project itself to help pay for the costly list of socially and environmentally sustainable development initiatives.
On top of writing off the profits of the project, the COPE council plans to raid the Property Endowment Fund to the tune of a further $85 million to fund their pie-in-the-sky wish list for the site.
Some of the COPE councillors tout this new development as a “learning lab” where the general principles of sustainable design can be evaluated. They believe these initiatives will “foster an understanding of ecological stewardship amongst professionals, academics, the development community and the general public.”
In his motion that reshaped the new southeast False Creek plan, Councillor Raymond Louie urged the city to showcase “especially innovative environmental measures.”
“Take risks to experiment,” he urged.
What an experiment is in the making! It is likely one the results of which will be so shocking it may be decades before we ever embrace the notion of sustainable development in this city again.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
