Gentrification in Metro Vancouver

Single father Martin Lenin Fernandez has worked for eight years to bring his two sons to Burnaby from his native Nicaragua. They finally arrived last month and just as the family was getting settled into his one-bedroom apartment in the Metrotown area, they were evicted.

Fernandez and his kids are the latest victim of plans to replace dozens of four-storey rental apartments with large multi-storey condo towers.

“This block is an example of what is going to happen to the rest of the area of Metrotown,” activist Ivan Drury said. “Every single building on the block of Dunblane and Imperial is scheduled to be demolished.”

“Metrotown is a community under attack by its own city government.”

Along with a six-lane, 25-metre-long pool, the facility boasts two waterslides, an extra-large hot tub, sauna and steam room. The leisure pool's kid-friendly features include a "lazy river," bubble bench, spray arches, a mini-playground structure and a large dumping bucket.

A two-lane, 15-metre long pool will have a warmer water temperature to accommodate people using it for rehabilitation, aquafit and lessons for young children.

And it's all fully accessible for people with disabilities, including a water elevator into the swim tank, a ramp with handrail into the whirlpool and zero-depth entry into the leisure pool from deck level.

The pool will be larger than most other facilities in the Lower Mainland, said Ellenwood, who noted the leisure components are very popular. "We'll get 1,500 to 2,000 visits a day by all ages."

It will also use the most up-to-date water disinfection technology-liquid chlorine, filtering sand and an ultraviolet system.

Most of the tile work was close to being completed during the tour and the pool is set to be filled and tested sometime this week.

Just across the hall will be another welcome addition to the community, a massive double gym that can be divided into four sections and is designed to receive lots of natural light, particularly from one corner made almost entirely of glass.

"This should take a lot of pressure off existing gym facilities," he said, noting the very high demand seen at Bonsor Rec Centre. "We needed this not only for this community but for all of South Burnaby."

An adjacent youth lounge comes with its own exterior entrance and door to the gym making it possible to eventually keep the youth centre open later while closing off the rest of the facility, said Ellenwood.

For now, the nearby KRIB youth centre will continue to operate but could eventually be phased out in favour of the new facility, he said.

Ellenwood noted that the games room, with foosball, a big TV and a pool table, is not exclusively for use by youth and will be located next to the seniors' snooker room on the second floor. "Hopefully the youth will integrate with the seniors. They'll have to co-exist with the seniors, which I think is healthy."

Also expected to take the pressure off Bonsor is the new cardio and weight room. At 650 square metres (7,000 square feet), it is 10 times larger than the similar facility at the old Eastburn Community Centre, and significantly bigger than Bonsor's which is about 4,500 square feet spread over two levels.

"It's very large but very large for a purpose because of high demand," he said.

Once the new community centre is finished, the fitness and weight-room equipment will be moved in, including new pieces and those from the interim fitness centre on Kingsway, which were purchased second-hand after being used by athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Along with the snooker room, the new seniors centre will include a lounge and access to a number of other multi-purpose rooms for all ages, such as a dance and fitness room with a sprungwood floor and mirrors and a fine arts room. Two music rooms are also set up with acoustic baffling, providing soundproofing to allow for music lessons.

At the other end of the age spectrum, a large new playground will soon be built at the newly named Edmonds Park (formerly Richmond Park) next door, but the centre will also offer a rainy-day option indoors.

A small indoor playground will be located on the main floor next to a "playcare," where children can be supervised while parents are at activities elsewhere in the building, and a preschool.

The facility will serve the community while also being built to a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver standard of sustainability.

White roofs will reflect heat away from the building, keeping it cooler in the summer. It features high-efficient water fixtures and lighting, and a heating system that recycles the hot air from the building's exhaust and uses it to heat water in the pool and plumbing systems. An aero-thermal heat pump operates four times more efficiently than traditional high-efficiency boilers.

