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delightful east vancouver street faces broadway plan onslaught
douglas todd: a three-block stretch of character homes is bracing for at least four giant towers that would forever alter its gentle, eccentric ambience.
jul 29 2024
4 minute read
a section of east 10th avenue is a microcosm of the massive changes being pushed through the broadway plan, says dennis foon. he fears the street will be forever harmed by a row of new "non-descript" towers.
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it’s a particularly charming residential street — and just one of those being profoundly shaken by vancouver’s broadway plan.
this three-block stretch of character homes, which currently exemplifies the “missing middle” type of housing that politicians say they want to promote, is bracing for at least four proposed towers that would forever alter its gentle, eccentric ambience.
brimming with large chestnut trees and hosting a lively bicycle route, this portion of east 10th avenue between guelph and fraser is home to street-art displays, including a sculpture of an elephant’s head, two share-a-book libraries, tree trunks on which passersby post their wishes, and a small flock of apparently happy chickens.
but the bulldozers are coming to this gardened street. they are slated to remove roughly a third of the eclectic dwellings, which range from modest vancouver specials to remodelled 110-year-old character homes. many of them have been renovated into multi-plexes, including with laneway homes.
four residential highrises in the 17- to 20-storey range are going to replace the existing homes and the little community libraries and the space where the chickens can be seen. the towers’ walls will butt up against the sidewalks.
one of four tower rezoning applications for three funky blocks of east 10th.
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“there are a lot of beautiful residential streets in vancouver, and this is one of them,” says dennis foon, a screenwriter who has for decades lived next to this stretch of east 10th in mount pleasant, where he says numerous languages are heard each day.
“this street speaks to me of tranquility and community,” says foon, as bicyclists sail past east 10th and carolina street. a pedestrian fills out her wish on a piece of paper that she then attaches by a clothes peg to a string on a tree.
many of the new highrise units for east 10th will be for renters, but foon says they will push out existing tenants. while he understands highrise life can work for some, he has read the psychological literature and learned many inhabitants end up struggling “with a sense of alienation and loneliness.”
while foon generally supports efforts to increase population density, and values the many medium-rise apartment blocks in the neighbourhood devoted to social housing, he is concerned vancouver politicians two years ago rammed through the broadway plan with little consultation.
“there are a lot of beautiful residential streets in vancouver, and this is one of them,” says dennis foon, standing beside homemade street art on a short section of east 10th avenue, which he says is among many threatened blocks of mount pleasant.
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the broadway plan is dedicated to turning 500 square blocks of mixed-use, mostly low-rise properties surrounding broadway (bounded by vine and clark) into a “second downtown” . at least 50,000 more residents are envisioned. developers have already flooded the city with more than 100 highrise proposals.
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at least a dozen houses on the north side of this three-block stretch of east 10th are going down, according to developers’ signs.
“it’s a very beautiful street,” says stephen bohus , a visual-effects designer who has been independently creating maps and 3d images of developers’ strategies for the broadway corridor.
bohus, who has a degree in landscape architecture, says residents of this section of east 10th will have to steel themselves for more than the four towers already proposed, since this fall council is preparing to again increase density as part of the broadway plan.
since bohus is convinced planners often don’t release accurate information about developers’ proposals, he has put together his own analyses on the website city hall watch. they include 3d renderings of proposed highrises based on the specifications provided by builders.
bohus’s renderings of the highrise proposals for these three blocks of quiet east 10th suggest an overwhelming transformation is coming to most of mount pleasant, which has been ranked the second-best neighbourhood in all of metro vancouver .
long expanses of mount pleasant have a “mature tree canopy,” said bohus. given the height and breadth of the boulevard chestnut trees on east 10th, bohus said, “they’ll definitely have to remove some branches because they’ll be overhanging into the lots” on which the towers will be erected.
designer stephen bohus’s unofficial rendering of two towers proposed for the north-eastern section of the 500-block east 10th, at the corner of carolina st. his suggestive images are based on the technical specifics developers’ provide in their proposals to the city of vancouver.
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matt shillito, vancouver’s interim director of planning, said in an email: “we acknowledge the broadway plan will lead to significant changes in many areas, including these blocks on east 10th avenue.”
while saying the changes will happen over years, shillito maintained “this scale of change is necessary in order to address the challenges the city is facing, such as the housing crisis and climate emergency, as well as capitalize on the opportunity presented by the broadway subway to create more walkable and complete neighbourhoods close to transit.”
instead of erecting new residential highrises mostly on thoroughfares like broadway, shillito said, planners have “heard that renters wanted to be able to live in secured rental housing on quieter residential streets, off busy arterials, like east 10th avenue.”
the broadway plan includes measures “to retain some of the key character-defining elements of these residential areas, such as heritage assets, mature street trees, etc.,” shillito said, while promising new amenities would come to the neighbourhood over time.
red marker shows location of three blocks of residential east 10th, between fraser and guelph.
however, foon says city council is showing little versatility with the broadway plan. “it’s tunnel vision,” he said, which will force the removal of many longtime owners and tenants and result in mostly uniform buildings and streetscapes, including wind tunnels.
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“it will bring buildings that will be nondescript horror stories,” he said, “as a way to maximize profits.”
a couple of decades ago, the city of vancouver was a model for sustainable urban development, said foon, who wrote the screenplay for the award-winning film indian horse: life above all. that reputation was inspired in part by early efforts to block a highway going through east vancouver and chinatown into downtown.
but now, foon worries, vancouver council is copying the mould of the powerful, controversial 20th-century new york planner and bureaucrat robert moses , who forced though a horde of grand projects while bulldozing existing communities under the guise of giving the public what it wanted — more affordable housing.
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