This one has been a long time coming! The planning “Policy Statement” for Translink’s bus barns on Oak Street is before Council on Dec 16th. The Policy Statement is here
Density
An excerpt from the Policy Statement suggests an overall intensity of use at 2.1 Floor Area Ratio or FAR (Total Gross Floor Area / Total Site Area) over the entire 14 acre site. The form of development is predominantly mid-rise in character, tapering to blend with the lower density of adjacent lands.
A back of napkin analysis suggests the site would generate 1,600 to 1,700 units in total if it were all developed at an average net unit size of 650 sf. Some land however will not be residential, and the requirement for family units will push the average unit size up, so the likely number of units will be significantly less.
A comparison …
The overall density envisioned for the Bus Barn site is generally comparable with the intensity of use permitted at the 25 acre Arbutus Walk site in Kitsilano, rezoned and redeveloped in the 1990s (without the benefit of a LRT station a short walk away).
Debate?
Given the Transit Orientation of the Bus Barns, and the pressures for more housing in Vancouver, is the plan for the 14 acre Translink Bus Barn site dense enough?
One observation is that the curving roads envisioned in the plan yield some difficult development sites (triangular sites are a real pain!), in contrast to the Arbutus Walk development where the masterplan worked off the orthogonal grid of the city fabric.
A bit of “Sketchup” analysis:
Approximately 40% of the Bus Barn site is given over to park and road space. So, it’s 2.1 F.A.R. on the gross site . 2.5 FAR if you net out the Park. And 3.5 FAR if you net out the roads as well. That’s not a particularly high level of density and it even requires a couple spots for 15 storey buildings to get the numbers up (note that many leafy neighbourhoods in Vancouver’s inner streetcar suburbs have accommodated some high rise over the past decades).
Does it make sense to approach suburban densities for such a large transit oriented site? Are there ways to generate more developable land out of this parcel?
Interested in your thoughts.
Georgia Straight Story here:
Condos, townhouses, and park seen for old Vancouver transit centre by TransLink
Thanks to Ken Ohrn for passing this on.
Regards from London,
Michael Mortensen
A Vancouver Developer and Urban Planner abroad.
Having had a lot of experience with this site and community back in the day, it appears on paper like a great framework for sensitive development of this brownfield site. It was never envisioned as a highrise area and I’m happy to see that has been avoided. The family-oriented housing mix knitted into the community rather than insular, a neighbourhood park to be shared, lower transitions at the existing fabric – all good.
Author
What do you think of the development plots Frank? Do they yield good development areas for Mid-Rise Forms?
This appears to be a good first cut for the site and its surrounding context. I particularly like how the mid-rise steps down to low rise at the edges on three sides, and the concentration of height on 41st Ave. Perhaps 15 storeys would seem a little too high to the neighbours and therein there should be some flexibility to tweak it down to 10 or 12. Mixed use is always beneficial, but I’d like to see a little more mix in the use, such as a few floors of office fronting 41st. I know there is a preponderence to place office in separate buildings from residential, but I’ve always thought a “split” building with the floors of office facing an arterial is separated from single-loaded residential facing the opposing direction with shared foyers and atrium, but separate elevators could work. This would also allow leased office floors physical separation from strata residential units. The private developer and city administration may have to join up their thinking in slightly more creative ways to achieve that.
The density proposed for this site and the existing density of the immediate neighbourhood would probably support a decent grocery store. Of course, the execution of urban design and architecure will make or break the very good groundwork so far. I wouldn’t worry about the angled development sites; the roads are gently curved and buildings can curve or be faceted with them, and that could lead to more interesting open space planning and design.
It is beyond ironic that this former significant transit site will have little or no influence on local transit, other than bumping up demand by a notch or two. The 41st Ave frontage and median may be an ideal spot for a higher-capacity light rail line (Metrotown to UBC?). The building and retail facades in this development could be pushed back 3-4 metres to accommodate the station platform in the roadway, more intense pedestrian flows and beefed up crosswalks. This is where TransLink would shine if the province would allow it to have greater planning powers than it currently has to marry land use and development proposals with transit assets.
Author
Office at grade generally does not create animated places (dark after hours, windows blinded up during the day) but it can form a reasonable part of a commercial podium on a busy arterial. However, it is challenging to mix office and residential. Office has heavy space, parking and vertical circulation and exiting requirements and is generally dilutive to value. $25/sf in triple net rent capitalized at 6% yields a value of only $417/sf (Value = $NNN/Cap Rate).
