Why are there so many tower proposals already in the Broadway Plan area?

This is Part 3 of 5 in Daily Hive Urbanized’s incremental series on unlocking the Broadway Plan’s full potential as a successful, high-density, diverse, and transit-oriented community and Vancouver’s vibrant second city centre.

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This week, Vancouver City Council is expected to approve a number of major amendments recommended by City of Vancouver staff to the Broadway Plan strategy, which enables greater high-density, transit-oriented development near the future stations of the SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension.

And during their deliberations, they could also make some amendments of their own that add to or revise the strategies outlined by City staff.

These changes are being made as the Broadway Plan reaches just over two years old — in direct response to the requirements of the provincial government’s new transit-oriented development legislation, feedback received from residents, businesses, and the development industry, and the type of applications seen to date within the Broadway Plan area.

The previous makeup of City Council approved the original Broadway Plan in June 2022. Shortly after, the Broadway Plan came into effect on September 1, 2022 — triggering a surge of rezoning enquiries, serving as a precursor for many proponents to the eventual submission of formal, detailed rezoning application at a later date.

As of the end of September 2024, the municipal government has recorded a total of 139 projects in the development pipeline under the Broadway Plan, including 44 projects in the rezoning enquiry stage, 71 in the formal rezoning application stage, four in the rezoning approval stage, 16 in the development permit stage, three in the building permit stage, and one in the occupancy permit stage.

The number of rezoning applications has also increased substantially from 56 in late June 2024 to 71 in late September 2024. Over the first nine months of the year, there was an increase of 42 rezoning applications.

Some of the most consequential Broadway Plan amendments recommended by City staff include enabling added density through increased permissible height for certain types of uses, and the removal of some of the existing rules limiting the number of high-rise towers per face of each city block (side of each street), particularly areas near the new subway stations.

Ian Brackett, a senior broker for Goodman Commercial, previously told Daily Hive Urbanized this policy limiting the number of towers per block has “created winners and losers” for the property owners. This has created competition among property owners and developers to secure the ability to build a high-rise, such as a 20-storey tower, on their site. Those unable to do so are left with the lower-density option of a four- or six-storey building.

Those unable to build a tower would not only miss out on a potential increase in value, but the alternative option of a low- or mid-rise building might lack the density needed to make the project financially viable.

In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized on Friday, Matt Shillito, the City of Vancouver’s director of projects, stated that the policy limiting the number of towers per block has created some artificial scarcity, which is a contributing factor to the high volume of applications out of the gate since September 2022.

“[A] factor is that the tower limits, the limits in towers for blocks in some parts of the plan area. It was only really in some parts of the plan area that they had a major effect. Did it prompt some landowners to think, ‘Oh, yeah, I think should get in early and try and achieve an opportunity there that might be missed if I don’t?’” he said.

“So I think there was, I think that’s a factor in it, but probably not the biggest factor. I think it’s one of a number [of factors].”

Compounded by the development interest driven by the new subway, which will open in Fall 2027, there is also pent-up demand from the temporary moratorium on most types of rezonings that was in effect for the entire Broadway Plan area spanning about 500 city blocks across six sq km. The moratorium was in effect from June 2018 to September 2022.

This moratorium — in effect until the finalization of the Broadway Plan — also lasted for a year longer than anticipated due to the pandemic’s impacts on the planning process. In June 2018, before the planning process began for the Broadway Plan, a moratorium was applied to deter some types of speculative activity seen during the prolonged planning process for the Cambie Corridor Plan.

“For a number of years, there was essentially little to no rezoning activity in a big area of the city,” said Shillito, highlighting the impact of the moratorium as a factor.

When asked whether some applications are lower in quality or less serious due to proponents’ “mad dash” to secure a tower for their property due to the per block rules, he acknowledged that such applications likely exist but noted he cannot be certain.

He anticipates many proposals are serious, given the high costs associated with advancing a project’s design with more detail as it moves from the rezoning enquiry stage to the formal rezoning application stage.

