Archive for November, 2015

Top 4 markets still in favour with Chinese buyers; Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Japan

Monday, November 30th, 2015

Despite China?s economic tumult, Chinese buyers are still investing in overseas property.

Juwai
Other

Although some sectors and industries may be experiencing some trouble, consumer demand is still strong and growing.

In a recent interview with news.com.au, Dave Platter of Juwai.com share that “Retail sales are up 10.8 percent, Starbucks is opening one-and-a-half stores a day, Apple just doubled its operating income, IMAX sales per screen are up from $287,000 to $300,000 per quarter, and outbound tourism is at record levels.”

We look at the top four markets currently still popular with Chinese property investors.

 

Australia

Chinese buyer appetite for the land down under is still going strong, contrary to a recent Credit Suisse report, which projects Chinese buyer demand to abate by as much as 30% in the year till December.

The unrelenting upsurge in Chinese hunger for Australian real estate proves otherwise, mostly bolstered by the weak Aussie dollar against the Chinese yuan, and Australia’s stellar reputation as a safe haven for real estate investment.

According to CBRE, Chinese demand for outbound investment is prevalent, and Australia is “definitely one of the top destinations” and remains eminently attractive.1

Juwai data forecasts a significant growth spurt in Chinese property investors in the next five years – of which Australia stands to benefit greatly from.

A recent trend to take note of though, is the Chinese’ recent penchant for Melbourne properties over longtime favourite Sydney. The Juwai Purchasing Intent Index of Victoria and Melbourne grew by 74% and 92% respectively – a surge that is largely thanks to its substantial number of new residential developments.2

 

United States (US)

The American dream is still alive for Chinese, it seems. The US remains a top choice for Chinese property investors, with California, Florida, New York, Texas, and Washington reigning as the five favourite US states with Chinese buyers.3 However, Chinese homebuyers are also casting their eyes on other options.

Juwai data reveals St. Louis, Gainesville, Florida, and Seattle as the next rising hotspots to watch.

From first-rate education and medical services – the US ranks as the #1 medical destination for Chinese HNWIs – to stable returns and thriving Chinese communities, the US has much to entice Chinese property hunters.

Chinese also rank as part of the top five most prolific international homebuyers in 46 of 50 states in the US.3 Clearly, the Chinese – who spent US$28.6 billion on American real estate – plan to retain their spot as the largest group of foreign property investors in the US.

 

United Kingdom (UK)

China President Xi Jinping’s recent trip to the UK and the royal welcome he received there has done wonders for boosting Chinese interest and attention towards the UK, which has long been a perennial favourite for Chinese buyers.

As the #2 education hotspot for Chinese students – 2014 charted 87,895 Chinese students in Britain, 58,810 whom were newcomers4 – the UK is heavily favoured by Chinese investors due to its top-ranking universities, as well as for its stringent gun control laws that render it a safer country for Chinese students.4

Tack on the latest UK visa relaxation for Chinese tourists, and booming infrastructure project such as the HS2 Rail Project, and we’ve got a winner on our hands.

 

Japan

Chinese investor attention on Japan has been on a rise – the Juwai.com Purchasing Intent Index showed a 20x growth in interest by Chinese investors earlier this year.

Juwai data shows the top four cities most popular with Chinese buyers are Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe.5

The Land of the Rising Sun’s allure stems from a medley of driving factors: its reputation with Chinese as a strong and safe economy5, the yen’s decline against the yuan6, and the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics5, which promises steady returns on investment (ROI) in Tokyo.7

Japan’s popularity as a holiday haven is also a big motivation. Japan was the No. 1 travel destination for Chinese during the October Golden Week8, with Chinese visitors doubling to 400,000 Chinese tourists who spent over 100 billion yen (US$830 million) in those seven days.9

This popularity has even led to the birth of property and shopping tours exclusively tailored for Chinese property hunters, which is no surprise as Juwai research shows Chinese tend to purchase property in holiday destinations they love.

 

Where else are Chinese buyers looking at?

While the above destinations remain at the top, Chinese buyers are increasingly casting their eyes further to less-conventional property investment destinations.

Up-and-coming Mediterranean destinations on Chinese radar have shown rapidly growing purchasing intent, while Spain has snagged the most Chinese investors, followed by Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, and Greece.

However, our latest Juwai Purchasing Intent Index has revealed Cyprus to be the favourite investment destination in the Meds – Chinese investor intent in Cyprus surged 351% last year, particularly in Limassol and Paphos.

One thing’s for sure, Chinese buyers are still investing overseas. It’s just a matter of where.

2015 © Juwai. All Rights Reserved.

Land values dictate future condo prices

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Frank O’Brien
Other

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Rhytm at River District 3281 Kent Avenue 46 homes in a 5-storey building and 99 in an 11-storey building by Polygon

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Other

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What happens when owners or councils violate the Strata Property Act?

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Tony Gioventu
Other

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1555 West Eighth 20 mones in 2 buildings 4-storey and 8-sorey by Kenstone Properties

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Other

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Detached Home Owners Selling Up to Become Multi-Family Landlords: Expert

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Record-low vacancy rate draws single-family home owners into hot multi-family market as long-term landlords cash out

Frank O’Brien
Other

Vancouver’s super-low rental vacancy rate is luring baby-boomer-aged owners of single-family homes into investing in the booming multi-family residential market, according to an industry expert.

Avison Young principal Rob Greer said that he is frequently seeing older owners of detached homes, which are now worth millions, selling their houses and investing in small apartment blocks.

