A new megaproject proposal for Central Lonsdale was abruptly suspended by a divided City of North Vancouver council Monday (Apr 16), pending completion of the updated official community plan.
City staff made the unusual move of presenting the application to council well in advance of any detailed design work, seeking permission to continue talks with the developer and schedule a town hall-style meeting.
City development planner Carl Purvis told council the intent of staff was that given the substantial nature of the request its an area with a (floor surface ratio) of 1.6 and the request is to jump up to 4.2 it would be prudent to notify council of the application and get some preliminary feedback, he said.
The developer, Kenwood Apartments, would like to demolish a pair of 60s-era three-storey rental apartment buildings at 1536 and 1550 Eastern Avenue. These buildings contain 34 rental suites. In their place the company wants to build a 19-storey, 140-unit condominium tower alongside a six-storey, 56-unit rental apartment building. The ground floors could either be commercial space or townhomes.
Kenwood is asking the city to exclude all of the market rental suites from its density calculations, along with a 1,300-square foot community-use room. The whole project would create 163,526 square feet of floor space, more than three and a half times what the OCP currently allows on the lots.
In another scenario offered to the city, Kenwood could simply knock down the existing buildings and put up four storeys of condominiums within the OCP limits.
My real concern, Coun. Rod Clark said. is we are looking at 4.2 FSR . . . but because of the exclusion of rental housing and amenities space, the development will be massed and perceived as 5.69 FSR. Thats getting up there. Thats a huge building on a very tiny piece of land. Its definitely going to have an impact. If ever there was a case where we should be waiting for the OCP review process to complete before we go further, this is it.
Coun. Pam Bookham said the public is exhausted by a series of major public consultation events and said council should think long and hard before allowing aging rental buildings to face a wrecking ball.
There are some key questions we havent come close to talking about, she said. We need to give our heads a shake. Thats where our truly affordable housing lies and we need to hang on to it for as long as we can.
Coun. Guy Heywood described the proposal as another megaproject in a very narrow area of the city.
We do need a discussion, he said, about what the city does when it takes community property, the airspace above existing zoning, and basically conveys it to a developer in return for something. Theres a choice being made as to whether we are going to subsidize market rental housing market means a business. It verges on illegal for the city to be subsidizing a business versus the alternative: disposing of that community asset, monetizing it, and putting it into building a recreation centre.
Heywood said the project would effectively turn a public asset into a private good.
Coun. Craig Keating disputed Heywoods position and said the provision of market rental housing is a community benefit.
He pointed out there is already similar density on the Lonsdale corridor and called for a rational, evidence-based discussion on rental housing policy.
I think we should not listen to folk wisdom, but to rental housing advocates, he said.
Its a tall building, said Mayor Darrell Mussatto, but its a tall building in a place where tall buildings should be.
Council voted 5-2 to shelve the application, with Keating and Mussatto dissenting.
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