CD-1 Rezoning 1405 Main Street

Great, thank you very much. Clerk, do we have any other speakers in the chamber? Okay. Okay, so we now will take a two-minute recess for any additional speakers to call in or come forward to the podium.

We do have an additional speaker, Kyra Young.

Hi. Kyra, can I please get you to state whether or not you're a resident of Vancouver for the record?

Thank you very much. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Clerk, do we have any speakers in the chamber or online? We do not. Seeing no further speakers, the speakers list is now closed. Clerk, has there been a large volume of public comments received on this item since 5 p.m.?

Okay. Seeing that there are few or no public comments received after 5 p.m., I'm now closing the receipt of public comments. Does the applicant have any additional closing comments?

Thank you very much. Do our team members have any closing comments?

Okay, does council have any final questions for our team members, noting no additional questions to the applicant are permitted? Councillor Domenato.

Thanks, Mayor. And through you to staff, I have a couple of clarifying questions. A number of the residents identified concerns with traffic flow and safety in the context of the proposed development, but also it sounds like regardless of the development in the current context of the school and drop-offs. So could you comment on... What might be, if this were supported, how do we address those concerns? And what does engineering undertake in terms of new developments and looking at traffic flows?

Could I ask a clarifying question? Just in follow-up to that is we've had some partnerships with the VSB around slow streets with schools. Would this be eligible? Is there an opportunity to explore that?

Okay. And then... I had another question, but I lost my train of thought, so I'll go back. I see Councillor Orr is on the queue, so I'll let him go first. Thanks.

Councillor Orr? Yeah, thanks. So, yeah, a question through the chair to the staff. I mean, we've heard some pretty strong language here. Monstrous, absolute chaos, irreparable harm to the community, things like that. How did we sort of get here? I mean, I know we sent out... 1,244 notices. We received 33, both positive and negative. Is there something better we can do to sort of communicate around, you know, what we heard there, you know, around we're going to be looking at, you know, safety upgrades, street lighting, new sidewalks, lane crossing, parking, regulatory signage. You know, is there something more we can do to sort of communicate? you know, what we're doing to listen because the petition, you know, the petition says that consultation has been minimal and, you know, and feels performative. I just wonder, you know, it might be a difficult question to ask or to answer, but, you know, is there anything we could do to communicate that we are listening?

Thanks for the question, Councillor.

A really detailed answer. Thank you so much. You know, just to sort of summarize, this work is ongoing. This work around infrastructure and whatnot is ongoing, right? And then just a question, just sort of a brief thing around, you know, people saying, you know, talking about policy and learning from other jurisdictions and worldview and stuff. Just to re-edify, public hearings aren't the place for that. If we want to change the policy, we do it at a different time and place, correct? Sorry to bring you back up.

Okay, thanks. And then maybe a little more granular and specific on, let's say, destruction of trees. There will be a tree bylaw, I assume, that is followed on this one. I'm just trying to pick out a few things.

Destruction of trees. Yeah.

Tree bylaw, sorry.

Okay, and then I don't know if someone else is going to ask about, I guess school capacity was a big one. Can we turn? I know we... Templar just briefly touched on that. What about community centers? That's kind of the same answer too, right? Where all the work is being done. Okay, sorry. I'm just kind of thrown back by some of this here. So, yeah, that's all my questions. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Dominato, did you?

Okay. Clerk, did we receive any additional public comments since the close of public comments?

unfortunately not mayor we did not uh yeah no we do have to follow the procedures unfortunately and we had an opportunity for speakers to speak and then no unfortunately not Council will now make its decision on this application. Do we have a mover for the recommendations?

Councillor Klassen, do we have a seconder? Councillor Frye, thank you.

Councillor Maloney, please go.

Thank you. Thank you to the speakers for coming in and sharing your views with us tonight. I was very much remembering an experience I had when we lived in an apartment in Yaletown and I remember that Vancouver House was being built close to us. And I remember... And another building was being built as well. And I remember how I felt when we were losing sight of the wall street, the wall centre from my daughter's bedroom. And I remember feeling sad about that and thinking that's a shame. And... And there is definitely a feeling of stress about change in your neighbourhood and I've certainly experienced a lot of change moving around the world myself and it's always difficult and the period of adjustment is always...

