Price Points: Vancouver’s Newest Neighbourhood

another interesting piece, particularly in comparing South East False Creek (the olympic village site and the adjacent city-owned development areas to the east and west of it) and the private development lands to the south, between first and second avenues, to North False Creek (the expo lands/concord pacific site), Yaletown and Downtown South. And comparing second avenue to Pacific Boulevard.

On these issues, I have a couple of comments. Everyone should go down to the Concord Pacific sales centre off Carall Street and Pacific Boulevard and have a look. They have a series of three fantastic photo-murals, showing the history of the area in oblique aerial photographs, showing its state in the 1960s/70s, 1986, and around 2010.

To see the change is amazing. What one can see most clearly is that prior to the development of pacific boulevard and expo, the “expo lands” was a giant railyard, and yaletown and downtown south were a sleepy area with ABSOLUTELY NO development going on. The division between them was simply the end of the railyards, and it was stark.

It is obvious that the change that occured between 1980 and 2010 was the result of a very deliberate and well-thought planning and development process.

Furthermore, consider that Yaletown is a designated heritage preservation district, and that Downtown South is a planned redevelopment area that absorbs the demand for downtown development and relieves the development pressure on Yaletown to a great extent.

In comparison, south of second avenue, up to 7th or 8th avenue, I think, the area between Cambie and Main is designated as a commercial/industrial area, where the preseervation of employment is priorized over development. I believe that for the foreseeable future, this area will be frozen in time with no new development.

2nd avenue will mark the boundary, and for the reasons stated, I think that it will develop over time to be a quite different kind of street from Pacific Boulevard. For the short term it will be a bi-character street, with new high density residential development on the north side, and old low density commercial and industrial development on the south side.

But over the longer term, the pressure to allow new development on the south side of 2nd will be intense, and eventually it will be released for development.