Things are getting a little messy up on Vancouver’s west side where a very functional commercial area is under threat of development. This article by Joanne Lee-Young in the Vancouver Sun shows what happens when the city goals of housing affordability butts up against a little single storey commercial area located at 33rd Avenue and Mackenzie Street. It’s the northeast corner of this intersection that is being proposed for redevelopment and it contains three lots. One of the lots has an older building containing Bigsby the Bakehouse, a community institution for good bread.
Price Tags Vancouver has previously written about this commercial gem of an area that provided small-scale storefronts for a variety of businesses. The three lots in question became part of Vancouver’s real estate flipping shell game, being sold to a numbered company in 2015 for $5.43 million dollars and then flipped for nearly a million dollars more a couple of months later.
The new “numbered company” owners wanted to build luxury condos, and some commercial space on the ground level. After consultation with local residents, the developer agreed to create smaller retail store spaces 16 feet wide to accommodate local businesses, and also agreed to create some adaptive units for seniors in the development.
Meanwhile three things happened~the numbered company owners put the three lots back on the market (asking a gasping $12.88 million dollars~they later took the lots off the market). The small businesses in the buildings are being served with 30 to 50 % increases in their commercial rents as their leases come up. And lastly, despite the negotiation to have the smaller commercial business spaces on the ground level with condominiums above, the City wants a large rental building on the site.
The developer’s architect states it this way “essentially, after two years of public consultation on a project that fit the City of Vancouver’s written guidelines of increasing the commercial area and modest increase of residential density for that area, (city staff earlier this year) stated they wanted a larger rental building on the site.”
After two years of extensive community consultation the land owners can no longer build the building that the guidelines have suggested they could build, and instead must consider a rental building which has higher risks, and is harder to recoup the initial investment. Meanwhile the commercial tenants are being pushed out, the local residents feel they have been involved in a process on the wrong product, and the developer has to rethink redevelopment as rental based instead of owner based.
And lastly, here’s a photo of the goods at the Butter Bakery,also located in this cluster of commercial stores. This bakery was a finalist for Oprah Winfrey’s “O” Magazine “favourite things” with their cookies. Come and visit this area while it is still here.
Image Vancouver Sun
Ditto on W 10th @ Sasamat where Safeway and surrounding shops were recently closed leaving an eyesore FOR YEARS.
Eventually there will likely be a subway station close by and a 15+ story tower no doubt, but that is probably 15+ years out .. say 2033 or so .. https://www.ubyssey.ca/news/stakeholders-advocate-rapid-transit-ubc/
Silly to blame redevelopment when west siders all but require any new housing to go precisely where these treasured old businesses are. If we want to keep old businesses we have to legalize new housing in single family. There is plenty of land there. The coalition of neighbourhoods will tell you that we don’t need to touch single family because a consultant told them we have “zoned capacity in c2” but what they are not telling you is that accessing that zoned capacity requires exactly what this storey describes – demolition of everything in those areas.
So many things have been lost in the ridiculous real estate frenzy overseen by the BC Liberals and Vision Vancouver.
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