“We get calls from such buyers every time we have a [rental apartment] listing,” he told REW.ca’s sister publication Western Investor.

With the average Vancouver West Side detached house selling for $2.7 million, house owners can sell up, buy a suburban apartment building, reserve the best suite for themselves to live in, “and then draw rent from five or 10 other suites, perhaps as retirement income,” Greer said. There is also a potential windfall profit from appreciation.

As well, with Metro Vancouver’s 0.8 per cent rental vacancy rate – the lowest in Canada – and with many tenants priced out of home buying, landlords are virtually guaranteed full vacancies, he added.

At the same time, soaring land prices have fundamentally changed the local multi-family market, according to Greer. The stunning prices have convinced a slew of vendors to sell up to this new breed of private investor, he said. Families who have held rental properties for decades are now cashing out at what they perceive as peak values.

“They never thought they would see prices like these,” Greer added.

In the first half of this year, 26 rental buildings in BC, each worth more than $5 million, sold for an average of $173,630 per door. In Vancouver, the per-suite prices are often twice the provincial average.

Metro Vancouver rental apartment sales are forecast to top $1 billion this year for the first time, estimated local real estate agent Mark Goodman, a multi-family specialist with HQ Commercial of Vancouver. Next year will likely be higher, he said.

© 2015 Real Estate Weekly

CLI Points to Stable Commercial Real Estate Activity Next Year

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

Other

The BCREA Commercial Leading Indicator (CLI) declined for a second consecutive quarter, falling 0.2 index points in the third quarter to 120.0. The index was still 1.2 per cent higher year-over-year, due to strong momentum from 2014 that carried into the early months of this year. 

Consecutive negative quarters registered in the CLI index means that the three quarter trend in the CLI has flattened out. In the past, this has signaled zero to minimally positive growth in commercial real estate activity over the next two to four quarters. The CLI trend smooths often noisy economic data and is herefore a more reliable indicator of future growth in investment, leasing and other commercial real estate activity. 

While the CLI has turned negative over the past six months, economic growth in BC remains very strong, particularly in the retail sector. Provincial retail sales are up 7 per cent year-to-date, the strongest growth since 2007. Meanwhile, a recovering Canadian economy and continued strength in the US economy has provided a boost to the manufacturing and trade sector in the second half of 2015. Indeed, as measured by the economic activity component of the CLI, the economic climate for commercial real estate remains very attractive for the foreseeable future. 

Employment in BC has picked up recently, but job growth in sectors that tend to lead commercial real estate activity was essentially flat in the third quarter. Average office employment declined by 3,400 jobs over the third quarter and is now at its lowest point since 2013. That decline was partially offset by second consecutive quarter of rising manufacturing employment. The manufacturing sector added about 2,400 jobs over the third quarter and is now up four per cent compared to 2014. 

Finally, falling appetite for Canadian Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and an overall downturn in financial markets in the third quarter led to a decline in the CLI financial component. Overall, weakness in financial markets and modest employment losses overwhelmed strong gains in provincial economic activity to pull the CLI down in the third quarter. A flat underlying trend in the CLI points to stability in commercial real estate activity on the horizon, though a very strong economic climate in the province should continue to support modest growth. 

Variation in the Commercial Leading Indicator can be broken out into three distinct components: 

»The economic activity component of the CLI follows the overall trend in the BC economy and reflects    changes in economic variables shown to lead commercial real estate activity.

»The employment component reflects changes in the commercial real estate environment due to changes  in the overall business cycle.

»The financial component acts as an early warning indicator from financial markets that could signal turning points in the commercial real estate market.

Copyright ©2015 BCREA

How to avoid risk of mistakes being made regarding dates and times in a contract, amendment, or other agreement

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Jennifer Clee
Other

In today’s busy marketplace, there is a greater risk of mistakes being made regarding dates and times in a contract, amendment, or other agreement for the sale or lease of land. It is of critical importance that licensees carefully review agreement terms with their clients to avoid simple, but costly date and/or time errors.

Have you ever written a cheque (I know, a foreign concept these days) in January, and mistakenly put the wrong year? It is not uncommon, particularly around that time of year. While usually the mistake is easily rectified, the consequences to licensees making this mistake on a contract of purchase and sale can be significant.

Consider the following: a buyer writes an offer for a property in October 2015 with a completion date of April 15, 2016. The seller, seeking completion before the New Year, instructs his licensee to counter the buyer’s offer changing the completion date to December 15, 2015. The licensee, in changing the completion date to December 15th, neglects to change the year to 2015, leaving the completion date as December 15, 2016. While one would hope the mistake to be quickly acknowledged and rectified by the parties, some buyers will seek to take advantage of the error.

Failing to implement a good diary system may cause a licensee to miss key dates, such as subject removal dates, resulting in a buyer losing the property they desperately wished to buy. Consider this scenario: a buyer wishes to acquire a property to redevelop. The buyer’s licensee writes an offer which includes various subject conditions to be waived or removed within 45 days. The licensee fails to contact the buyer prior to the subject removal date with the result that subjects are not waived or removed within time. The seller then maintains the contract is void, exposing the licensee to a claim for damages by the buyer.

