Category: Housing

Quick followup on Oak Bay Lodge

(Sorry about the delay in this update, I have been on vacation from the 18th to the 26th)

Just a few clarifying points on my post on Oak Bay Lodge just over a week ago:

  • The building is to be 6 stories, not 5
  • The Mount Tolmie lands ultimate disposition is unclear at this time. Saanich Council has made it very clear that they will not rezone the land, so that likely ends any chance of it being sold off.
  • Where is the cost/benefit analysis of replacing vs repairing Oak Bay Lodge that Oak Bay Council asked for, and was promised by VIHA CEO Waldner, in Janurary 2010?

Ultimately, I suspect that like the school, which was just delayed, I suspect this project won’t start construction this fall.

Baptist Housing proposes 5-story Oak Bay Lodge replacement

Baptist Housing, owner of many senior’s facilities in British Columbia — including Shannon Oaks in Oak Bay — came to Oak Bay Council with a five story Oak Bay Lodge replacement, tentatively named Garry Oaks. The 320-bed facility would be a mixture of dementia care and long-term residential living, removing any independent living that currently exists at Oak Bay Lodge. Given that Shannon Oaks, Baptist Housing’s independent living facility just up the street, isn’t full yet, this isn’t shocking, but it is disappointing.

However, it appears that the threat of the land being sold has passed, as the land is being transferred from VIHA to the Capital Regional Health District, owners of the existing land at RJH and VGH. It isn’t clear yet what will happen with the Mount Tolmie land and buildings, as this is a linked development, designed to replace both Oak Bay Lodge, Mount Tolmie and the Bapist Housing-owned Mount Edwards Court.

Happily for the any future residents, the new facility will keep full on-site food preparation and laundry. Patrick Cotter, the architect, had this to say on the topic of food:

The new building will have a full central kitchen on-site that will provide lunch and dinner service, this will be augmented with a complete kitchen in each of the 16 resident houses that will provide food preparation for individual breakfast service throughout the morning; will provide individual service of lunch and dinner within the resident houses; and snacks and drinks throughout the remainder of the day.

The deal gets more complicated, however, when you consider yet another moving piece: Baptist Housing’s Mount View Heights, a contentious development on the old Mount View School Grounds on Carey Road. Cotter Architects is also designing the 260-bed facility there, which VIHA is somehow combining with the new Oak Bay Lodge/Garry Oaks development to trumpet their “increase in beds”

So much remains murky, including whether or not this building, in this size will get past Oak Bay Council. Cotter claimed that reducing it in size would reduce its effectiveness (ie: profit), as it is designed around 20-unit “neighbourhoods”. Stay tuned for more.

 

Oak Bay Lodge rezoning up for discussion tomorrow night

Details are scant, but it appears that Oak Bay Lodge (identified as 2251
Cadboro Bay Rd in the [download id=”8″ format=”1″]) is up for discussion tomorrow night.

Note: This is the first of three mandatory meetings for any rezoning, so there is no need to panic yet. Any rezoning first goes to Committee of the Whole, then Council for notice to be sent to neighbours, then comes back two weeks later for voting.

Committee of the Whole meets at 7:30pm on August 8th, 2011, in the Council Chambers of Oak Bay Municipal Hall.

Blair Gowie in their own words

“to change that [Blair Gowie’s heritage designation] would impoverish the designation”

Councillor Braithwaite on why she is voting against the Heritage Revitalization Agreement

“Constable Herbert”

Councillor Jensen with an interesting slip of the tongue after Herbert ran down a significant list of things he would like to see changed

“[make sure the Heritage Revitalization Agreement is] sufficiently sensitive to the original designation goals”

Jensen on the HRA

“It is not going to fall down next week … or next year”

Councillor Ney explaining why she is voting against the agreement

“The Heritage Revitalization Agreement doesn’t remove but imposes a different kind of protection”

Councillor Copley debunking the rumour that the HRA will remove the heritage designation

“She [Mrs Ellis] felt I, as Mayor, could come up with the perfect plan for Runnymede”

Mayor Causton talking about his many discussion with Mrs Ellis on Blair Gowie (or Runnymede as she called it)

 

Urban suburbanites

Two interesting quotes from this excellent article about urban suburbanites in Metro Vancouver from the Globe and Mail.

The first pisses me off:

They want to know, if the Evergreen line comes here, what will I do about the problems that come with it, like crime. They are asking about homelessness and social housing,” says Conservative MP James Moore, first elected in Port Moody-Westwood-Coquitlam in 2000

Public transportation brings crime (and is crime-filled) in one of the biggest media-created piles of crap in recent memory. Observe recent efforts such as the “bus” streaker or the victims that happen to be shot while on/near/by the Sky Train. Of course a Conservative MP would spout the line again, but I really doubt the urban suburbanites described in the story actually describe this as their biggest concern with the Evergreen Line; most probably just want to know when it is going to get built.

More revealing is this quote from the pollster near the end:

“What I run into is people who are exhausted. They don’t get enough down time or sleep time. They’re driven to the suburbs in the first place because they think it’s more affordable and they don’t realize the time and driving it’s going to cost them,” says Mr. Lyle. “They have no time to watch The National or read a newspaper. So when they do hear about an issue, they’re angry. They become populists.”

This isn’t exactly news, but it is interesting to see it stated in this way. After all, all those urban hipsters with their smart phones riding the bus/rail are can read the news a lot better than some poor shmuck driving hours to and from work each day.

