Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood braces for 23 new towers - Vancouver Sun October 19th, 2024
Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood braces for 23 new towers
Douglas Todd: Developers are targeting the beachside Kitsilano
neighbourhood now that the Broadway plan has opened up the construction
floodgates
These houses on the 2100-block of W 14th in Kitsilano are set to be demolished and replaced by an 18-storey tower, which developer Michael Geller calls "absolutely absurd." Photo by Douglas Todd /sun
The eclectic beachside community of Kitsilano
is often ranked among Metro Vancouver’s favourite neighbourhoods, appreciated
for its boulevard trees, old homes, low-rise rental apartments and character.
It was the epicentre of hippie culture in the 1970s.
But a wholesale reconstruction of Kitsilano is
in play — a vertical upzoning of the neighbourhood’s eastern edge, adjacent to
Burrard Street.
As a result of the city of Vancouver’s
two-year-old Broadway plan, and the
construction of a new SkyTrain station at Arbutus, developers have set in
motion at least 23 highrise projects, mostly in the 20-storey range.
Critics, including residents, retired
architects and planning consultants, say it’s overreach. It’s out of
scale. And the Broadway plan should be placed on hold.
There is already high population density in
this four-block-wide zone of Kitsilano apartment buildings, which falls inside
the boundaries of city council’s massive Broadway plan upzoning scheme.
Yet the development application signs
spreading rapidly through east Kitsilano are going up in front of many
50-year-old, four-storey apartment buildings. They’re also being erected in
front of the gardens of charming, renovated duplexes and triplexes.
Overall, the Broadway plan encompasses 500
square blocks between Vine Street in Kitsilano in the west and Clark Drive in
the east, bounded by 1st Avenue to the north and 16th Avenue to the south. More
than 120 building proposals, almost all for residential towers, some as high as
35 storeys, have already been approved or proposed under the Broadway plan.