“Everybody says they’re serious, but you can’t tell for sure what’s behind a particular proposal. There are some clues in the form of the parties involved, if there’s a developer involved as well as a landowner, and if they have produced a robust package of materials at the inquiry stage, for example. That shows they’ve done a lot of thinking about this and invested in design and architecture and so on,” Shillito told Daily Hive Urbanized.

While the high and growing number of applications may be alarming, especially to critics of the Broadway Plan, he noted that although many proposals are serious, a high number of other proposals will likely be canceled for various reasons at some point in the development timeline.

“There is a spectrum and there will be some that do fall away for sure — you know, no doubt, quite a significant percentage,” he continued.

For clarity and brevity, this is an edited and condensed version of the remaining questions and answers from Daily Hive Urbanized’s interview with Shillito:

One of the key concerns about the Broadway Plan is not only the perceived lack of new parklands and community and recreation centres, but also the shortage of very significant funding strategies to pay for such amenities. In the West End Plan and Cambie Corridor Plan, for example, future amenities are being paid for by significant community amenity contributions (CACs) from developers of strata market condominium ownership housing. But to date, the overwhelming majority of the proposed residential development in the Broadway Plan is secured purpose-built housing, which offers highly limited CACs in comparison. How is the City navigating these challenges?

I think there’s no doubt that that’s a challenge that we faced in producing the plan and it was a very big theme during the planning process.

We’ve got a public benefit strategy in the plan, and that’s a 30-year vision for investment by the City, partly by taking revenues from development in the form of development cost levies (DCLs) and CACs, but also allocating capital plan dollars from essentially from tax revenues towards that 30-year funding strategy. And then within that, there’s a 10-year strategy for the first 10 years of a $1.1 billion investment.

Although in pulling that together across all of the categories of public amenities and infrastructure, there are always sort of more needs and things that we would like to be able to fund from those funding tools, we do think that it’s a pretty robust public benefits strategy.

Certain parts of the Broadway Plan have relatively low park provision relative to the rest of the city, particularly areas like Fairview. And so, one thing that City Council did when they approved the plan is they directed us to go away and come up with a public space target.

I think the task that we’ve sort of had was, “how do we come up with new ways to provide public space and park space outside of the traditional way?” That was to either acquire land by the City buying it, or get large areas of park space dedicated in sort of master planned areas of the city. So while the strategy we’ve come up with does do both of those things, it does include a budget for park acquisition, and it does involve achieving park dedications from some of the large sites in the plan area.

The new thing the plan does, or the big emphasis, is the reallocation of road space. We know we have a significant amount of land that the City already owns, and therefore there’s no acquisition cost for land that is used for vehicles. And we have another aspiration, which is to reduce the proportion of trips within the area by private vehicle and increase walking, biking, and public transit modes. These two things work together in a way, and we believe that there is surplus road space that could be repurposed.

The big emphasis on road reallocation will get us to a 25-acre new park and public open space target.

And then also, the other thing we can do is make more use of the existing park space that we have. There are some existing parks in the area that don’t provide a great variety of options in terms of activities, such as Jonathan Rogers Park. It’s quite a large park, but it’s mostly a moon field.

One of the issues we’ve had to wrestle with in coming up with the public benefit strategy is understanding that we would get a lower contribution from CACs than has been the case in some of previous area planning processes. It’s been a bit compounded by the sort of limited interest in building condos at the moment, because the market is weak. That will likely change over time.

To that end, do these amendments to the Broadway Plan include policies that encourage more strata market ownership condominium uses as opposed to only rentals or are you depending on a cycle change in market conditions?

We haven’t got any changes that actually sort of further encourage strata in the Broadway Plan area. What I would say, though, is that the plan already includes a wide variety in terms of the geographical area, and also the different kinds of opportunities in different parts of the plan for strata. So it’s not like there aren’t many opportunities for strata in the plan.