Failure to communicate written acceptance of offers or counter-offers within the time specified in the contract may also enable a party to argue the contract is unenforceable. In a recent case, a seller accepted the buyer’s counter-offer in writing, but the seller’s written acceptance was allegedly not communicated to the buyer within the time specified in the contract. The buyer maintained the contract was unenforceable. Licensees should recall that Section 5-4 of the Real Estate Council Rules requires a licensee to promptly deliver a copy of the signed acceptance of any offer to each of the parties to the contract and to the related brokerage of the licensee.

Confusion regarding the time or date by which a term, condition or other event must occur will also increase the risk of a buyer or seller taking the position that the contract is unenforceable. If an event is to happen within a number of days or a number of hours, care should be taken to document, in writing, when the time period starts to run and end. Failure to clarify the start and end times or dates can result in one of the parties challenging whether an event occurred within the time specified in the contract.

Licensees can avoid lawsuits, professional complaints and harm to their professional reputation by:

  • Ensuring subject removal dates and other important dates are properly recorded and tracked;
  • Ensuring acceptance of any offer/counter offer within the time specified in the contract and written communication of that acceptance within that time;
  • Clarifying the time/date by which an event must occur, be it subject removal, payment of a deposit or compliance of a fundamental term or condition, and ensuring all parties have the same understanding of that time/date, and;
  • Ensuring extensions of time are obtained and agreed to in writing by all parties before the original deadline expires.

Copyright ©2015 BCREA

Retired planners push back against proposed tower at 555 West Cordova Street in Vancouver

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

Daniel Wood
Other

This is a place everyone knows of but few consider. It’s where—in the years ahead—urban politics will contend. Controversy will be high. And decisions momentous. If one were to stand against the fence that backs Impark’s 76-vehicle parking lot—the one between Waterfront Station and Gastown’s Steamworks Brewing—it would be possible to imagine how two opposing and enormously important ideas will collide here.

Or, put simply: what is the future of Vancouver’s vast, train-track–covered downtown waterfront?

The story begins with a bizarre, 26-storey office building proposed for that parking lot and a feeling among many that, propelled by Vision Vancouver’s “greenest city” initiatives, the city’s traditionally sensitive planning process is being bulldozed by the juggernaut of unwanted high-rise towers. Becoming green has started looking more like Kermit the Frog than any prince.

For example, the city’s planning department proposed in 2013 to put 20 12- to 36-storey towers near the Broadway–Commercial Drive transit intersection. Local residents detested the idea. There are, currently, a dozen more controversial high-rises, some up to 40 storeys high, on the drawing board for the Oakridge Mall area. And still more in Marpole and Mount Pleasant. The public began muttering about Vision succumbing to the embrace of developers. And former city planners began worrying that long-held development principles were being abandoned to the expediency of so-called green growth.

Then news of Cadillac Fairview’s notorious 555 Cordova Street “twisty tower” plan broke this past January. The thing would spiral upward from the waterfront parking lot like an unbalanced crystal, leaning directly over the classic 1914 train station. Reaction was swift. Through a freedom-of-information application for 250 emails sent to Brian Jackson—at that time the city’s general manager of planning and development and a proponent of the project—shortly thereafter, I learned this: 129 writers and organizations opposed the structure; 18 supported it. One person called it “a contender for the ‘Ugliest Architecture in the World’ award”. Another: “an alien parasite eating the Waterfront Station”.

Even worse, Ray Spaxman, the city’s esteemed former city planner, called the building “a Martian landing” site. This despite Jackson’s endorsing the asymmetrical tower, calling it “an extraordinary design”.

There is, in politics as in love, a Law of Unintended Consequences, and the widespread rejection of the 555 Cordova structure produced a series of spectacularly unexpected repercussions. Critics complained that it was 15 storeys higher and contained six times more floor space than suggested by development guidelines for the site. Worse, it gave a glass-and-steel finger to Gastown’s adjacent 19th-century architecture.

In an interview at his home, Spaxman said: “ ‘Good neighbourliness’ used to be one of our planning mantras at city hall—from proportions to heritage to land use. If you read the 555 architect’s design rationale—that the building ‘maintains a sense of human scale for the pedestrian experience’—and then look at the illustrations, you may wonder who is smoking what.” Note the three words used to be. A not-so-covert fight was on: former city planners versus the pro-tower city planner, Jackson.

The 555 proposal became, in this way, a sort of stalking horse for Spaxman and his allies, who understood that were it to go ahead, the towerification of Vancouver—with Vision’s backing and Jackson’s persistent acquiescence—might proceed unchallenged. And this meant the Central Waterfront Hub Framework development, a massive 2009 plan envisioning a dozen more office towers on the Burrard Inlet waterfront adjacent to the Impark lot, could, in time, also proceed. Despite its not having had any public input.

What happened next arrived like a bomb at city hall. In a five-page open letter to Gregor Robertson and city council last July, the newly formed Downtown Waterfront Working Group (DWWG), a coalition of concerned planners, former city councillors, urbanists, and academics, lambasted the 555 plan. And, obliquely, Jackson. The building wasn’t just ugly, they said, it broke every rule of compatibility that Vancouver’s celebrated urban design was established on. Far more importantly, this powerful group took advantage of the 555 controversy to argue that the six-year-old Hub Framework plan for the city’s adjacent waterfront also be shelved and, instead, council investigate an imaginative redesign of the nine-hectare site, located directly east of Canada Place and directly north of the proposed 555 tower. Use this pause, they suggested, to Think Big.

