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Vancouver city hall extends time for public input as reno fight heats up in West End

There is talk at Berkeley Tower about how a groundswell of community opposition can snarl a developer's plans even when they meet and go beyond the legal requirements.

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Tenants at Berkeley Tower in the West End are organizing to fight their planned evictions as Reliance Properties proposes to do extensive repairs on the 16-storey building in a prime location overlooking English Bay.

The company is giving tenants a long lead time and compensation that is almost double what relocation regulations require of developers, said Reliance president Jon Stovell.

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But now, especially after the civic elections, there is talk of how community opposition might be able to snarl a developer’s plans even when they meet, and even exceed, the regulations. With housing issues key to so many high-profile municipal races, observers and tenants feel there is now greater pressure on politicians to protect existing affordable rental stock for long-term tenants.

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Gordon Price, a former six-term Vancouver councillor, wrote in a recent post to his blog that “a strategy for community and housing activists emerged from the fight over 105 Keefer.”

He is suggesting Berkeley Tower tenants might want to follow the strategy taken by Chinatown community groups at 105 Keefer St.

Former longtime Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price is urging tenants at the Berkeley to fight the project in the same way residents in Chinatown took down a Keefer Street proposal.
Former longtime Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price is urging tenants at the Berkeley to fight the project in the same way residents in Chinatown took down a Keefer Street proposal. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

“Choose a development that, though following proper process and may be allowable under the existing zoning, is out of touch with the sentiment in a changing community. … Change the terms of the debate. Go to public meetings and contest the assumptions, ideally culminating in a decision, whether from council or an authorizing board, that rejects the current proposal and changes everything that follows,” he wrote.

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105 Keefer was a proposed condo project in Chinatown that was ultimately rejected by the City of Vancouver’s development permit board last year in rare response to community opposition.

In the end, Beedie Development Group was halted from building at 105 Keefer St. even though it had spent three years pitching a total of five proposals. Its final one didn’t even require a change in zoning.

Reliance bought Berkeley Tower at Denman and Davie Street for $43 million in 2016.

The company outlined to the 60 renters in June a plan for them to move out in a year’s time so major structural, electrical and plumbing repairs can be made to the 60-year-old building, a process that will take about two years.

It said tenants will have first right of refusal when the work is done and may come back at whatever market rates will be when the building is renovated, as required by provincial law.

Stovell said Berkeley tenants have been offered a compensation package based on taking the most onerous requirements from both provincial and municipal rules for tenant relocation, and then doubling the dollar payments. At the high end, Reliance is offering just under $20,000 and at the low end, just over $5,000. The average payment is $10,000.

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So far, 36 per cent of tenants have opted to take the package, said Stovell, who adds the building rents for 70 per cent of what the Canada Housing Mortgage Corporation says was the average rent for 2017 in the area.

“That (70 per cent) number will be even lower in 2018,” he said, noting rents have increased in the area. “It’s a rate that is very much below the market,” he said.

The tenants held a rally and cited a Supreme Court ruling, which is being appealed, to illustrate why they should, after the renovations, be allowed to return to their units at the same rents they are paying now.

Since then, the backdrop has shifted, with the civic elections leaving Berkeley tenants feeling newly emboldened.

“Right now, council is pretty evenly split down the middle and we have a mayor who ran on a platform of (housing) affordability,” said one Berkeley tenant, Andre Duchene.

On the last day before the initial deadline of Oct. 29 for collecting public feedback on Reliance’s application for a permit to proceed with the renovations, the city extended the period, saying it had received “a lot of feedback” on it.

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Lauren Stasila, a city communications manager, said she didn’t know yet the nature or exact number of comments received so far, but “it’s not uncommon to extend feedback periods for projects that receive a higher volume of comments.”

Reliance’s application for a development permit requires approval of the city’s planning director.

Price said he believes the upset loss by incumbent Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan to Mike Hurley is “traced to the Metrotown demovictions” and a desire to more strongly protect existing affordable rental stock for long-term tenants.

That would make Reliance’s development application to Vancouver, which involves evicting scores of tenants, “likely the first test” after the Oct. 20 civic elections.

Stovell, who also chairs the Urban Development Institute, which represents the development industry, brushes asides comparisons with 105 Keefer St.

“This is not a new building and it will remain rental housing. It’s much less of a thing,” he said.

And, he said, “one of the main aspirations of the new mayor is to have the private sector build 25,000 market rentals, and there are signals to reinvest in rentals.”

jlee-young@postmedia.com


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