Gastown business group, activists oppose new soccer home
Frances Bula
Sun
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun Files Whitecaps president John Rocha (left) and operations director Bob Lenarduzzi unveiled an artist’s concept of the proposed stadium
VANCOUVER – The proposed Whitecaps soccer stadium on the Vancouver waterfront has united two groups that have been at odds for years.
Gastown business owners and residents lined up with Downtown Eastside advocates Thursday to voice serious concerns about the proposed stadium and ask the city to conduct a thorough review of the possible negative impacts.
And Jon Stovell, president of the Gastown business improvement association, asked the city to consider a review of the entire waterfront, since Whitecaps owners Greg Kerfoot has bought not just the land where the stadium is proposed but the entire stretch of land from Canada Place in the west to Crab Park in the east.
“Any planning of this rail land should be done comprehensively,” said Stovell. “We see literally hundreds of issues.”
Stovell said the city needs to look carefully at whether it wants to set a precedent by allowing construction of the stadium, saying it could result in a long strip of development that would create a wall six to 10 metres tall between Gastown and the waterfront.
“We need to look at whether there are opportunities lost if we do this, as opposed to developing at grade. We should be looking at can we put the trains underground, if we don’t build over top of them and ratify their existence.”
Stovell added that Gastown, which has struggled for years but is seeing a revival lately, doesn’t need to be saved by the stadium.
“We’re kind of saving ourselves.”
A staff report has recommended that council approve a six-month high-level review of the stadium proposal, to study everything from neighbourhood impacts to technical feasibility, before planners even consider a rezoning process. The Whitecaps are being asked to pay the $160,000 cost of that review.
Most speakers with concerns asked council to endorse that careful review and perhaps even expand it, except for a Gastown residents’ representative, who asked council just to kill the proposal on the spot.
Ian Armitage, president of a strata from the 300-block Water Street, said local residents who are “only a soccer ball kick away” from the proposed stadium, said the stadium will bring noise, crowds, traffic, and light pollution to the area.
Speakers from the Downtown Eastside, like Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Centre Action Coalition, Kim Kerr of the Downtown Residents Association, and Chris Slater of the Anti-Poverty Coalition, also asked for a thorough review that respects people from the Downtown Eastside.
Swanson said there are 14,000 low-income people living in Gastown and the Downtown Eastside who should have a major say in whether the community impacts are acceptable.
She asked the city to make sure there are public meetings in that neighbourhood where people really get to participate, instead of being given a lesson by staff about the merits of the project.
Downtown Eastside advocates also said it was insulting that the Whitecaps hadn’t talked to people first and that they had presented the stadium as a done deal in a splashy announcement last week.
But Whitecaps president John Rocha said the group has only done what city staff have asked them to do and that it has always emphasized that it is ready and willing to go through what consultation the city thought was right.
“We were surprised that people were critical of the launch,” said Rocha. “We were saying that we were sharing our vision, not that it was a done deal. We want to be great neighbours to all the communities.”
Although city councillors were mainly asking questions at this point rather than giving opinions, it was evident that Coalition of Progressive Electors councillors have the most concerns about the stadium.
COPE Coun. Tim Louis said it is important that “when the private sports industry expropriates public amenities like the viewscape,” they have to be prepared to return significant public benefits to affected neighbourhoods.
The Whitecaps had a survey done of public opinion on Wednesday, nine days after the stadium plans were unveiled. The poll of 290 Vancouver residents, split evenly between the west and east side, indicated that 55 per cent supported it, 17 per cent were opposed and 21 per cent had no opinion.
When they were asked what factors would make them more likely to support it, people liked most the idea that the stadium would also be used for non-sports events, such as outdoor concerts and ethnic and community festivals.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005