It’s true, though, that we have, in many cases, sort of favoured rental housing, in terms of the additional height and density allowance for rental versus strata on the same site, for example. And we still think that’s the right strategy. And it’s important to remember that we are very focused on rental supply

In essence, we’re trying to address decades of undersupply of rental. In that sense, the plan is working, and a majority of the residential development is in market rental and below-market rental at the moment, not strata. And although that brings with it some challenges in terms of the CACs and delivering public amenities, it is also positive in terms of trying to address this major shortfall of rental housing.

Circling back on park space, some community advocates have been calling for improved and expanded traditional landscaped green park space for the Vancouver City Hall campus, as opposed to the City’s “Civic District” vision outlined in the Broadway Plan amendments for a high-density mixed-use redevelopment with major public plazas. What’s your reaction to their alternate vision? What are some of the challenges of this green park idea, if any?

We have heard from some people that they’re particularly interested in sort of preserving the mature trees and the kind of green, leafy, if you like, oasis feeling of the lawn in front of City Hall. I think that’s sort of been the main focus of people’s interest. And, you know, we certainly understand that.

We feel like there’s a balance. There’s an opportunity to balance that objective and retain existing mature trees as much as possible, do new planting, and retain green space, but also evolve that area into a more usable space with a greater variety of uses, including things like celebrations.

At the moment, that space is not particularly accessible. It’s essentially a sloping lawn with a path running over it, a community garden, and there’s the Japanese garden, which is important to maintain. But it’s not particularly usable or accessible at the moment.

We think it can do more in terms of a greater variety of uses, while also retaining its sort of green part of this area. So we think it’s important, and it’s possible to do both things.

One other thing I would say is just in terms of public space, generally, the idea of the plan for the Civic District for the block north of 10th Avenue is to create more public space there in the form of a more of a hardscape plaza, but still to create more space for people to gather and circulate around the City Hall area.

What would you tell an architect or developer when they inform you they can’t plan for a financially viable project based on the allotted densities, height limits, and building form constraints?

It varies case by case. We do in some cases work with developers to see if there are adjustments that could be made to their projects within the Broadway Plan’s parameters or even just outside the parameters. It’s important to know that the plan is not a rigid blueprint, it’s a 30-year plan and a framework for development that covers such a large area.

So it’s important to have some flexibility if there are particular projects that could be adjusted slightly — things like floor plate sizes, a little adjustment in height, and other things like that that would enable a project to proceed in the current market climate.

We do consider that quite regularly as long as it’s still meeting the intent of the plan and delivering on its objectives, whatever that might be relevant to that particular project. We work with developers on those things and there are some areas where we could be flexible on to help move things forward.

Well outside of the Broadway Plan area, there is a rezoning application to redevelop the former BC Liquor warehouse site next to SkyTrain’s Rupert Station to build what will be Vancouver’s future tallest towers — far higher than the Broadway Plan’s tallest allowances. From an urban planning perspective, should that type of development be also permitted in central areas of the city well served by public transit, like Central Broadway?

We aren’t proposing any adjustments to the heights of the tallest buildings in the Broadway Plan area. We still feel that 40 storeys is essentially the limit in the key station areas, primarily South Granville Station, and then building heights 30 to 40 storeys in some of the other station areas is the right height for those particular locations. We’ve not had any proposals go beyond these heights.

We still feel that’s the right kind of scale for these areas. The particular project you mentioned does have some other considerations at play as it’s a First Nations-led project, which brings another lens to it in terms of our commitments for reconciliation. But we feel that the heights that we have, in fact, the tallest heights that we identified two years ago, are still appropriate.

Of course, height is only one measure of density. There’s a number of opportunities in the plan for increased density taken as a whole, and they are really substantial.

Some members of the public have wondered why do we need to make the Broadway Plan area a second city centre for Vancouver? What are some of the constraints of our existing primary city centre of the downtown Vancouver peninsula? As cities grow in population and densify and mature, how does their main city centre evolve and expand?

That’s a great question. I think it’s important to say that the Broadway Plan area is almost entirely contained within the what we call the Metro Core of the region.

And that’s a regional district designation that the City has adopted. It makes it the primary metropolitan core of the region.

