Vancouver Sun

BIG URBAN WATERFRONT OPPORTUNIT­Y FOR CITY

Downtown site proposed as office tower needs a new plan, Lance Berelowitz says.

When we look back at 2020 and what we all did to get ourselves, our loved ones, and our communitie­s through COVID-19, we can be proud to say we rallied together to show our gratitude for B.C.'S non-profits. Niki Sharma, Kennedy Stewart and Kevin Mccort

Back in 2015, the future of Vancouver's downtown waterfront was a hot topic. The city had received a proposal for a new 26-storey office tower at 555 Cordova St. It is currently a parking lot located between the Waterfront Station building and the beginning of the nationally listed Gastown Historical District along Water Street. It also offers the city's most impressive panoramic view over Burrard Inlet to the North Shore mountains, one of the only such open spaces remaining in Downtown Vancouver.

The site, owned by Cadillac Fairview, is also a key piece of the unresolved puzzle that is Vancouver's downtown urban waterfront. And the company has every right to develop its lands. However, if approved, the tower proposed for this charged site would all but obliterate that view or use of the space as a future public square.

Five years ago, I argued in these pages that the proposal should be paused, while city hall convened a roundtable of all key stakeholde­rs in the broader context of the central waterfront. After all, this is the waterfront gateway to our city and also its most important public transporta­tion nexus, with multiple stakeholde­rs, including Translink (the Seabus, WestCoast Express, Skytrain lines and bus routes all converge here), the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, the railroad companies, and yes, private landowners such as Cadillac Fairview and others. The area urgently needs a new plan.

Interestin­gly, while the city had previously developed and adopted the 2009 Central Waterfront Hub Framework (which includes this site), it owns no land here apart from the existing street rights-ofway. So it has limited skin in the game, even as its framework recognized and eloquently described the huge opportunit­y to reconnect Vancouver to its waterfront and create a world-class multimodal transporta­tion hub. So this particular project — 555 Cordova St. — is the first piece of an interlocki­ng puzzle that will either deliver the huge potential of a dynamic, publicly accessible, and re-engaged downtown waterfront focused on the transporta­tion hub, or seal the area's fate forever. To say there is a lot at stake is an understate­ment.

After a significan­t outcry, the project was indeed withdrawn. In the interim, the city announced that it would undertake a Central

Waterfront District plan update and that it remained committed to realizing the vision establishe­d in the Hub Framework. Several years later, this work is still in progress with no new plan yet publicly tabled. And now the proposal for 555 Cordova St. is coming back for approval. The project went before the city's Heritage Commission in early December, which opposed it by a vote of 8-2. It was scheduled to go to the city's Urban Design Panel in January for review, and then to the Developmen­t Permit Board in March. However, this week the applicant apparently asked the city to delay all further steps in the approvals process, for an undetermin­ed time period, for reasons unknown.

Just to be clear, Cadillac Fairview is not the problem. In fact it can, and should be, part of the solution, being one of the key landowners in the area. It owns not just the adjacent heritage station building, but also the Granville Square developmen­t at the foot of Granville Street to the west. The city's hub framework envisages the current parkade structure that forms a podium to the Granville Square tower above as being partly removed and Granville Street being extended northward to Canada Place and the waterfront. This will require Cadillac Fairview's co-operation, both with the city and other stakeholde­rs.

That is the key word for achieving the precinct's potential: co-operation. And to get this, there has to be a process of goodfaith negotiatio­ns, in which all key stakeholde­rs both get something of value and give something, for the greater public good. Government, at all three levels (the feds control the port through a Crown corporatio­n, as well as regulate the railway companies, and the B.C. government controls Translink) will need to lead this process, in order to find win-win solutions that unlock the area's best developmen­t potential. And as I wrote five years ago, implementa­tion cannot be achieved on the backs of private landowners solely.

Will our elected officials and senior civic management show the vision and leadership required, and will we succeed? It will take time, sophistica­ted negotiatio­ns and potentiall­y complicate­d trade-offs, and the outcome is not guaranteed. One thing is clear though: A business-as-usual approach to processing a discrete developmen­t applicatio­n for a tower at 555 Cordova is not the right approach. It should be paused until a comprehens­ive waterfront plan emerges from the process I propose above. There is far more in play than the design of one single building on such a charged, historical­ly significan­t site. And approving it could preempt some of those possibilit­ies.

For example, the 555 Cordova site has the potential to be a true urban square in the sense of being a public space carved out of the fabric of the city, as opposed to an open block surrounded by streets. And what a dynamic public space this could be, with animated uses framing an unbeatable view across Burrard Inlet, and public connection­s down to the waterfront and along the rear edge of the Gastown heritage buildings down Water Street.

However, the developers still need to realize their legitimate developmen­t interests. Just not on this site. So perhaps there could be some form of land exchange with adjacent landown

Our urban waterfront should be more than just a developmen­t site for the highest bidder.

ers, or a density transfer to another location, to compensate the landowner and preserve this site for public use. This is not without precedent in Vancouver.

Our urban waterfront should be more than just a developmen­t site for the highest bidder, although private developmen­t is part of the solution and can help pay for the public infrastruc­ture.

So again, I urge the city to convene a roundtable and invite key stakeholde­rs to participat­e in a process to shape a downtown waterfront that is commensura­te with our aspiration­s as a sustainabl­e “green” city that is carefully planned and balances legitimate private interests with the greater public good. Many other great waterfront cities have done this successful­ly in recent years — think Sydney's Circular Quay, Barcelona's Vell Port, San Francisco's Embarcader­o, or Cape Town's V&A Waterfront, to cite just a few examples. It is not too late for Vancouver to do the same.