No matter who you are, you need a place to stand. The Centre of Your Personal Universe, your Hood.
It’s your place. You may own or even rent a home, but you own more than that – you’re a citizen of your neighbourhood with all the attendant rights and privileges.
At least, that’s how you’d like it to be …
The centre of my universe, as I’ve written here before, is the Capilano neighbourhood in the District of North Vancouver. And the epicentre of that universe is Edgemont Village, the – formerly – quaint collection of shops and services that dozed complacently for decades.
You could sit outside Delany’s cafe and watch the same people doing the same things go by and think to yourself this will all be the same 50 years from now.
And feel more than a little smug.
Well, wipe that smirk off your face, Buster, because someone put steroids in the Edgemont Village water supply.
It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Metro Vancouver, from Horseshoe Bay to Langley. Density has invaded the ’hood and life will never be the same.
No one knows more about the transformation of the Edgemont ’hood than Grig Cameron, so he and I sat down for coffee just the other day; apparently, there will always be coffee shops.
Grig is on the executive of Edgemont and Upper Capilano Community Association, or EUCCA. Unattractive acronym aside, EUCCA is a way to exercise your rights as a citizen of the ’hood. While EUCCA’s authority is mostly advisory, it is a very useful sounding board for developers and the DNV, so Grig and his fellow EUCCA members are in the eye of the hurricane in the centre of the universe.
Grig knows Edgemont. He can survey the landscape, currently under feverish construction, and tell you what’s going on and what’s about to happen. What’s going on: More than 100 new condos and townhouses are currently being built along Edgemont Boulevard. What’s about to happen: more condos. A new set has just been proposed by Boffo, one of the current developers, and another developer has a plan for the now vacant Petro-Canada site and the adjacent restaurant and laundry. All this while regulars are still absorbing the grand new Amica assisted living facility that is now open on Woodbine Drive and Highland Boulevard.
Transformation equals change. These are “luxury” residences, which is a euphemism for expensive, the cheapest coming in at $800,000 plus. Visions of all this luxury induce landlords in the village to raise rents, and the small businesses that are responsible for the character of the village have to leave. Village regulars still mourn the loss of Highland Produce, The Bakehouse and Peter Rabbit, the pokey little convenience store where they bought candy when they were kids.
The Peter Rabbit site is for many the still vacant soul of Edgemont Village, but maybe “ghost” is a better word. Meanwhile, they’re having trouble warming to the fancy-pants Connaught and Edgemont Walk and Condos to Come, grumbling that the village is turning into Yaletown or something.
Not quite. Grig points out the new buildings are restricted to three storeys. In order to get three and a half, the developers of the Connaught are providing 200 free community parking spaces in addition to resident parking, which will pretty much take care of the Edgemont Village parking problem.
And he says that while the inspection and permit process is proceeding at a snail’s pace, Peter Rabbit will become an expanded market featuring fresh produce.
So Grig sees this change as inevitable and necessary as Edgemont’s contribution to accommodate the extra million people projected to make metro their ’hood by 2040. But like any good stewards, he and his fellow EUCCAns worry about what he calls the “missing middle,” the next generation of villagers, who can in no way afford to spend a million-plus to stay in the ’hood.
Why aren’t we building affordable housing in and around places like Edgemont Village? Economics, that’s why. You can accomplish a lot with zoning – reserve the land in and around the village for multiple unit dwellings, but thanks to the cost of land, they will be multiple units for millionaires.
So whatever it was, the ’hood is not going to be that any more. The planners have no patience for nostalgia because nostalgia is not going to solve the pressures of a million extra people. But nostalgia is where we start, and if we’re going to let it go, we need to be convinced that change is better … or at least not worse.
Fortunately, there are people such as Grig who are trying to make “better” happen in the ’hood. If you want to exercise your homie rights or if you just want to talk about them, it’s as easy as going to the EUCCA website and making contact.
I’ll even get you started: fonvca.org/Edgemont/.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. [email protected]
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