“[This plan] for Metrotown provides the opportunity to create a true downtown for Burnaby; one that enables the highest order of land use and development,” writes Lou Pelletier, director of planning and building for the city of Burnaby in his introduction to the report. It was introduced to council’s planning committee on Tuesday, and now city staff are seeking preliminary approval from council to allow for public consultation over the summer. A final draft development plan would go before council again in the fall.

If approved, the plan would remake the streetscape of Kingsway, clearing the way for the redevelopment of blocks of single-use office complexes, malls and residential towers for mixed-use development, more akin to downtown New Westminster or Vancouver. In the blocks behind Kingsway, it would allow for a swath of low-rise apartment blocks to be replaced by four-to-12-storey towers (that process has already begun) and make the area more pedestrian friendly with new plazas and the like. The goal, the plan states, is “to establish an exciting, inclusive, and sustainable downtown for Burnaby; one comprised of well-connected neighbourhoods that provide a sense of place and community identity."

It’s been almost 40 years since Burnaby adopted its long-term development plan for the Metrotown area in 1977. Over the following two decades, a series of malls—most prominently Metropolis at Metrotown—were developed, as Kingsway was lined with towers set back from the streets, with overpasses for pedestrians at certain points (rare in other city centers centres in the region). And in those intervening years a lot happened; first the construction of the SkyTrain in 1985, and then a series of long-term visions adopted by the city—its 1995 Transportation Plan, its 1998 Official Community Plan and the 2011 Regional Growth Strategy—which didn’t always correspond with changes to Metrotown’s plan. That final plan called for Burnaby to increase its population by 125,000 over the next 25 years, and Metrotown will be expected to accommodate “a significant component of the city’s residential and commercial growth.”

If homeless shelters are provincial or federal responsibilities, then tell me why New Westminster, Vancouver, North Vancouver, Surrey, Coquitlam and Richmond have shelters and Burnaby is without?

Many people when following Metro Vancouver politics do not understand they have a rather unique city Charter while the other municipalities are governed by the a different statute.

Basement Dweller wrote:

I'm not impressed with the NIMBY behaviour of some homeowners near Commercial Drive. This isn't another glass condo owner. It is mid-rise rental housing that is badly needed right now.

http://www.straight.com/news/726261/housing-unaffordability-and-neighbou...

You do realize that this article is not about Burnaby don't you? 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Basement Dweller wrote:

I'm not impressed with the NIMBY behaviour of some homeowners near Commercial Drive. This isn't another glass condo owner. It is mid-rise rental housing that is badly needed right now.

http://www.straight.com/news/726261/housing-unaffordability-and-neighbou...

You do realize that this article is not about Burnaby don't you? 

I've pm'd the mods to request a change in the title of this thread to Gentrification in Metro Vancouver, as this would better reflect the contents of the thread.

Approximately 80 tenants of the Amacon-owned, 23-unit building at 5025 Imperial St. were evicted at the end of June, but protesters occupied the building as a pre-emptive move on Saturday, having seen multiple buildings in the two square blocks to the northwest recently emptied and demolished by developers.

Burnaby RCMP officers arrived at the building late Saturday, but protesters barricaded themselves into a third-floor unit and refused to leave.

“This is an issue for all of Metro Vancouver,” Maria Wallstam told 24 hours Sunday while standing on the balcony of the apartment where occupiers had holed up the night before. “Just on this block, there are hundreds of units being lost of affordable housing ... this is how homelessness is created.

“There is no homeless shelter in Burnaby, so homeless people are going to end up in other municipalities.”

Advocates for affordable housing have occupied an empty three-story apartment building in Burnaby and a lot in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and are refusing to leave.

It's all in protest of the demolition of low cost apartment buildings, which have forced some into more desperate situations when it comes to finding appropriate shelter in a region infamous for its housing problems.

While the Burnaby protest takes aim in part at local city officials, Burnaby's mayor says there's little he can do because the B.C. government has refused to give municipalities the power to protect low-cost housing.

As a result, Derek Corrigan says the local housing shortage has reached "titanic proportions".