A few queries for you, fine sir.

Thus far, my schedule isn’t allowing me the time to put as much thought into  a piece of media perceptions of South Asians in this city, but hopefully I will be able to pump something out later in the day (hopefully).

But in the meantime, here are a few questions for Randy Helten, the man who alls anyone outside of his perception of what a typical West End resident constitutes a “stereotype” and according to one predictable website, “the person who is spearheading with his community the opposition to the recent STIR developments”:

Do you have a family member who owns property across the street from the 22-storey high-rise rental apartment tower on the site of St John’s Church at 1401 Comox Street?

Also, does another family member of yours own a penthouse unit above the TD bank on Bidwell and Davie, which is across the street from a proposed 19-story tower?

Finally, do you own a property adjacent to the Comox proposal?

And, if any of these facts are true, don’t you think that you have a responsibility to disclose them as at least part (but not all, of course) of the reasoning behind your opposition to the STIR developments going up in the West End?

I anxiously await a response.

Completely overshadowed by the Mayor’s unfortunate comments are the attitudes that are being expressed by the anti-STIR forces in the West End who from what I can tell simply adverse to change or any kind of development in their neighbourhood.

Former City Councillor Gordon Price is a voice of reason and experience within the realm of municipal politics within this city, and so I think that everyone should read his take on the STIR program being introduced into the West End here.  Goodness knows that by no stretch of the imagination is Price on board with everything that Vision Vancouver has taken on, meaning that his perspective as a West End resident who sees the community from the inside is very valuable.

Here are the excerpts that I found most interesting:

“As a West Ender myself (and the first City Councillor to come out of the downtown since the 1940s), I learned that, paradoxically, as the rate of change slows down, people’s anxiety about change increases.  Even the smallest alteration can ignite fear of precedent. Within that square mile only a dozen or so new buildings have been constructed since 1972, the year the highrise boom ended.  But even that proved to be too much, and so in 1989 the NPA Council rezoned the district to discourage demolition.  A rate-of-change bylaw has slowed redevelopment to practically zero.”

“Developers were directed to other parts of downtown, where rezonings encouraged much higher densities where few residents would be disturbed.  Downtown South became the new West End, taking pressure off the existing housing stock.”

“That era is practically over.  Downtown is almost all built out; there are few places left to massively rezone.  The STIR program, whether intending to or not, is directing attention back to the West End, where dozens of wooden low-rise apartment blocks are nearing the end of their physical lives.  Change, it seems, is inevitable.”

“One long-time leader in the community is skeptical of anything so simplistic as a ‘plan.’ As he notes, the West End is a hodge-podge: layers of different styles and forms accumulated over a century.  Trying to define a single vision for the future actually goes against the very nature of the West End.  Better to go block by block, allowing new development when and where it fits in without rezoning the whole neighbourhood, doing so incrementally without massive disruption.

Kind of what the STIR program is attempting to do.”

Couple this with writeups by residents like Godfrey von Nostitz-Tait, who in a piece originally written for the Daily Gumboot,  says stuff like this:

“My opposition to STIR in the West End started with “not in my back yard” and into a full fledged defense of my community, a rewarding and gratifying experience that goes beyond politics,”

as well as these arguments against the STIR program (scroll to the bottom to read their 11 points), and what you have is a community that thinks it can escape change and not be a part of the bigger community of this city.

Here are my quick responses to those 11 points:

• The plan is from 1989.  As Gordon Price points out, it is designed to keep change and development away from the community rather than preserve something that is pristine.
• There is little within the STIR program proposals for the West End that are “radical”
• Subsidizing large-scale development companies is a hollow accusation, as this program is about taking the steps necessary to encourage new rental housing stock to be built.  This kind of development would not happen in the private sector without City Council stepping in.
• What are communities going to say?  That they don’t want rental housing in their backyard just as the West End is doing?  Consultation happens on a case by case basis, as is happening with this proposed development.
• This is not about creating more rental stock simply for the West End.  Believe it or not people, the entire City of Vancouver does not revolve around the prescriptions of those that live in the West End.
• Rental stock needs to be increased in this city, which all economists and developers will assert leads to greater affordability and choice for the market.
• How should change happen?  Well, it does happen regardless of whether those in the West End want to mimic Hot Tub Time Machine and stay in the 1980s.