Yes, the critics agreed, the Hub site should still feature a huge roofed transit concourse, as was proposed in 2009. It would extend northward over the tracks, directly behind Waterfront Station, and would shelter the movement of tens of thousands of transit passengers using the site daily. But in the future, a lot of the site might become—with dramatic views toward the North Shore mountains—a huge public amenity, with an emphasis on outdoor restaurants, parks, retail stores, and entertainment facilities right on the waterfront, right behind Gastown. Rather than it becoming, as the Hub Framework proposes, a concrete extension of downtown, with office towers built over the train tracks there. The letter was signed by Spaxman, Larry Beasley, and Brent Toderian (Vancouver’s three former directors of planning), plus 36 other authorities on Vancouver’s urban-planning politics.

Four days later, at age 60, Jackson quit.

By coincidence, I’d arranged to interview Jackson for this article on the day after he announced this. He explained to me that he’d considered retiring months earlier and his departure had nothing to do with the critical letter. I found this assertion hard to believe. He admitted that the DWWG letter was “unhelpful”. He felt that halting construction of the 555 tower—as the letter urged—would jeopardize the multibillion-dollar Hub waterfront development, to which it was linked as step one for the entire waterfront project.

“I’d love to dial things back to the time Spaxman was here, when the federal government was spending money on infrastructure. But we’re much more dependent on the private sector now. There’s a lot of potential for office towers in this area,” he said, pointing to the 44-page Hub Framework design on his desk. “It’s a key location for adding development and jobs, for acting as a catalyst for the waterfront transportation hub.”

It was, however, when I challenged him about his apparent rubber-stamping of developers’ oversized towers—Cadillac Fairview’s 555 Cordova plan, the clusters of towers around the Broadway-Commercial intersection and around Oakridge Mall—that the conversation quickly changed.

“People say you’re under pressure to approve new towers as part of Vision’s greenest-city strategy,” I said.

“No. No pressure from any member of city council.”

“Not from Penny Ballem?” I asked, speaking of Vancouver’s powerful city manager.

“No. No pressure from her. No. Pressure. From. Anyone. None. Period.” And goodbye.

From his tone, I knew he knew what I was talking about. Scot Hein, the senior planner formerly overseeing the Broadway-Commercial design, had earlier quit—along with two other city planners—in protest against directives from what Hein called “senior management” to put maximum tower densities into the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood. And to do this without following long-established community-planning protocols. (It was clear that, among the many planning experts interviewed for this story, the phrase “senior management” was code for Ballem and that she was, in fact, dictating that towers be built at major transit hubs to propel high-rise densification.)

To help me understand the development issues and political complexities of the Hub waterfront site, I asked Frank Ducote to be my guide. Now retired from 11 years as a Vancouver city planner, and one of the authors of the contentious DWWG critique, Ducote first led me through Waterfront Station, then to that fence that backs the Impark lot. To the north, there’s a stunning aperture onto a possible future there.

“This is the most magnificent view in Vancouver,” Ducote said of the panorama before us. “Maybe the best urban view in the world!” I looked. It’s easy to agree.

From this elevated position, Ducote considered the transit traffic that surges past the parking lot: 100,000 people a day flow through the nearby Waterfront transit station; 30,000 more daily ride SeaBus, floatplanes, and helijet flights from Coal Harbour; 15,000 more daily use the Westcoast Express train; and 2,000,000 more annually depart from the Canada Place cruise-ship terminal to our left. Subways, buses, ferries, cruise ships, taxis, floatplanes, helicopters, trains, and pedestrians: it is, Ducote said, the most densely compact—and confusing—transit hub on Earth. Ask anyone who uses the place; it is in desperate need of redesign.

But the Hub site is also a chessboard of corporate land ownership and government interests. Cadillac Fairview is one of Canada’s largest commercial-real-estate developers, with holdings of $25 billion, including properties on both sides of Waterfront Station. Carrera Management Corp. acquired development rights—and still holds them—for most of the land behind Gastown. As well, there’s a dozen or so sets of tracks there controlled by Canadian Pacific Railway. Plus, there are TransLink’s rail and SeaBus interests and Port Metro Vancouver’s marine interests.

“Under Jackson, developers were getting everything they wanted,” Ducote said, “as if policy and neighbourhoods didn’t matter. In recent years, it’s been ‘form follows finance’. That’s the world we’re in right now. Density equals money. But form should follow policy, follow public consultation.

“So we’ve taken it upon ourselves,” he said of the former city planners, architects, and academics who signed the damning open letter, “to question the city’s rush toward densification and towers. The gloves are off. ‘Why are you so upset?’ Jackson asked us. Why? Towers here and here and here!” And with a gesture, Ducote wiped his hand across the North Shore mountains as if erasing the spectacular view before us.

At 80, Ray Spaxman is—although he’d be embarrassed by the idea—a legend. Vancouver’s livability owes its origins to his 16-year tenure as city planner (1973 to 1989), and to the design guidelines he applied from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the famous 1961 urbanist book by Jane Jacobs. Sitting in his book-lined West Vancouver studio, he scrounged a pen and stray envelope and drew for me an equilateral triangle connected at its corners by three little circles that he labelled “politicians”, “public”, and “bureaucrats”. Then he connected these words with double-ended arrows.

“Livability,” Spaxman said of his urban-planning principles, “was our central concern. Designing a livable city is an equal partnership: politicians, the public, bureaucrats. It requires a balance between these, a synergy between forces.” And he gestured back and forth over the arrows, indicating that power flows both ways. “When you love a city, you love all of it. And you reach out to get people’s love and opinion and involvement. It’s what gives people a sense of place. It’s what has made Vancouver the most attractive city in the world.