There are some mixed use low rise buildings in South False Creek with a ground floor of commercial, a second storey with offices, and two floors of residential on top, but set back a bit. That seems to be a good balance.
I guess we’re lucky there’s some retail frontages facing 41st at all.
To the east on 41st closer to Cambie, several projects have been approved without any retail at grade.
In essence, the commercial aspect of the “town centre” is focussed mainly on the Oakridge site, rather than along the spines leading to the 41st & Cambie intersection.
I’m not a planner, just an engineer, so I’m curious about the process here. Shouldn’t the city planners just be saying, “this much density, no taller than X, must have retail along this street, have at it”, and then let the owners/developers/whoever build what they want? Going into such detail, providing examples from somewhere else in the city (with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink make it look like this and we’ll approve it) seems to be beyond the scope of what planners should be doing. Seems to me this is why we have such a sterile environment in Vancouver, where everything looks the same, there’s no innovation in buildings, nothing stands out.
Not trolling, I’m genuinely interested to know why we (ie those of you who are planners) think this is a good way to go.
Author
BF, the guidelines at this stage are fairly coarse grained and performance based. Key interests (like access, setbacks etc) can be “hardlined” early to shape the planning and design that follows.
Speaking from experience as a former Major Projects planner with the City, my view is that Vancouver’s Major Project planning system ideally works as a collaborative process – taking into account the interests of the property owner and their architects and designers, the public, the Urban Design Panel, and various City departments. Planning heads up the City review – collating and resolving the interests of Urban Design, Engineering, Streets, Water, Sewer, Parking and Transportation, Public Art, Social Planning, Heritage, Landscape, Building Code, Fire, Police, Sustainability, Addressing etc.
The guidelines give the Public some comfort about what to expect. Ideally the guidelines should be very performance-based and not prescriptive at this early stage of the neighbourhood design process.
It’s been more than a decade since I left Planning at the City to work as a Developer. Reflecting on the Policy Plan process as a Developer, I think it gives us more certainty about what amount and type of development we can safely include in our pro forma projections, and what sort of amenities will be needed commensurate with the intensity and nature of the new uses. This reduces risk significantly for all parties. For large sites with complex interests, it is a useful step before a rezoning.
A nimble system allows a Policy Plan with a concurrent detailed rezoning application for a first phase of development. In this case, the developer’s timelines (or their need to sell on land parcels with more development certainty) might be driving the need for more detail.
Hope this goes some way to answering your question.
Cheers
Michael Mortensen, MA MCIP
A Developer and Planner abroad.
Well, it answers it, but it doesn’t give me any comfort. What you’re saying is that the planners go out of their way to make it easy and profitable for developers. In fact, they’re even taking on some of the work the developers should really be doing, like laying out the streets, deciding which buildings go where, doing the preliminary marketing etc.
I think a bit of risk taken on by developers is actually a good thing. That’s how you get buildings that will eventually become heritage buildings, neighbourhoods that become quirky and beloved, houses that don’t all look the same. Sure you’ll also get a bunch of stuff that’s best torn down pretty quickly, but we have a lot of that already.
I guess, working in hi-tech, I’ve seen that the best advances are when the field is left open, so to speak, and people with good ideas and a willingness to take chances are left to their own devices to come up with something. (Which is not to say regulations aren’t necessary). It just feels to me like there are a lot of people in city hall (like yourself at some point, apparently), that want to be developers, and are using the planning department as way of being developers without actually going out and doing it.
Author
Have to strongly disagree with your conclusions above BF. You misconstrue my answer and/or you do not understand it. City building is different than building a consumer product or an app; the lifecycle and interdependencies of a neighbourhood require collaboration of a different kind.
Obviously, there are drawbacks to “central planning”. You don’t get much of Schumpeter’s creative destruction of capitalism.
There are benefits to decentralization that I don’t think you are gunna hear about by asking the experts in planning departments, because that’s not their business.
Planners gunna plan, yo.
Author
Vancouver’s Discretionary Planning regime is fairly open. Now if you want to see CENTRAL planning, you should see the detailed lengths that cities in Germany or the Netherlands go to to prescribe what goes where!!
Michael – I agree with you; the Major Projects group was a significant function of the planning department that was set up to handle large-scale projects like these and did it quite well for years and separately from day-to-day senior management supervision. It produced results that the developer, the City and especially the community could live with. (BTW, I can only assume similar results were achieved in the Bus Barns case.)
Perhaps a new DOP will see the wisdom of reestablishing a similar core group rather than an ad hoc response.