Then obviously, the downtown within that has been the primary core within the Metro Core. Obviously, the downtown peninsula, while there is still development potential on individual sites, and in some areas on False Creek and on the Central Waterfront, is substantially built out.

There’s a natural move really to a kind of Uptown area, which is in the Broadway Plan area. A lot of large cities, mature cities, have a kind of Uptown that is secondary to the downtown core, but still very central. And in this case, obviously, very well located in terms of public transit accessibility. So there’s a kind of natural move there, as well as a move that’s prompted by the Metro Core designation, which includes most of this area, and it goes back into policy for many years, if not decades.

It’s a sort of natural evolution of a city that’s continuing to grow and maturing, and needs to find space to accommodate that growth. And that’s in terms of addressing housing needs, economic vitality, and diversity.

On that note, can you touch on how the Broadway Plan might support more cultural activities and attractions within its area, as well as catalyze new hotels?

We have policy in the plan to encourage and to safeguard existing and encourage new cultural spaces. This is also part of the public benefit strategy with city funding allocated towards that, and we’re seeing a few projects come forward that are embracing that.

For example, the proposal for redeveloping the City Centre Motel site on Main Street provides a new cultural space there. Then there’s the La Maison de la Francophonie project, and a number of other sort of smaller initiatives.

As well, we got direction from City Council to look at ways to incentivize hotel development across the city.

While there were already quite a number of opportunities in the Broadway Plan that were approved, and indeed a number of projects moving forward through the rezoning process now, we’ve looked at broadening the areas geographically where you can build hotels, and also looking at ways to support the viability of hotel development by pairing it with strata condo development, which seems to be a good way to kind of make both things work — but particularly to support the hotel development.

So there’s a bit more flexibility and a broader area where hotels can be developed, plus some incentives. There were already some incentives in the plan for hotel, but sort of broadening and deepening those incentives to give a bit more emphasis to that, which has increased our hotel target to 3,000 rooms now.

How has Squamish Nation’s nearby Senakw project influenced the Broadway Plan, if at all? Has Senakw pushed the envelope or the overton window of how Vancouver should be able to grow and evolve?

I don’t know that it’s hugely influenced the Broadway Plan. It’s obviously a unique set of circumstances and the location. I would say that it hasn’t been a huge influence. It’s obviously a contextual piece that we need to be mindful of in terms of connections to it and the sort of the delivery of public benefits and so on, and the connections from Senakw to the new subway.

I wouldn’t say it has hugely influenced our thinking about the scale or the nature of development that we’re recommending in the Broadway Plan area.

Overall, can you summarize what are the successes and challenges seen to date with the Broadway Plan’s implementation over the last two years?

I think it’s funny because one of the successes is also one of the major challenges. I suppose, the success in terms of the interest in taking up the opportunities for development in the plan — after all, one of the major objectives of the plan is to deliver housing, particularly rental housing, affordable housing, and commercial spaces of different kinds. The level of interest in that is both very pleasing and encouraging in terms of meeting the plan’s objectives, but also has presented challenges in terms of the volume of activity for our staff in terms of processing applications.

It’s a bit of a double-edged sword there. I think other than that, we’re very pleased with the public realm plan that we’ve produced. We are also working on some more zoning changes to sort of facilitate development under the plan to happen without rezoning.

We’ve done some changes in the industrial areas to help facilitate that. We look to moving forward into some of the residential areas as well, because that will help us to streamline our approvals process and kind of avoid the rezoning stage for those projects.

It is too early to declare victory, a huge success, because it is only two years into a 30-year plan. But I would say we are cautiously optimistic that the plan is going to bring its resources to the table in terms of things like the public realm.

We’re going to keep working at it and keep monitoring it, and we’ll be judged by the metrics that we’ve committed to over the 30 years.

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This is Part 3 of 5 in Daily Hive Urbanized’s incremental series on unlocking the Broadway Plan’s full potential as a successful, high-density, diverse, and transit-oriented community and Vancouver’s vibrant second city centre.

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