“But…I’m worried by what’s happening in Vancouver; the balance is gone,” he told me in this early-September interview. And he pointed to his triangle. “I think Penny Ballem lacks an understanding of urban design and public engagement. Brian Jackson was brought in to produce densification and raise capital input for the city. Penny pushed that. Vision has done a lot of things I support. But there’s also a whole lot of stuff wrong at city hall. City council doesn’t listen anymore.”

And what about the 555 tower and the Hub plan? I asked, wondering if his critique applied there.

“I looked at the design of 555 and I was shocked! You can’t do that, I thought. It’s against design guidelines. It doesn’t fit the neighbourhood. This opened the door to thinking about the entire 2009 Hub plan for the central waterfront. It’s a crucial part of the city. But that plan’s been abandoned for six years. It would be a lovely opportunity for the city to show leadership, to reconsider the plan, to have a discussion with the landowners there, get public input,” Spaxman said, reiterating the contents of the open letter. “So we wrote the mayor and council to express our concern. We did what city hall should have done.”

Within weeks of Spaxman saying this, Ballem was fired.

Like Ducote and Spaxman, Patrick Condon, UBC’s chair of urban design, was sufficiently outraged by Jackson’s support for the 555 tower design—and the implications of that for the linked Hub design—to join the others in signing the open letter. “The city has lost its way,” he told me, speaking of council’s pro-tower advocacy. “It puts short-term benefits over long-term development. It puts profits over people. The value of urban design has been diminished at city hall. Vancouver’s known for its modesty. We’re admired all over the world for livability, not for weird buildings that shout like Donald Trump: ‘Look at me!’

“Vancouver’s got this dramatic space,” Condon said of the Hub site. “The question is: how can we capitalize on it? In the letter, we said to council: ‘Don’t encumber the future by making decisions there fast. Good planning takes time. It’s laborious. Consensus will emerge. Maybe you’ll discover you don’t want a bunch of office towers on the waterfront after all. Maybe instead a big public gathering place. The site’s about as important to Vancouver as Piazza San Marco is to Venice. Do something fantastic there.’ ”

The problems of doing “something fantastic there” are, I know, immense. Vancouver owns none of the land. So the city’s primary power is saying “No” to developers—something city hall has, demonstrably, not been inclined to do recently. In fact, Jackson argued against delaying construction of 555 and the Hub’s office towers when we talked. So did Vision councillor Geoff Meggs, who felt that, despite the open letter, the waterfront towers should go ahead. Meggs believes implementation of the plan is necessary to trigger federal infrastructure money for the adjacent proposed transit concourse linking buses, trains, ferries, taxis, and passenger movements under one gigantic roof.

Steve Brown, the city’s manager of traffic and data, spent two years researching and writing the actual Hub Framework report, and he explained to me—pointing at diagrams—the complexities of whatever happens there. “We’ve proposed building over an active rail yard—a huge platform over a dozen sets of train tracks. There’s $100 million of roads needed on the platform to be paid for by developers who’d put a series of commercial towers there.

“But,” he cautioned, “approval of Cadillac Fairview’s 555 tower is catalyst for all the rest.”

Unlike Jackson and Meggs, it’s Brown believes that the critical open-letter campaign isn’t entirely bad. He compares it to the angry 1970s protests against a freeway being pushed through Vancouver that ultimately saved Chinatown, Gastown, and the very Burrard Inlet waterfront now under development consideration from becoming an eight-lane superhighway. “Of course, Cadillac Fairview isn’t interested in delay,” Brown said. “They’re a pension fund. They think short-term. But delay might benefit them. Priorities can change.” (Cadillac Fairview did not respond to an interview request.)

And things have changed since 2009. Commercial vacancy rates in downtown Vancouver are currently at a 12-year high: 10 percent and increasing. That’s almost two million square feet of empty office space. The last thing Vancouver needs right now is 12 more office towers.

And if precedent means something, consider this: more than 40 years ago, the entire south shore of False Creek was lined with railroad tracks, remnants of the city’s industrial past. The land behind Jericho Beach was a military base, with gigantic hangars for seaplanes there. And that proposed highway was aiming at the heart of Chinatown and Gastown. Should False Creek be surrounded with high-rise towers? Should Jericho be converted to housing? Should the highway go ahead? Developers, of course, said yes. Build! But a newly arrived city planner said, “Let’s not rush into things. Maybe low-rise is best for south False Creek. Maybe a park is best for Jericho. Maybe the highway is a bad idea.” That planner’s name was, of course, Ray Spaxman.

Lance Berelowitz is a noted Vancouver-based planner and author of the 2005 book Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination. Seated in his Mount Pleasant condo, he scrolled through images of cities elsewhere that have transformed their industrial waterfronts: Boston, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Tel Aviv, and, best of all, Sydney, Australia, with its harbourside parks and shops, tree-lined promenades, and a new transportation hub at Circular Quay.

Turning to Vancouver’s waterfront and a possible revisioning of the Hub design, he told me he’s not opposed to towers there. “We have to make sure the corporations are respected. They’re stakeholders. Their concerns count,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the city doesn’t own land there. It’s got power: discretionary zoning, permit approvals, public opinion. Imagine if Vision jumped on this. The train tracks get covered. Think of the value of that! A magnificent transit concourse is designed. And an expanded ferry system proposed—to serve places like West Van and Bowen Island. Plus, a lot of public access. All this done under Vancouver’s ‘greenest city’ guidelines: green high-rises, green transportation, green spaces, with walkways and restaurants. Directly on the waterfront. It could be transformational!”