Bar, the site is owned by a public agency, and work so far has all been accomplished by city planners in full consultation with the public. They had to illustrate their work, and the renderings you see are not a developer’s proposal, just a facsimile of what is possible. In my view this is how it should be on important sites like this, where a development company will eventually be given the groundwork and defined constraints after a substantial amount of planning and consultation — hopefully better urban design too — has already been accomplished by public representatives and facilitators.
Author
Good points MB. And note also the involvement of Busby Perkins Will architects, likely working on behalf of the land owner/developer Translink. Again, a collaborative process involving very high levels of public involvement, informing planning recommendations and political decisions.
Replying at this level to avoid unreadable indenting…
I understand the needing for city planning. I’m just questioning the level of control and conformity that’s required these days. It’s hard to see how any developer is going to do anything different from the design and layout that’s being drawn out here – you follow this, and the approvals will flow, you make any significant changes, and it will be back to the drawing board. More time, more money.
You have to wonder how many of the buildings we consider “heritage” would have got built under the rules in place today. Who today is going to go out on a limb and build something different and interesting?
I also question the “full consultation with the public”. My experience has been that consultation involves putting the plan in front of the public and saying “here’s what’s going to happen. Consider yourselves consulted”. But that’s another story, don’t want to get off the topic too much.
Anyway, I appreciate the input. Not trying to be argumentative, I hope it contributes to those of you on the inside seeing what it looks like to those of us on the outside…
Author
Thanks BF, I understand your good natured questioning and appreciate it.
For sure there is a ladder of public involvement – sometimes the level of involvement is low or non existent, for example when the Provincial Government unilaterally announced that it is going to spend $3.5B of your money on a new 10 lane expansion of Hwy99 and a new bridge (they won’t even give you public records). That’s a combination of mushroom farming (‘keep ’em in the dark and feed them *hit’) and “design and defend”.
Some developers do very little public involvement and “consult” as you say. The last Art Gallery proposal for example had a “ta-da here it is, isn’t it lovely” quality to it. Essentially saying: our work is done, please “like” it on your way out the door.
As a developer and a planner, I like to operate at the top of the ladder, at the level of co-design and partnership. You see, as projects increase in scale, complexity and impact, it is important to involve people more because they are impacted more. At the neighbourhood scale, the city is a de facto partner; they (“we the public”) assume many responsibilities after the place is built – for both hard and soft services – roads, water, sewer, lights, waste and recycling collection, park maintenance, schools, community centres, libraries etc.
I do understand your point about design freedom and the need to be very performance driven rather than design prescriptive. Indeed developers can be very formulaic and conservative about their products even without municipal regulation. Developers themselves often joke that even sheep show more leadership! Some of this is driven by bank financing and marketing realities.
Notwithstanding all the various inputs into the development process, many developers and cities DO innovate and create imaginative buildings and public space.
There’s a blog thread here about iconic design which is also relevant to your question – who gets to decide what gets built where?
Ironically it was a Roman Engineer who started this debate in 15 BC. Vitruvius’ frequently quoted line translated from Latin is: “The end is to build well. Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight.”
On the perils of poor design, I like Frank Lloyd Wright’s: ‘Doctors can bury their mistakes; architects can only advise their clients to plant vines’
The first map shows this involving the bus barn, the second map includes that medical building on Willow. The actual report to council includes those and the petro can on oak and the Jewish centre across the street.
What’s going on here?
Author
Likely these are just identified as sites within the zone of the subject property.
It seems to be more than that. The subject property is the bus barn. The title of the plan is ‘Oakridge Transit Centre’ and all maps talk only about the bus barn. The report here: http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/otc-council-report-draft-policy-statement-151211.pdf talks about the bus barn parcel only in the context, background and site parameters.
Then, on page 10 they talk about ‘adjacent sites’ and that oh by the way these are included in the study area. Then you look at the map on appendix A and voila, the ‘Oakridge Transit Centre’ policy now all the sudden spans all of 41st on both sides of the street.
I’m not one who jumps to deviousness and all that but this seems like slight of hand with no public input.
Author
Absolutely nothing “slight of hand” going on here Don.
The briefing document I linked at the top of this blog (even its title) is very clear in this respect.
Read the last paragraph on Page 2 of the Council Report you linked: “This Policy Statement also considers three adjacent sites as directed by Council: 5680 Oak Street (Petro Canada Station), 809 West 41st Avenue (Oakmont Medical Centre) and 950 West 41st Avenue (Jewish Community Centre). ”
To be clear, I have not participated in the public involvement for this (as I live in London at the moment) but the record and reports show that the scope for the study and the public involvement was clearly established at the outset to include 3 strategic properties in proximity to the Bus Barns.