Anyway, read the whole story. From my perspective the change bodes well for our future. Less big-C conservatives and more NDP/Liberal/Green voters only means a better Canada.

Canadian Urbanism releases 10 points for sustainable cities

Cities in Canada get a rough ride. They get less than their other OECD-brethren and are expected to do more. Toronto even pays for welfare cases, courtesy of Mike Harris and his “Common Sense” revolution. Given we have an election campaign running, the Council for Canadian Urbanism (Conseil d’ Urbanisme Canadien en francais) released their 10 point “call-to-action” today:

1) A progressive and influential National Urban Policy, that recognizes the critical role of the success of cities in Canada’s future.

2) A National Housing Policy that addresses the acute and growing need for affordable housing.

3) A National Transportation Policy that particularly addresses the need to expand active, cost-effective and sustainable forms of transportation, such as transit, rail, walking, and biking.

4) Effective Federal programs that will make us a world leader in combating climate change. There is a need to align the above three national policies in achieving this goal.

5) A national dialogue involving the Federal Government, Provinces and Cities on the development of new sustainable, long-term funding and legislative tools for urban resiliency.

6) Future Federal funding and stimulus programs focused on spending that supports urban resiliency and “smart growth” (i.e. complete and compact communities, expanded transit and rail, renewing aging urban infrastructure, enhancing cultural and civic amenities, etc), rather than on “shovel-ready projects”. A corresponding de-prioritization of, or halt to, stimulus funding that promotes auto-dependency and urban sprawl.

7) Tax reforms that support full-cost accounting of housing choices (which would reveal the well-researched and well-understood economic advantages of compact, walkable communities and sustainable transportation modes that require less infrastructure and lower public expense).

8 ) Federal tax incentives to promote the construction of purpose-built rental housing.

9) Reinstatement of the long-form census to enable reliable planning to better understand, and meet, future needs.

10) Electoral district reform that addresses democratic and fair representation of the population in urban areas, and recognizes the increasing urbanization of Canada.

(h/t to Price Tags)

Angry crowd push council to reject secondary suites

Last night’s council was packed as expected given secondary suites were on the agenda. Also expected, the speakers were nearly all against secondary suites, probably out in forced because of the new anti-secondary suites group, Friends of Oak Bay Neighbourhoods. But what hasn’t happened since we had a little discussion about crap in the Uplands last year, we had hecklers in the crowd. It got so bad that Councillor Cassidy was visibly angry while he told off somebody for speaking out of turn, and Mayor Causton was forced to speak up as well.

Ultimately council decided, in a split vote, to move forward with more consultation, likely in early April. This will probably take the form of an informational fair and an invitation-only “stakeholders” meeting. More details later.

Secondary suites up for discussion tonight

Secondary suites are back on the agenda of the Oak Bay Council this Monday at the Committee of the Whole Meeting at 7:30pm. There is a new note from Mark Brennan, Chief Municipal Administrative Officer, likely about the public engagement the Mayor asked for at his January address. Should be interesting, given the founding of a new, issues-driven Friends of Oak Bay Neighbourhoods. Come by the municipal hall and see the fun (or join it, depending).

GG2010: A morning of important people

Day one of a conference is usually the time for the big speakers to come and tell us about their grand ideas and successes and Gaining Ground is no different. As Mark Holland remarked in his opening comments, this is a fairly unique conference in that we don’t “disappear into a big building and come out when the sun has gone down”, rather we are spread across four venues and our lunches are out in the wider community, as places such as Steamworks or Wild Rice. It is a nice refreshing change, because SFU’s brand new campus in the Woodwards building is very shiny and new and it is easy to forget we are on the borders of the Downtown Eastside.

The host mayor, Gregor Robertson, led the day off, talking about the various accomplishments the city has seen through since the last Gaining Ground in 2009, including changes to the building code, a massively successful transportation plan for the Olympics, new electric car charging stations (they are planning for 15% of the fleet by 2020), and various green jobs initiatives, including one in the Strathcona neighbourhood. At that he had to run off to council, where they are deciding the fate of the proposed Hornby St. separated bike lane.

Easily the most dynamic speaker of the morning was Jared Blumenfeld, now of the US EPA, late of the San Francisco Dept. of the Environment. He had the whole audience laughing, talking about how we got to here (The Inconvenient Truth, the hockey stick graph, peak oil, BP spill, etc.). He had a few pithy comments, calling all the greenwashing “greeningless” and of the climategate scandal, where there’s a t-shirt, there is a problem.

One of his key points was the drivers of change need to be cities. While India and the US may disagree on climate change and how to tackle it, the mayors of New York and Mumbai have some pretty similar interests. One example he mentioned was the banning of phalates in the US, which went from a municipal ordinance in San Francisco, to California state law, to federal legislation, all in the space of 6 months. What was amazing is that both the city and state got sued because they didn’t have the right to ban it, but did it anyway.

The presidents of SFU and BCIT were up next, talking about the many things that both institutions can do. What grabbed was the Translink RFP out for a gondola (ala the Portland Aerial Tram) up Burnaby Mountain and Don Wright of BCIT pointing out that sustainability includes housing costs, and if those aren’t brought under control, all the others gains will be for nought as the young move away or become car commuters and change their views.

So far, so good. This afternoon is filled with various workshops and salons, which should be interesting.