Berelowitz has, I can tell, thought a lot about this. “Vancouver’s the world’s poster child for urban planning. We’ve got no shortage of great planners here. But it’ll take political will to do this. It’ll take leadership. It will take imagination. Push ‘pause’ on the current Hub plan,” he said.“The city then lays the table, invites the stakeholders and public, hosts a party, provides the wine, and asks everyone: ‘What should we do there?’ ”

© 2015 Vancouver free press

Retired planners push back against proposed tower at 555 West Cordova Street in Vancouver

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

Daniel Wood
Other

This is a place everyone knows of but few consider. It’s where—in the years ahead—urban politics will contend. Controversy will be high. And decisions momentous. If one were to stand against the fence that backs Impark’s 76-vehicle parking lot—the one between Waterfront Station and Gastown’s Steamworks Brewing—it would be possible to imagine how two opposing and enormously important ideas will collide here.

Or, put simply: what is the future of Vancouver’s vast, train-track–covered downtown waterfront?

The story begins with a bizarre, 26-storey office building proposed for that parking lot and a feeling among many that, propelled by Vision Vancouver’s “greenest city” initiatives, the city’s traditionally sensitive planning process is being bulldozed by the juggernaut of unwanted high-rise towers. Becoming green has started looking more like Kermit the Frog than any prince.

For example, the city’s planning department proposed in 2013 to put 20 12- to 36-storey towers near the Broadway–Commercial Drive transit intersection. Local residents detested the idea. There are, currently, a dozen more controversial high-rises, some up to 40 storeys high, on the drawing board for the Oakridge Mall area. And still more in Marpole and Mount Pleasant. The public began muttering about Vision succumbing to the embrace of developers. And former city planners began worrying that long-held development principles were being abandoned to the expediency of so-called green growth.

Then news of Cadillac Fairview’s notorious 555 Cordova Street “twisty tower” plan broke this past January. The thing would spiral upward from the waterfront parking lot like an unbalanced crystal, leaning directly over the classic 1914 train station. Reaction was swift. Through a freedom-of-information application for 250 emails sent to Brian Jackson—at that time the city’s general manager of planning and development and a proponent of the project—shortly thereafter, I learned this: 129 writers and organizations opposed the structure; 18 supported it. One person called it “a contender for the ‘Ugliest Architecture in the World’ award”. Another: “an alien parasite eating the Waterfront Station”.

Even worse, Ray Spaxman, the city’s esteemed former city planner, called the building “a Martian landing” site. This despite Jackson’s endorsing the asymmetrical tower, calling it “an extraordinary design”.

There is, in politics as in love, a Law of Unintended Consequences, and the widespread rejection of the 555 Cordova structure produced a series of spectacularly unexpected repercussions. Critics complained that it was 15 storeys higher and contained six times more floor space than suggested by development guidelines for the site. Worse, it gave a glass-and-steel finger to Gastown’s adjacent 19th-century architecture.

In an interview at his home, Spaxman said: “ ‘Good neighbourliness’ used to be one of our planning mantras at city hall—from proportions to heritage to land use. If you read the 555 architect’s design rationale—that the building ‘maintains a sense of human scale for the pedestrian experience’—and then look at the illustrations, you may wonder who is smoking what.” Note the three words used to be. A not-so-covert fight was on: former city planners versus the pro-tower city planner, Jackson.

The 555 proposal became, in this way, a sort of stalking horse for Spaxman and his allies, who understood that were it to go ahead, the towerification of Vancouver—with Vision’s backing and Jackson’s persistent acquiescence—might proceed unchallenged. And this meant the Central Waterfront Hub Framework development, a massive 2009 plan envisioning a dozen more office towers on the Burrard Inlet waterfront adjacent to the Impark lot, could, in time, also proceed. Despite its not having had any public input.

What happened next arrived like a bomb at city hall. In a five-page open letter to Gregor Robertson and city council last July, the newly formed Downtown Waterfront Working Group (DWWG), a coalition of concerned planners, former city councillors, urbanists, and academics, lambasted the 555 plan. And, obliquely, Jackson. The building wasn’t just ugly, they said, it broke every rule of compatibility that Vancouver’s celebrated urban design was established on. Far more importantly, this powerful group took advantage of the 555 controversy to argue that the six-year-old Hub Framework plan for the city’s adjacent waterfront also be shelved and, instead, council investigate an imaginative redesign of the nine-hectare site, located directly east of Canada Place and directly north of the proposed 555 tower. Use this pause, they suggested, to Think Big.

Yes, the critics agreed, the Hub site should still feature a huge roofed transit concourse, as was proposed in 2009. It would extend northward over the tracks, directly behind Waterfront Station, and would shelter the movement of tens of thousands of transit passengers using the site daily. But in the future, a lot of the site might become—with dramatic views toward the North Shore mountains—a huge public amenity, with an emphasis on outdoor restaurants, parks, retail stores, and entertainment facilities right on the waterfront, right behind Gastown. Rather than it becoming, as the Hub Framework proposes, a concrete extension of downtown, with office towers built over the train tracks there. The letter was signed by Spaxman, Larry Beasley, and Brent Toderian (Vancouver’s three former directors of planning), plus 36 other authorities on Vancouver’s urban-planning politics.

Four days later, at age 60, Jackson quit.

