Thanks to Frances Bula for the tip.
Following up on this PT post from a year ago, the redevelopment plan for the old Post Office building at Georgia and Homer is going to the urban design panel tomorrow (3:15 pm, May 10, 2017).
- Address: 349 W Georgia Street (Post Office Site)
- Permit No.: RZ-2016-00021
- Description: The proposal is to allow the retention of the heritage building (Class A heritage, yet to be designated) and convert it into a mixed-use seven-storey podium. The proposal also adds three towers above the podium, including 17 storeys of office, and 18 and 20 storeys of residential. An overall floor space ratio of 12.08 FSR is proposed as well a total floor area of 145,998 m2 (1,571,506 sq. ft.) and a height of 67.7m (222 ft.).
- Zoning: DD to CD-1
- Application Status: Rezoning Application
- Review: Second Architect: MCM Partnership (Mark Thompson)
- Staff: Michael Naylor & Paul Cheng
The design does open up the now-blank walls along Dunsmuir, Homer and Hamilton.
A few numbers:
- 799 residential units (372 market condominium units and 427 market rental units)
- An overall floor space ratio of 12.9 FSR
- Six levels of parking, including 1,168 bicycle spaces
- A 49-space childcare facility
So uninspiring. Lets plunk 2 glass towers with no color on top of a heritage building.
Let’s not make them dig six stories of parking
Case in point why occasionally the view cones create godawful lumps…
Right let’s put in another 50 story glass box on the site, so inspiring.
Agreed – if there were no view cones over the site, fewer, taller thinner towers could be built, allowing the heritage façade more prominence in the design.
Right now, the design looks like a couple of massive weights squishing the old Post Office underneath.
Expect a similarly squat and bulky design when Holborn redevelops the Bay Parkade site (adjoining Granville SkyTrain Station)
– it is limited by the same view cone (about 300 ft).
The current post office reminds of Berlin Alexanderplatz under communist regime. Ugly ugly ugly. Why retain it ?
And not even 10 stories ?
No wonder anything new now is over $1500/sq ft in downtown Vancouver.
Yes the Old P O is ugly. Amalgamate the land with the Q E & Art Gallery sites plus road allowances . Build a new theater,& art gallery with lots of residential. Do something creative but no parking,
And when that new Post Office was built, structures like the old one (now Sinclair Centre) were considered “ugly”. It is as good example of postwar institutional architecture Vancouver has, the relief mural is definitely unique. Heritage preservation can’t be governed by fads in design.
The illustration is the design submitted last year. As it’s returning to the City’s advisory Urban Design Panel, (who didn’t support it) presumably it’s not exactly the same now.
The plans don’t call for any digging – there’s a huge space underneath the existing (heritage) building.
As Ken’s write-up says, in the version above there were up to 20 and 18 storeys of rental and condo buildings, and a 17 storey office tower, all above, above the 7 storey re-purposed heritage building. That’s a lot more than 10 storeys.
Anything new is over $1,500 a square foot to buy, because that’s what buyers have been willing to pay. It’s a market project, so the market at the time of selling will determine what price the developer achieves.
Yes, captain obvious, the price is what people are willing to pay for it. But when the option for comparable space elsewhere at a lower price, or when the highest bidders have found more attractive units to buy instead, then buyers wouldn’t be willing to pay so much for it.
Tom’s point is that, after a convoluted multi-year processes of reviews, re-zoning applications, redesigns to meet Vancouver’s inane view-cone policy, etc., you end up with half as many units produced at twice the cost in three times the time. Is it really so difficult to make a connection between that and the price of housing? Or are supply and cost completely divorced from price?
And yet, European cities seem to have high densities in buildings of six storeys or less, without a housing affordability crisis. The view cones may or may not be wise policy, but it’s hard to imagine they play a role in the cost of housing.
might want to check on that one there
I love how people point to midrise buildings in Europe as ideal while defending a planning regime that makes them economically infeasible.
1) Many of those european mid-rise buildings were built centuries ago as-of-right, before zoning existed. Those buildings would be illegal here, due to lack of setback, parking, etc.
2) Because the overwhelming majority of land here is reserved for detached family housing and low-rise, (intensely) developable land is at a premium. Add in all the delays, risk, and uncertainty involved with the permitting process and developers have to “go big or go home” to make returns.
Getting rid of most of the layers of Vancouver’s byzantine permitting process would, ironically, lead to fewer towers being built because:
A) Midrise, wooden frame construction is cheaper to construct per unit than concrete and steel towers
B) Midrise would be less risk since there are fewer units to sell
C) Because they no longer have the large overhead of the permitting and rezoning process, they can achieve the same ROI with fewer units
The view corridor policy by itself may not be responsible for Vancouver’s prices, but it’s symptomatic of a planning regime that infringes property rights for the most arbitrary and arcane reasons. Planners are having too much fun playing SimCity to acknowledge that there are externalities to an over-regulated housing market, beyond the uncountable man-hours wasted on developing these schemes.
Jason, I can assure you that you’ve replied to the wrong “people”. If you’ve got a point please don’t pin it on somebody for which it doesn’t apply.
If people don’t “get” the view cones, they really don’t get Vancouver. Toronto might be a better choice for those who worship at the altar of tall for tall’s sake.
Ah, yes, because whenever people are asked what makes Vancouver great, the first response that leaps from their tongues is inevitably “the view cone policy.”
Toronto also has view corridor policies by the way, so if you’ll need to find something else that separates us from the masses of unwashed Torontonians.
I think it’s fair to ask if the view cones are still relevant. There was a time when the mountains made a great backdrop to the skyline from lower elevations and it was very “Vancouver” to maintain the sight of them. Increasingly what they’ve become is a narrow slot where you can see a single peak from a small viewpoint.
I’m not suggesting that everything be tall. In fact I think a bigger tragedy is how difficult it is to find a sunny spot downtown. After all, the entire downtown only blocks mountain views from a fairly small area of the city.
The Urban Design Panel gave qualified support to the revised design, with some suggestions for further changes. The buildings are now slightly smaller, the office tower design is simpler, and the areas between buildings has been increased to get more light onto the rooftop podium and childcare.
There’s an image of the model that they reviewed on the ChangingCity blog. https://changingcitybook.com/2017/05/10/the-post-349-west-georgia/
And yes, evidence would suggest that supply and cost of housing are indeed only slightly related to the price that developers can obtain in the current housing market. The developers clearly understood the limitations they would face in developing the site, and the price they paid for the building should have reflected those factors, including requirements for commercial space and the viewcones. The only reason they can have any housing at all in the city’s relatively small CBD commercial-only area is because they’re preserving and repurposing a heritage building. If it was demolished all they could build would be office, retail, hotel or entertainment uses.
Author
Hi ChangingCity: many thanks for the update.
So, are there plans to use the secret tunnel that goes to, I believe, the old P.O. (or is it waterfront Station)? You know, the one rented by the film industry on occasion?
Overall, this one is a disappointment. I still believe the feds could have given the building to the VAG.
It was supposed to be filled in after the 2013 sale. Canada Post terminated a lease with the City and were going to decommission the tunnel.
Mail stopped arriving by train by the 1960s and the tunnel has been mostly empty apart from a few movie shoots and some apparently amazing Haloween parties. The City was reported to have examined the re-use or refurbishment of the tunnel, but found it would be too expensive to make it safe, especially with no viable use on the horizon.