A quick trip over to the North Shore today, where, by picking up the North Shore News, I was reminded what a different world it is:
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West Vancouver council has given a unanimous green light for a 17-storey residential highrise building in Ambleside… Cressey Seaview Development Ltd. came back to council Monday with a slightly slenderized design that hits the exact mark for maximum allowable width, 100 feet. In decreasing the width, the project’s architect, among other changes, moved the balconies on the west façade to the south side and reduced the size of them. …
Ensuring the plan includes ample parking on-site was another ask of council. Cressey is proposing 127 parking stalls for its 35 units.
“I would comfortably say that there would be no reason why anybody, resident or visitor to this building, should ever need to park on the street,” said Jason Turcotte, vice-president of development with Cressey. …
Coun. Michael Lewis said Cressey should be complimented for repurposing plans for storage lockers into additional parking spaces. “
And yet …
Council then debated whether or not to allow Cressey to build a temporary 7,000 square-foot, two-storey sales centre on the site, which sits in a residential area. Some councillors were worried about a traffic increase, while others questioned why the large structure was needed to sell 35 units.
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PS: On the bus back, I noticed the railings are up along the north sidewalk of the Causeway through Stanley Park. Initial impression: nice job, MOTI.
If anyone has a pic, send it along.
If anyone has a pic, send it along.
I had to do a double take on this one “Cressey is proposing 127 parking stalls for its 35 units.” and re-purposing storage space for more parking space? This seems to be going completely in the opposite way that the discussion is going is other parts of the region.
The force of Motordom’s thinking seems to strong in West Van’s council. Anywhere else it might appear that 3.6 parking spaces per unit seems like inordinately large allocation. The developer must be aiming for a luxury market unconcerned by the additional cost each parking stall adds to the building cost. Most future occupants in the building might desire a different car for every season of the year.
It is not a different world on the North Shore, but in West Van.
On the other hand, if the smallest condo in the building is over 2000 sq.ft. maybe the storage lockers weren’t needed.
Likely it doesn’t matter much whether West Van luxury condos come with 2 or 4 parking spots. There are single-family homes with small parkades.
The unfortunate side effect is the West Van cars coming over to North Van and Vancouver clogging up streets and looking for parking.
I don’t think you can extend this as a North Shore generalization, sounds more like a particularity of wealthy West Van.
Brookfield has proposed a 14 storey tower for 13th and Lonsdale and parking will be .75 for every unit built.
It’s a wealthy area where 2 cars or more is the norm. That demographic will not use transit.
On the street parking front, however, if a resident has a party, and only has one visitor’s parking pass (as is usually the norm) – then you will of course have people looking for street parking.