By coincidence, I’d arranged to interview Jackson for this article on the day after he announced this. He explained to me that he’d considered retiring months earlier and his departure had nothing to do with the critical letter. I found this assertion hard to believe. He admitted that the DWWG letter was “unhelpful”. He felt that halting construction of the 555 tower—as the letter urged—would jeopardize the multibillion-dollar Hub waterfront development, to which it was linked as step one for the entire waterfront project.

“I’d love to dial things back to the time Spaxman was here, when the federal government was spending money on infrastructure. But we’re much more dependent on the private sector now. There’s a lot of potential for office towers in this area,” he said, pointing to the 44-page Hub Framework design on his desk. “It’s a key location for adding development and jobs, for acting as a catalyst for the waterfront transportation hub.”

It was, however, when I challenged him about his apparent rubber-stamping of developers’ oversized towers—Cadillac Fairview’s 555 Cordova plan, the clusters of towers around the Broadway-Commercial intersection and around Oakridge Mall—that the conversation quickly changed.

“People say you’re under pressure to approve new towers as part of Vision’s greenest-city strategy,” I said.

“No. No pressure from any member of city council.”

“Not from Penny Ballem?” I asked, speaking of Vancouver’s powerful city manager.

“No. No pressure from her. No. Pressure. From. Anyone. None. Period.” And goodbye.

From his tone, I knew he knew what I was talking about. Scot Hein, the senior planner formerly overseeing the Broadway-Commercial design, had earlier quit—along with two other city planners—in protest against directives from what Hein called “senior management” to put maximum tower densities into the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood. And to do this without following long-established community-planning protocols. (It was clear that, among the many planning experts interviewed for this story, the phrase “senior management” was code for Ballem and that she was, in fact, dictating that towers be built at major transit hubs to propel high-rise densification.)

To help me understand the development issues and political complexities of the Hub waterfront site, I asked Frank Ducote to be my guide. Now retired from 11 years as a Vancouver city planner, and one of the authors of the contentious DWWG critique, Ducote first led me through Waterfront Station, then to that fence that backs the Impark lot. To the north, there’s a stunning aperture onto a possible future there.

“This is the most magnificent view in Vancouver,” Ducote said of the panorama before us. “Maybe the best urban view in the world!” I looked. It’s easy to agree.

From this elevated position, Ducote considered the transit traffic that surges past the parking lot: 100,000 people a day flow through the nearby Waterfront transit station; 30,000 more daily ride SeaBus, floatplanes, and helijet flights from Coal Harbour; 15,000 more daily use the Westcoast Express train; and 2,000,000 more annually depart from the Canada Place cruise-ship terminal to our left. Subways, buses, ferries, cruise ships, taxis, floatplanes, helicopters, trains, and pedestrians: it is, Ducote said, the most densely compact—and confusing—transit hub on Earth. Ask anyone who uses the place; it is in desperate need of redesign.

But the Hub site is also a chessboard of corporate land ownership and government interests. Cadillac Fairview is one of Canada’s largest commercial-real-estate developers, with holdings of $25 billion, including properties on both sides of Waterfront Station. Carrera Management Corp. acquired development rights—and still holds them—for most of the land behind Gastown. As well, there’s a dozen or so sets of tracks there controlled by Canadian Pacific Railway. Plus, there are TransLink’s rail and SeaBus interests and Port Metro Vancouver’s marine interests.

“Under Jackson, developers were getting everything they wanted,” Ducote said, “as if policy and neighbourhoods didn’t matter. In recent years, it’s been ‘form follows finance’. That’s the world we’re in right now. Density equals money. But form should follow policy, follow public consultation.

“So we’ve taken it upon ourselves,” he said of the former city planners, architects, and academics who signed the damning open letter, “to question the city’s rush toward densification and towers. The gloves are off. ‘Why are you so upset?’ Jackson asked us. Why? Towers here and here and here!” And with a gesture, Ducote wiped his hand across the North Shore mountains as if erasing the spectacular view before us.

At 80, Ray Spaxman is—although he’d be embarrassed by the idea—a legend. Vancouver’s livability owes its origins to his 16-year tenure as city planner (1973 to 1989), and to the design guidelines he applied from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the famous 1961 urbanist book by Jane Jacobs. Sitting in his book-lined West Vancouver studio, he scrounged a pen and stray envelope and drew for me an equilateral triangle connected at its corners by three little circles that he labelled “politicians”, “public”, and “bureaucrats”. Then he connected these words with double-ended arrows.

“Livability,” Spaxman said of his urban-planning principles, “was our central concern. Designing a livable city is an equal partnership: politicians, the public, bureaucrats. It requires a balance between these, a synergy between forces.” And he gestured back and forth over the arrows, indicating that power flows both ways. “When you love a city, you love all of it. And you reach out to get people’s love and opinion and involvement. It’s what gives people a sense of place. It’s what has made Vancouver the most attractive city in the world.

“But…I’m worried by what’s happening in Vancouver; the balance is gone,” he told me in this early-September interview. And he pointed to his triangle. “I think Penny Ballem lacks an understanding of urban design and public engagement. Brian Jackson was brought in to produce densification and raise capital input for the city. Penny pushed that. Vision has done a lot of things I support. But there’s also a whole lot of stuff wrong at city hall. City council doesn’t listen anymore.”

And what about the 555 tower and the Hub plan? I asked, wondering if his critique applied there.