I have more to say, but I had better stop now before I write something I will regret later.  I hate these kinds of attitudes in Vancouver, and am sick of people not willing to think about the city as a whole rather than their little fiefdoms of comfort.

NIMBYs unite in the West End, and everyone is supposed to bow down?  Give me a break.

]]> http://civicscene.ca/anti-stir-residents-are-little-more-than-nimbys/feed 3 http://civicscene.ca/monday-quick-hits http://civicscene.ca/monday-quick-hits#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:01:46 +0000 Jonathan Ross http://civicscene.ca/?p=3781

• Matching up this “headline” with the reality of what actually went down on Saturday is yet another example of how hollow this guy’s “breaking news” truly is.  And before he starts to assert that he was the driving force behind ensuring that the fly-over occurred (this is the kind of claim he might be prone to making), let me assure you that there was never any danger of the Canadian Forces not being able to put a show for the fans.  Word from my sources who the Canadian forces personnel reached out to for help is that all involved were very upset to learn more about the individual that they had chosen to take up their story.  I am going to try and get some details on how those pieces of correspondence were obtained, and what those personnel were told by said blog owner.

• After touring the city with my sister who is spending the summer in Vancouver after not living here for more than two weeks at a time since 2003, I heard how impressed she was as to Vancouver’s transformation through “loosening up” and becoming a lot more fun.  In fact, the new atmosphere of festivals and events and people truly experiencing the city is something that is being noticed by many of my contacts from a variety of different social circles.  Yes, the Olympics have had a lot to do with this, but just as important is the current City Council and Mayor, who might just have figured out exactly how to permanently change Vancouver’s “no-fun city” branding.

• Why did they have to call it “Rogers Arena“?  It would have been so much cooler for ticket holders to be able to say “We’re heading over to Rogers place to watch the game.”

• Meggs’ trip to Portland on the high speed rail was interesting, and in spite of the delay, tomorrow I will have a post up on the proceedings and what the future might hold for such a transportation link through the Cascadia region.  I promise.

• This guy’s laziness shows through in a poorly thought out, American-styled “I don’t need to tell the government anything” type of rant.  Frances has got it right when she describes the federal government’s decision to cancel the census as “a serious blow to our ability to understand who we are as a nation, what we’re doing collectively, and how to plan for the future.”  Absolutely – the better we know ourselves, the better we as citizens can figure out what kind of country we want.  Governments fumbling in the dark without reliable information on trends, demographics and how Canadians are living is downright scary – particularly with this government that is currently in place.

• Not sure when Kitsilano became a nude beach (maybe I should check it out later on today), but this writer’s take on Vancouver from a typical Toronto perspective is fun.  The commutes of Toronto’s freeways are a nightmare as anyone can attest, and being able to traverse a city without the hassle of getting onto one still continues to remain as one of North America’s true urban anomalies.  I might hate how traffic has increased over the past five years, but it is still a city of neighbourhoods that can easily be traversed without too much punching of the steering wheel.

• Embarassing?  Sure.  The Mayor is going to have to offer some kind of apology for this one, I am sure.  But the amount of misinformation being pedaled around the west end by a few dozen diehards is absolutely stunning.  This advisory council is an idea that will help to provide balanced representation (not voted in by those who would tirelessly organize to have all anti-Stir members on the committee) that will hopefully cut through the swath and get some real facts out into the community.

