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The City of Vancouver just made the details of a 21-storey tower proposed at West 3rd Avenue and Vine Street live on Friday, January 3, 2025. An online Open House and Q&A session has been scheduled between January 22 and February 4, 2025. Currently the site includes two rental buildings (further details on ShapeYourCity: 2268-2294 W 3rd Ave and 1902-1912 Vine St rezoning application). This application is just a few blocks away from Millennium’s 2158-2170 W1st Avenue tower rezoning.

According to the summary by City staff, the rezoning application has a total of 207 rental units, with 20% below market. A building height of 74m (242 ft.) is proposed with commercial uses at grade. A floor space ratio of 6.8 is requested. The number of residential parking spaces is listed in the application booklet as 81 (with 11 spaces for visitors). While there is a claim that this rezoning is coming under the Broadway Plan, it breaks the rules on maximum floor to floor height of 10 ft or 3 m (levels 2-5 are 3.251m or 10′-8″). There are also units without balconies, which is apparently not allowed. Staff fail to mention the non-compliance with their Broadway Plan.

This rezoning proposal has been on our radar for many months (we’ve been tracking it on our interactive map). The application booklet is dated July 15, 2024 (and ShapeYourCity states the submission date as August 28, 2024) and only now are the plans officially published. The applicant behind the proposal is Marcon Developments Ltd. while the designers are Boniface Oleksiuk Politano Architects. There is apparently also a real estate PR firm involved; for further reflections see: Who Needs Public Relations in Planning? (Observations by Jak King on one breed of PR firms in the development business – see also this note about the Jak King Award at UBC).

We have spoken with renters in the existing buildings who are concerned about the potential impacts and disruptions on their lives. They are encouraged to read up, network and organize their buildings. The Vancouver Tenants Union website (https://www.vancouvertenantsunion.ca/) provides resources regarding tenant rights, including tips on dealing with relocation and demoviction under the Broadway Plan. The City and property owners sometimes hold briefings for residents about relocation and redevelopment plans via a zoom call. Tenants may wish to seek outside advice prior to attending these briefings and to also record the meeting(s) for future reference.

The proposed rezoning could significantly add to land price speculation. In order to help visualize the size of the proposed rezoning in relation to the surroundings, we’ve included a few renderings of our ‘work-in-progress’ rough massing model done over the weekend (please see the renderings below).

The Broadway Plan was adopted in 2022, resulting in a massive land rush. CityHallWatch is tracking about 150 proposed rezonings for towers between Clark and Vine, 1st and 16th Avenues, with dozens of them involving possible forced displacement tenants in existing mature rental buildings. There are petitions and a growing movement calling for the provincial and municipal governments to Rethink the Broadway Plan. More information on our portal post – https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/broadway-plan/. See also this documentary teaser, “Is this the city we want to build?” (YouTube).