As a planner one hears a lot of this … easy allusions to “improper public process”, “slight of hand” etc. The record refutes that, and I know – from experience and from the ethical code of my practice – that my professional planning colleagues operate in the public interest. As professional planners, we are bound by an ethical code of practice. I am obliged, frankly, to defend them. They are solid people who work long and hard in the public interest,
Michael,
I am a planner for a different municipality. I too know what I’m talking about.
The opening paragraph of this blog post is about the translink bus barns. The map you linked to shows the plan area including the bus barn property only. The report to which I previously linked refers only to these ‘adjacent sites’ in passing.
If that were my report, I would be much more transparent about what properties the plan actually includes and what it doesn’t.
Like I said, I’m not sitting here screaming ‘conspiracy!’, but words are important. Naming this the ‘Oakridge Transit Centre’ plan, showing maps that include the Oakridge bus barn only, having the website (http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/oakridge-transit-centre.aspx) describe the project site as only including 949 W. 41st and then including these new properties without fully and transparently rationalizing why is…poor form.
It’s the process and transparency I take issue with here. Even you ‘fell for it’ by the title of this blog, your sketch up and the maps to which you linked. The public deserve better.
Author
Point taken Don. The main site is the 14 acre “Bus Barn” property but it is proper to look at the connecting urban fabric.
To be fair to our hard working colleagues, the front cover of their presentation here: http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/otc-policy-statement-draft.pdf fairly screams “adjacent sites”.
Glad to see Vancouver moving on with these sites in a positive direction, marrying public involvement, professional design and some political leadership. From my perspective in the UK, we have a pretty good development and planning culture in Greater Vancouver.
I agree, the meandering street reminds me of suburban developments and I would personally much prefer the grid seen in Arbutus Walk and the rest of the city, however judging by Google maps, the site may just be too wide for a single north-south road, but too thin to really justify two. This may be the compromise solution.
I hope they’ve at least considered the feasibility of enacting “thin streets” here, as politically it would be much easier to put that in place in a new development rather than existing neighbourhoods, where it has been tried in the past, and it would make absolute sense.
If there were a couple of cul-de-sacs I would agree. But as it appears so far, it’s just a gently curved through-street.
Devoting 20% of the land area to a park is quite generous. I hope the quality of park development is high for all age groups and not overpowered by programming for sports.
Sorry, I had only seen the site plan. I didn’t know that 15-storey buildings were planned. I’m disappointed with this move to that much height. Anybody know what the FSR is? (I’m guessing redevelopment of the large RCMP site further north will generate similar heights and densities.) having said that, financing will rule – and trump, so to speak – urban design.
Tessa – wrt to the curving suburban streets, the Urban Design Panel had the same criticism back in June when this plan went to them for initial review. Looks like staff persisted anyway.
Michael – to your question about feasible sites for development, I’m pretty sure the consultant must have looked into that in some detail. It looks to me that one master developer will have to be guiding development in order to deliver the infrastructure and park in a coordinated and timely fashion, a la Concord Pacific and East Fraserlands. Hopefully there will more architectural variety than in the typical master planned development, though.
Author
It’s 2.1 FAR on the gross site Frank. Some 40% of the site is given over to roads and park space from the outset, so taking out that space would generate a NET FAR of 3.5 x the developable land area. Not high density – but remove the high rise and the density would fall significantly. Does it make sense to approach suburban densities for such a large transit oriented site?
Certainly a “road diet” could yield more developable land and open up more ways of accommodating more housing. Engineering experimented with thin streets in Arbutus Walk – some interests challenged with respect to infrastructure under the streets.
Interesting that curvy streets are viewed as suburban. All old towns and cities in Europe (and probably elsewhere) have curvy streets, except for towns laid out as Roman military camps. Straight streets in a grid are easy for navigation but boring. Walking connections can still be short even with curvy streets.
Author
Fair points. It’s a balance of dedications – developable sites vs park and road. Currently 40% of the site is given over to those uses. Is that too much?
Curving streets can be made or broken with the facade treatment of the buildings. That is to say, the vertical elements (building walls, street trees, etc.) are powerful edge-defining elements to a street. In some respects it’s not the curve in the street, but the urban design and architectural response to the curve that really matters.
If executed well, the “street walls” will sharply define the park space too with verticality at its edges. I would question, though, having up to 12 storeys at the southern edge of the park. Stepping down to the park is as important as stepping down to the surrounding community, especially when considering the shadowing of public open space.