[officedweller]

The rezoning passed - and your answer to why there are no condos above the Safeway store.

Towers approved for Marpole Safeway site
Residents seek long-term planning for Vancouver neighbourhood

By Cheryl Rossi, Staff writer
May 19, 2011

Rezoning to allow a 16-storey residential tower on the Marpole Safeway site on Granville Street passed at city hall May 17.

Only COPE councillors Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman voted against the plan which includes a new Safeway closer to Granville, a 16-storey tower on one corner of the store, a 15-storey tower at the corner of West 70th Avenue and Cornish Street and a nine-story building on Cornish. Of 357 proposed residential units, 31 will be rentals.

Gudrun Langolf, president of the Marpole-Oakridge Area Council Society, which runs Marpole Place, says everyone she knows is excited by development on Granville, but “it’s how we do that that’s important.”

She remains unhappy about the height of the new towers. Some residents wanted Henriquez Partners Architects and Westbank Projects, the developer on behalf of landowner Safeway, to spread the residential units across the top of the grocery store so a 16-storey tower—first pitched as 24 storeys—wouldn’t be necessary.

But Gregory Henriquez said condos in a tower would sell better than second-storey suites fronting busy Granville Street, and Safeway wanted flexibility to update the look of its store in the future.

Langolf said Woodsworth and Cadman echoed residents’ concerns about heights in a traditionally low-rise area of the city, a lack of adequate community amenities and traffic congestion.

Some residents called for a community plan for Marpole before rezoning was approved. Langolf wants “more organic” planning with “active listening and not defensive crap.”

She called the director of planning Brent Toderian’s assertion that the 16-storey tower wouldn’t be precedent setting “barnyard droppings.”

Langolf said some residents have become attached to the idea of Safeway providing a library with the redevelopment, but she isn’t sure whether it could be large enough to work.

She argued nothing in the development’s design references the nearby Fraser River or Musqueam heritage.

“I’m hoping we can change that,” she said. “Because it’s stupid to be right at the beginning of Vancouver when you come in from Arthur Laing [Bridge] and you just see a residential highrise that’s nondescript.”

Henriquez wouldn’t comment on possibility of including such elements in what he called early stages of design.

He expects the redevelopment to be complete in three years.

crossi@vancourier.com

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