It's always... very unrelaxing and takes a little while to get used to. And there are some things about change that are very helpful, though. And I know in my own neighbourhood having a new London drugs and supermarket was a fantastic by-product and more eyes on the street and more neighbours and having it easier to get around. It ended up, even though I had initial concerns about the change, it ended up being a better neighbourhood as a result of it. And I know that's not much consolation for you seeing this change, but I think there are some good things that can come to the neighbourhood as a result of having rental housing. You know, I was so appreciative of the... the speech by London. I have two kids of my own who are teenagers and I'm concerned about them being able to find housing in the city, affordable housing close to where we live. And I know that any parents are concerned about that as well. And I know how many people are losing their children, their adult children are moving out far away from where they live. And it is very difficult for them not to see them as often as they like. And I've heard from a lot of seniors that we don't have enough accessible housing options in every neighbourhood and people also don't like having to move far away from their community where they know everyone and they know the shops because they can't find suitable accommodation in their neighbourhood when they can't handle the stairs anymore. So I know that's all not what you want to hear, but there are real benefits from having more affordable rental accommodation for the people that need to live in our city, our firefighters, our police, our servers, our teachers. it is very hard to find rental accommodation. So I will be voting in favour of this development and I really appreciate you coming and sharing your views.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Claassen. Thanks very much, Mayor, and thanks to all the speakers that came in tonight. I really appreciate hearing your voices and your passion and certainly your love of the community. I'm going to just share a little bit. When I was straight out of high school, which was a long time ago, 45 years ago, I got a job at the Vancouver School Board, and I got to ride around in a truck during the summer jump out, cut grass, and clean up the gardens. And McGee High School is one of the places that I remember very fondly. It was the old building before they built the new one, which is still one of the nicest school buildings in the district. And I just remember sort of treasuring being at it. This area, for the most part, has not really evolved and changed a lot. The tree canopy is larger, but it maintains itself as a fairly stately neighborhood with beautiful boulevards, and it's just a great place to live. I remember next door to... the school across Maple at 49th, there used to be like a little corner store. And I think somebody knocked it down and built a house there quite a long time ago. But it was a neighborhood that had a place, a sense of place. It still has a sense of place, but it was really driven by the connection to Arbutus and some of the, now lately we're starting to see with the grocery store, Savon Foods, which I think a lot of neighborhoods would love to have grocery store like that so close to their door being able to walk to it one of the speakers talked about more older adults living in a neighborhood and that's something that is particularly important to me I see our neighborhoods evolving I see certainly the fact that we have so many seniors now. And I recently visited somebody who didn't live very far from here who was concerned about very similar things. A new housing development is going in, concerns around traffic. There was a school nearby. They were very worried about the potential for, you know, there being an incident involving the kids walking to school. So we walked around the neighborhood together and looked at it and talked about it. But when I went back to his home afterwards, he told me that his wife had to go into a care home because fairly elderly, and now she's had some cognitive challenges. And as I sat in the living room with him, I looked at all of his photo books. And, you know, it really drove home the fact that we really do need to take care of elderly people in this neighborhood, in all of our neighborhoods. And the way we do that, I think, is really suitable and appropriate housing. And what I do find is that when you get to a certain age. If it's at all suitable, it's really great to be able to have those housing options where you're closer to people, closer to amenities, walkable grocery, shopping, and having those kinds of things that really make life, those activities of daily life, and make life much more joyful in your later years. And so I just... I have to put that down as something that I think about a lot when we are planning and building our city. And so this is going to be a place that will always be lively. There will always be young people walking to school for generations to come. The school district absolutely needs to think about its capacity. That's a little bit out of our hands. We try and influence it as much as we can. But at the end of the day, that's a provincial matter. They really do need to think about it. And as Councillor Don Minato, through her questions, pointed out, We need to be very careful about the amount of traffic. I used to drive 49th all the time. I was an Eastside kid. I went to UBC. Some of my best pals were McGee kids, and still to this day they're old friends of mine. But at the end of the day, I think that this neighborhood is taking a very small step towards having a more kind of village environment that rental housing... like this, which at five stories is relatively modest, will hopefully provide housing for people who want to downsize their housing, still live in the neighborhood, still be able to walk to the grocery store, meet up with friends, and be able to... be close to a place where they can shop go to have a coffee and things like that so i'm just again i'm sort of trying to think about how the neighborhood evolves a little bit and i know it's cold comfort for those of you brought forward some very concerns about traffic and and and uh and what you considered, you know, sort of describing about the heft of the building, the shadows and what have you. At the end of the day, I think that this proposal that I see, designed well and built well, will, at the end of the day, would be a very positive aspect of this neighborhood. So I'll be supporting it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Kirby-Young.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor. I'll just sort of touch on a couple of different points that I heard, and I appreciated hearing from all the residents who are very passionate about the neighborhood. What I'm hearing in this rezoning tonight and in other applications coming forward is people and local neighbors underscoring the importance of livability and community amenities. And so I did want to express that taking that to heart is very helpful to hear from people that are in their neighborhoods and that are They their kids themselves, families are trying to use them every day because council has an opportunity to set our investments in the upcoming capital plan. Every council inherits one and every council gets to complete one. And so I think for me, the takeaway I'm hearing is that we really need to be looking at some of these aging. facilities and we're hearing about it, whether it's the Kerrisdale Ice Arena, the local playgrounds, et cetera, and making sure that we are investing them, which happens, as was mentioned, in the capital planning process outside of this specific hearing, but hearing that feedback directly from residents is really important and affirms to me that that's where we need to be spending a lot of time and effort to contribute to supporting the existing residents and some of the new ones that would come in with this building. So I just wanted to thank everybody for that feedback. Thanks, Mayor.