 | Saturday, January 22, 2022
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Vancouver’s viaducts not falling soon, even with court decision | | |  | | | Remember when the City of Vancouver voted to tear down the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts seven years ago? What’s going on with that?
It’s a question that comes up often, given how prominent the viaducts are to downtown Vancouver — both visually and as transportation infrastructure — but also all the things promised to happen if they go down.
The rough plan has been to tear down the viaducts and create a new road network for the area. More recently, it’s also involved building a true meeting point for the city’s Black community — complete with affordable housing in a land trust — in the Hogan’s Alley area displaced more than 50 years ago due to the construction of the viaducts.
Generally speaking, this would be funded from the proceeds of Concord Pacific developing the parking lots at the north end of False Creek that have sat vacant for decades.
But Concord Pacific hasn’t moved forward on any application to develop the land since council voted to tear down the viaducts. The City of Vancouver doesn’t want to move forward with any part of the plan until they have development money to pay for the post-viaduct future.
And so the paralysis continues, year after year.
We bring this up now because of a news story you might have seen earlier this week: Concord Pacific losing a B.C. Court of Appeal case over a messy dispute with the owner of the adjacent Plaza of Nations lands, in a proposed partnership gone awry.
Concord Pacific told CBC News they’re considering a further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but said the ongoing legal battle has nothing to do with their timeline on the rest of the lands. But they also said they were “hopeful” more concrete plans for their site would be shared later this year.
Will those plans pass muster with city council? Will it create a viable funding model to get the Hogan’s Alley land trust created? And if the answer to those questions is no, how much longer will the seismically shaky and asbestos-laden viaducts stay up for, and what’s a Plan B?
These are large questions without clear answers.
But then again, if there were clear answers, we wouldn’t be on year eight of the viaducts remaining up. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | | | Outside of a couple of public hearings, it was a lighter week in B.C.’s biggest city, though an eight-motion council agenda is set to come next week. But a prank caller during one of the public hearings provided amusement — or irritation, depending on your point of view — and there was another round of the debate that has consumed some of the city’s political discourse the last two years: is crime *actually* down, and how does the mayor feel the city is safe?
Read more in Vancouver is Awesome | | |  | | | 2. Surrey | Discussion about Doug McCallum’s reign as mayor will reach a fever pitch next week, as he has his first court appearance for a mischief charge stemming from his claim he was run over. Meanwhile, three-term Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal is becoming quite open about his consideration to run for mayor — whether against McCallum or not is still part of the question.
Read more | | | |  | | | 3. Pandemic policies | The pandemic affects different municipalities in different ways every week — and in the last few days in B.C., it’s been a number of small communities in Interior Health that have seen their inpatient services closed or reduced to redeploy staff. The Mayor of Barriere has called it “irresponsible," and one imagines other local leaders aren’t too thrilled either. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. E-scooters | The B.C. government’s pilot program allowing the smaller devices on local roads is slowly making its way through the legislative process in a few municipalities, and on Tuesday, the City of North Vancouver gave its first three readings to bylaw changes. A reminder: they're allowed only on local roads with no centre line, bike lanes, mobility lanes and multi-use paths. Don’t go crazy out there.
Read more | | | |  | | | 5. Housing policies | Over the last year, the province has been stepping up its rhetoric on how municipalities need to build more housing, without going so far as to override them on many local decisions. But they technically could, as often as they want — and it’s quite possible that whoever becomes the next leader of the B.C. Liberal Party in two weeks will start making that a bigger political debate. Read more in the Vancouver Sun | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for this week! In the meantime, check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
