Alan Herbert
Sun
Re: Outlook B.C., June 28
Fiona Anderson names the Central Waterfront as “one of the last remaining pieces of waterfront land in Vancouver”, and she is correct. She names the future site of the Olympic Village on Southeast False Creek as the other, but she missed a third intriguing rival, just a hop, skip and jump from the False Creek shoreline.
That third spot is some 300 to 400 acres of industrial land often called the ‘East False Creek Flats’. The city promised to begin a public process on the future uses of this land over a year ago, but so far nothing has happened. Those lands, if rezoned residential, could easily accommodate well over 10,000 units taking much of the pressure off the downtown core. The Flats are also crossed by two existing Skytrain lines plus, as far as ‘location, location, location’ is concerned, the Flats are first rate, ideal.
The problems as I see them are first, Vancouver dare not alienate more industrial land and much of these Flats are zoned industrial. That said, the Port of Vancouver has yet to gauge the scale of growth coming our way from Asia, but it is coming, it will be enormous, and it is a truism that a good part of that new traffic growth, Vancouver being a transshipment port from its founding, will be destined for points elsewhere with the mode of transit being rail. That demand for rail has similarly yet to be gauged.
The second problem is that the Flats are land fill, but so is downtown or lower Manhattan and more significantly, Mexico City, built on a lake bed with an active volcano to the northeast and a major Pacific fault line to the west, one identical to the one off Vancouver Island. Mexico City has developed the technologies to build subways and skyscrapers that can withstand great shock and were indeed tested a few years ago when these structures withstood a quake measuring approximately 8.0 on the Richter scale.
The challenge is to have our cake and eat it too. We have ‘extended’ the city in Coal Harbor by building piecemeal, a roof over the tracks — remember when the Marine Building was on the waterfront — and now the Whitecaps Stadium is proposing to do the same thing rather than cause the loss of industrial port land.
Why not do it again, but this time consciously and purposefully, and on a large scale.
In short, build a roof — “Plus 30”, just like Plus 15 in Calgary, over the Flats. Beneath the roof the industrial uses remain while a new city with residences, parks and institutions are built above it.
If you visit Midtown Manhattan and you take a moment to notice, you can slide your hand underneath the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel because a similar approach was used — building a roof for a fast growing city that, at the same time, needed to retain its rail yards.
The truth is that our city is going to grow much larger than it is today and accommodating that growth is going to demand some bold and innovative plans.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006