“I looked at the design of 555 and I was shocked! You can’t do that, I thought. It’s against design guidelines. It doesn’t fit the neighbourhood. This opened the door to thinking about the entire 2009 Hub plan for the central waterfront. It’s a crucial part of the city. But that plan’s been abandoned for six years. It would be a lovely opportunity for the city to show leadership, to reconsider the plan, to have a discussion with the landowners there, get public input,” Spaxman said, reiterating the contents of the open letter. “So we wrote the mayor and council to express our concern. We did what city hall should have done.”

Within weeks of Spaxman saying this, Ballem was fired.

Like Ducote and Spaxman, Patrick Condon, UBC’s chair of urban design, was sufficiently outraged by Jackson’s support for the 555 tower design—and the implications of that for the linked Hub design—to join the others in signing the open letter. “The city has lost its way,” he told me, speaking of council’s pro-tower advocacy. “It puts short-term benefits over long-term development. It puts profits over people. The value of urban design has been diminished at city hall. Vancouver’s known for its modesty. We’re admired all over the world for livability, not for weird buildings that shout like Donald Trump: ‘Look at me!’

“Vancouver’s got this dramatic space,” Condon said of the Hub site. “The question is: how can we capitalize on it? In the letter, we said to council: ‘Don’t encumber the future by making decisions there fast. Good planning takes time. It’s laborious. Consensus will emerge. Maybe you’ll discover you don’t want a bunch of office towers on the waterfront after all. Maybe instead a big public gathering place. The site’s about as important to Vancouver as Piazza San Marco is to Venice. Do something fantastic there.’ ”

The problems of doing “something fantastic there” are, I know, immense. Vancouver owns none of the land. So the city’s primary power is saying “No” to developers—something city hall has, demonstrably, not been inclined to do recently. In fact, Jackson argued against delaying construction of 555 and the Hub’s office towers when we talked. So did Vision councillor Geoff Meggs, who felt that, despite the open letter, the waterfront towers should go ahead. Meggs believes implementation of the plan is necessary to trigger federal infrastructure money for the adjacent proposed transit concourse linking buses, trains, ferries, taxis, and passenger movements under one gigantic roof.

Steve Brown, the city’s manager of traffic and data, spent two years researching and writing the actual Hub Framework report, and he explained to me—pointing at diagrams—the complexities of whatever happens there. “We’ve proposed building over an active rail yard—a huge platform over a dozen sets of train tracks. There’s $100 million of roads needed on the platform to be paid for by developers who’d put a series of commercial towers there.

“But,” he cautioned, “approval of Cadillac Fairview’s 555 tower is catalyst for all the rest.”

Unlike Jackson and Meggs, it’s Brown believes that the critical open-letter campaign isn’t entirely bad. He compares it to the angry 1970s protests against a freeway being pushed through Vancouver that ultimately saved Chinatown, Gastown, and the very Burrard Inlet waterfront now under development consideration from becoming an eight-lane superhighway. “Of course, Cadillac Fairview isn’t interested in delay,” Brown said. “They’re a pension fund. They think short-term. But delay might benefit them. Priorities can change.” (Cadillac Fairview did not respond to an interview request.)

And things have changed since 2009. Commercial vacancy rates in downtown Vancouver are currently at a 12-year high: 10 percent and increasing. That’s almost two million square feet of empty office space. The last thing Vancouver needs right now is 12 more office towers.

And if precedent means something, consider this: more than 40 years ago, the entire south shore of False Creek was lined with railroad tracks, remnants of the city’s industrial past. The land behind Jericho Beach was a military base, with gigantic hangars for seaplanes there. And that proposed highway was aiming at the heart of Chinatown and Gastown. Should False Creek be surrounded with high-rise towers? Should Jericho be converted to housing? Should the highway go ahead? Developers, of course, said yes. Build! But a newly arrived city planner said, “Let’s not rush into things. Maybe low-rise is best for south False Creek. Maybe a park is best for Jericho. Maybe the highway is a bad idea.” That planner’s name was, of course, Ray Spaxman.

Lance Berelowitz is a noted Vancouver-based planner and author of the 2005 book Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination. Seated in his Mount Pleasant condo, he scrolled through images of cities elsewhere that have transformed their industrial waterfronts: Boston, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Tel Aviv, and, best of all, Sydney, Australia, with its harbourside parks and shops, tree-lined promenades, and a new transportation hub at Circular Quay.

Turning to Vancouver’s waterfront and a possible revisioning of the Hub design, he told me he’s not opposed to towers there. “We have to make sure the corporations are respected. They’re stakeholders. Their concerns count,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the city doesn’t own land there. It’s got power: discretionary zoning, permit approvals, public opinion. Imagine if Vision jumped on this. The train tracks get covered. Think of the value of that! A magnificent transit concourse is designed. And an expanded ferry system proposed—to serve places like West Van and Bowen Island. Plus, a lot of public access. All this done under Vancouver’s ‘greenest city’ guidelines: green high-rises, green transportation, green spaces, with walkways and restaurants. Directly on the waterfront. It could be transformational!”

Berelowitz has, I can tell, thought a lot about this. “Vancouver’s the world’s poster child for urban planning. We’ve got no shortage of great planners here. But it’ll take political will to do this. It’ll take leadership. It will take imagination. Push ‘pause’ on the current Hub plan,” he said.“The city then lays the table, invites the stakeholders and public, hosts a party, provides the wine, and asks everyone: ‘What should we do there?’ ”

© 2015 Vancouver free press