Planners seek feedback for city hall plan
Three concepts presented for `Civic District'
The City of Vancouver is seeking feedback on ideas for transforming the area around city hall into a “Civic District.”
The 31/2-hectare rectangular space bound by Broadway and 12th Avenue and Cambie and Yukon streets is where the Broadway-City Hall Canada Line Station will intersect with the new Broadway Subway Station.
City staff are presenting three concepts, each with a slightly different mix of taller buildings and open space plans for the area north of city hall.
These include the potential for office, retail, cultural and institutional buildings, as well as an outdoor plaza north of the city hall building, which is a designated Class A heritage building.
The buildings could be up to 103 metres tall as measured from Broadway with proposals for different sizes and shapes.
“It's the infamous City Hall Plan,” said urban planner Andy Yan, explaining how there have long been musings about where city hall should be located and what it should encompass.
They go back to the city's early days and the first town plan prepared by planner Harland Bartholomew in 1928. There had been talk of a city hall location at Victory Square between downtown and Gastown.
When city hall was later first established at 12th Avenue and
Cambie in 1935, this location was considered remote. Vancouver was one of the first Canadian cities to locate its city hall outside the downtown core.
The push behind this was for it to be geographically closer to south Vancouver and the Point Grey areas, which had become parts of the city.
People will be looking to see how this Civic District site, which will be both a “second downtown” and a “bookmark” in the Broadway Plan, reflects the city, said Yan.
The public is being asked for its input at open houses in mid- and late June, and a survey that closes July 14. This engagement is focused on hearing feedback on plans for the Civic District and also a Public Realm and Streetscape Plan, which focuses on improvements to the streets and public spaces, as well as the Broadway Plan, which covers an area from Vine Street to Clark Drive and 1st Avenue to 16th Avenue.
Looking at the concepts for the Civic District, it appears the city is letting go of the previous requirement that there would be only two towers per block, said urban planner Sandy James, who is also a director of WalkMetroVan, a non-profit group that champions accessible walkability. One of the concepts shows four towers.
“What people forget is the view corridor goes both ways. It is from city hall and to city hall. We are the only city in the world that was able to keep view corridors because our development happened so late,” said James.
“Originally, there was a plan to make Broadway a great street, which means it would have had incredible walking amenities, park, space and great places and venues around each transit station for people to hang out in, go to a bookstore, use washrooms and generally be people watching. With this new (legislation with requirements for transit oriented areas) from the province, this will look like Gotham and will function as such. It will be a place where people are just going through and not to.”
James pointed out that city hall needs to be earthquake-proofed.
A main driver of design should come from thinking of the volume of people coming into and going out of that single transit station, said Mary Beth Rondeau, a retired urban designer and architect who used to work for the City of Vancouver and also the City of Surrey, s well as being a member of WalkMetroVan.
“Plot out where people are going and give them safe, easy access to get them where they are going,” Rondeau said of the concepts being presented for the Civic District.
She said the concepts presented for the Civic District all seem to keep tall buildings to the east of city hall, which respects the original art deco design of that building.
But she thinks some of the shapes and sizes of buildings next to heritage homes east of the site as shown in the concept drawings are “terrifying.”
Both James and Rondeau asked if there should be an international design competition for the site.
“We did that for the library downtown and got a landmark,” said James.