Open Letter to Mayor and Council About Norquay Open Houses of February 2011

BLOG POST posted on March 16, 2011 by Joseph Jones

Open Letter to Mayor and Council

To: Mayor Gregor Robertson and Councillors Suzanne Anton, David
Cadman, George Chow, Heather Deal, Kerry Jang, Raymond Louie, Geoff
Meggs, Andrea Reimer, Tim Stevenson, Ellen Woodsworth

Re: Norquay Village Neighbourhood Centre Open Houses of February 19 and 21

Date: March 15, 2011

The situation with Norquay planning remains an ongoing concern. (Also consult an eight-page response to the Comment Sheet handed out at the February 2011 open houses.) I did not see one single councillor present at either of these open houses. The following letter will highlight a few of the greatest concerns that are emerging. More can be found in the Comment Sheet response. I submitted that open house response by email to < norquayvillage@vancouver.ca > (cc'd to three current main planners) on the deadline date of March 11, and specifically requested confirmation of receipt. Planner failure thus far to provide that confirmation seems less than professional.

1 – The Norquay report that the the Vision-NPA element of Council approved on 4 November 2010 is defective. To the extent that the report is supposed to provide legal warrant for further planning, that warrant is doubtful. For example, appendix C shows no four-storey apartment on Earles. Planners and Council want to proceed on the basis of "We know what is in our minds, just trust us." (This sentiment was openly voiced during the Olympics bylaw fiasco.) There is no basis for such trust.

2 – The provisions for triplex clearly violate Renfrew-Collingwood Community Vision 15.5 and make a mockery of planner assertions that Community Vision will be respected.

3 – One planner announced to the Norquay Working Group at a 3 February 2011 meeting that the group would be disbanded, and that sign-up sheets at the open houses would lead to the formation of at least two new community groups: one concerned with zoning for new housing types, one concerned with amenity and benefits strategy for the community. By the time of the open houses, however, the new planner in charge (the fourth such for Norquay) had decided against allowing any community involvement in the planning itself. Good planning cannot exclude the community in this way. Planners clearly cannot even plan their own planning.

4 – It appears that planners now intend to sever the Norquay plan, to push ahead rapidly with mass rezoning for new housing types (to go to Council in summer 2011), and to defer indefinitely the "neighbourhood centre" portion of the planning along Kingsway. This is not an acceptable approach to planning for an integrated community, and displays reversion to the housing-type-only plan that the community strongly rejected in June 2007.

5 – On 4 March 2011 the City of Vancouver posted an application for mixed use development rezoning at 2667 Kingsway, apparently on the basis of the report approved by Council on 4 November 2010 as an interim step prior to public hearing and final approval. To post this application before Council has even considered a severed portion of the Norquay plan which does not provide for this planning seems cart before the horse.

6 – Against strong sentiment that favors bicycle lane provision along Kingsway, planners persist in imposing their own desire to consume valuable road space with useless median planter decoration. The recent installation at Kingsway and Knight has demonstrated what poor upkeep this non-functional feature is likely to receive. At the least, a single east-to-west bicycle lane running downhill on Kingsway would address the serious ongoing safety concern presented by frequent downhill bicycle traffic on Kingsway sidewalks.

Detail of concern about failure to address Norquay planning with commensurate amenity can be found here.

Norquay residents are pleased that a PhD student in planning has recently expressed interest in studying what is happening to our community, and hope that the prospect of this qualified scrutiny may enhance current accountability. Council and planners should remember that Norquay is, in a sense, the future of over half of Vancouver – unless even the pretense of adherence to CityPlan is cynically abandoned.

Doing things fast and wrong in Norquay will have impact on the lives of 10,000 current residents, and beyond that, have major implications for all similar residential Vancouver communities – over half of the city. Please take a prudent, measured look at where this planning is headed and how it is proceeding.

Sincerely,

Joseph Jones