• The CityCaucus are up in arms about “keeping the Mayor’s office website distinct from the City’s.”  They claim that “city’s website has been used to continually shill for Mayor Robertson.”  But similar links from other cities’ websites do the exact same thing – Calgary, being just one of many examples.  There is not one mention of anything political on that website – mention Vision Vancouver doesn’t appear anywhere.  So to accused such a site of being used to “politick” is ridiculous, and just another empty allegation from a potential future City Council candidate and possibly his future campaign manager.

• Alex Tsakumis stated this about George Chow at the end of one of his most recent blog posts: “Nice thing, being able to count on your ethnic vote every three years, eh Georgie?”  This statement seems to imply that the ethnic vote is is all the George relies on to get elected every term, which is not only completely false, but also quite offensive.  In spite of Alex’s taunts about George’s intelligence, sarcastically referring to him as a “MENSA candidate” and calling him a “useless nit,” they don’t at all match up with a man who is an engineer by profession and one of the most pragmatic, level-headed individuals elected to Council in recent memory.  Tsakumis’ continuing trend of making culturally insensitive remarks is piling up, giving people a deeper window into the man behind the bluster.

• Speaking of Tsakumis, I stumbled on the following comment from Frances Bula’s blog, and I thought it to be quite funny in light of recent developments: “24hrs. is a FIRST CLASS operation and I’m sure I speak for my highly respected colleague, Bill, when I say that it’s a pleasure to work there. On behalf of our editor and publisher, thanks for the employment suggestions, but neither of us is going to be fired and the reason we have two of the most popular and most read columns in the city is precisely because we are impartial and fair. 24hrs has almost a quarter of a million readers per day and ranks in B.C. only behind the Sun and Province in daily readership…and our trendline has always been on the up…”  I wonder if he still has the same opinions today about his former employer today…

• The NIMBY’s in the west end who are up in arms about the proposed STIR development in their neighbourhood might have a lot of names on a petition, but by no means are united in the reasons behind their opposition.  Some hate the developers and development in general, some feel that the height is too much, even though it would be on par with other buildings in the area, some feel attached to the church, and some just don’t think that the element that would be coming into the area would be desirable (a silly perception of what kind of renters would be attracted to such a building, but that is how myths turn into reality in a neighbourhood war like this).  Anyways, this is yet another example of how the few mobilize, and turn a program that has real benefit to the city and demonizes it.  City Council had better be prepared to have some open and honest consultations with this group, but hopefully won’t abandon a very worthwhile program for a city of Vancouver’s expense.

• This if probably worthy of a larger post, but where is COPE on City Council these days?  Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman are nowhere on the public radar, as opposed to Jane Bouey on the School Board and Loretta Woodcock on the Park Board, who have both been excellent in their roles.  Woodsworth and Cadman (when he bothers to show up) have been silent in terms of advancing any causes, and yet I hear that COPE administrators are trying to demand more than 2 spots if a deal with Vision Vancouver can be agreed to.  So you have two under-performing Councillors who will have a very hard time getting elected next time around (particularly with the sorry state the party is in these days, both financially and organizationally), and now you want more guaranteed spots in an electoral arrangement?  These guys are delusional, and possibly heading the way of the NPA if they don’t get their act together.

• The Montreal hockey fans really disappointed me amidst my utter elation at the fact that my beloved Habs are moving into the third round of the playoffs.  Although, as was pointed out by CBC’s Mark Kelley yesterday, Montreal has a history or riots over politics, culture or sports, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise (they had Rejean Houle come on with a recorded statement in the Bell Centre asking people to show class and respect in their celebrations).  But what I found even more upsetting was the site of Minister of Heritage James “I”m eating crow now” Moore wearing a Habs jersey.  After labeling the Canucks “Canada’s Team” a few weeks back in a ill-thought out tweet, I get no joy in seeing that XXL sized jersey being worn by someone who clearly has no context about hockey history.  Let’s hope he hasn’t jinxed what can now be officially classified as “Canada’s Team” in the next series.

That’s it for today folks.  Enjoy the beautiful weather out there.