Campus construction continues to climb
University appeals to private condo market despite calls for affordable housing
OKER CHEN COMPOSITE PHOTO / The Ubyssey
by Amanda Stutt
News Writer
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
For anyone who has been around at UBC for a while, it’s impossible not to notice the disrupted landscape. Some of the changes are pleasing and pastoral while others seem to be an eyesore. There’s no denying that the campus is under construction. So what exactly are the impacts to staff and students?
Most have probably heard of “U-Town”—the plan to take the remote and arguably isolated campus and turn it into a “university city in an idyllic setting.” Whether you’re on board or not, it’s happening.
Jan Fialkowski, executive director of the University Neighbourhoods Association, has utopian visions of what U-town can become and discussed a number of both realized and hypothetical scenarios.
“U-Town is…based on the Cambridge/Oxford model, where the philosophy is you study, you eat, you play, and you live where you go to school—it’s a seamless progression from one aspect of university life to another.”
Fialkowski has hopes to render the distinction between where you live and where you go to school obsolete and “have it all rolled into one…a situation where there are no borders.”
Fialkowski discussed plans for new amenities such as retail and office space, and proposals for a new pub on Wesbrook mall.
She viewed artist’s renditions on plans for U-Town at function put on by UBC Properties Trust. “They were very pretty pictures…very idyllic.”
She pointed out that new developments on Wesbrook Mall such as Fraser Hall are “totally geared toward student housing,” and additionally, Greenwood Common is rental housing geared toward students who want a different experience than institutional residential housing, as offered in Gage or Totem or Vanier.
“There are lots of students living in Hawthorne neighbourhood and Hampton,” she said, explaining that students rent from the owners or live in secondary suites.
She also said that there will be more employment opportunities on campus through the UNA once U-Town is fully realized and the UNA community centre is open to students.
“We’re committed to making sure that this works,” Fialkowski said as she explained the UNA’s broad plan to implement new initiatives through the U-Town messaging boards. One examples is a babysitting services for faculty who are hard pressed to find care. With students living in closer proximity and looking to make extra cash and faculty and staff needing care for young children, it could possibly forge new relationships between faculty and students.
“They already know each other,” said Fialkowski, pointing out that there would already be a relationship of trust established and that ideas like the babysitting service board would be mutually beneficial.
Joe Stott, director of Campus Community Planning, said that the main purpose of campus development is to benefit those who work and study on campus, and that there are both institutional and non-institutional (residential) developments that have been completed, with more in the works.
Stott said that a series of community plan memorandums of understanding between the GVRD (now Metro Vancouver) and UBC were consolidated in 2000.
“It defines how, in partnership with the GVRD, we would administer a regime of land use planning and development controls,” said Stott. “The bargain we have with the regional district is that half of our rental accommodation, about 10 per cent of the housing stock, would be non-market housing.”
Non-market housing is priced below market value, therefore making it more accessible for staff and students who would not be able to afford to rent or buy at market price.
“It’s not just students who worry about affordable housing,” Stott pointed out, “it’s also a faculty and staff concern as well.”
According to Stott, the university gives faculty and staff rental housing by providing land for free, paying what it costs to get a mortgage, as well as the operating fees, and then passing them on as rentals at below market value.
“Since the community plan was approved, there’s a commitment by the university to have 50 per cent of the new housing occupied by people who work or study at UBC,” said Stott.
UBC physics PhD candidate and BoG (Board of Governors) member Darren Peets is sceptical. His vision of U-Town is not quite as idyllic, and he raises issues surrounding what will happen when the other 50 per cent non-university members arrive to call U-Town home.
Peets believes that some concepts around U–Town contain flaws and wants the policies on developing non-institutional housing revisited.
“The way it’s being done…makes it unaffordable for people associated with the university,” he said, pointing out that aside from accessing rentals, many UBC community members would not be able to purchase a home on campus.
“A large portion of this is being done to make money, which means you want to sell for as much as possible… a large fraction of people working at the university are not in a position to afford [to buy property] at one and a half million [dollars].”
Peets believes that if the goal is to create a complete community, where people can live where they work, then “we’re not doing that.”
He also believes there is currently not enough affordable and accessible student housing on campus.
Peets also said that instead of asking students and faculty what they wanted or even what they thought, “consultation was run on the design, display, defend…and do it regardless of what they may think system.”
“University Boulevard stands out to me as an example of how [consultation] was done wrong,” said Peets.
He also believes that the $1 to1.5 million condo target market “may have a pretty abstract idea of what a university campus is. They may think a university campus is made up of a bunch of very quiet, very intelligent people walking around reading philosophy books pondering the meaning of life.”
The reality, as Peets argued, is that in large part, the campus is comprised of students who may be away from home for the first time and are more interested in parties, late night drinking, and “playing loud music at three in the morning…rather than standing around quietly under trees.”
Peets believes that complaints will be imminent.
“When you put apartments that start at one and a quarter million across the street from Totem Park residence, you’re putting people that are nocturnal and loud against people who are not nocturnal and are quiet,” said Peets, “and referees’ whistles’ blowing on the playing fields at nine in the morning on Sundays…to some people, that’s quite irritating.”
Peets also said that residents arriving with dogs would begin to use the university as a park when they walk their dogs and said there are no ‘pick up after your dog’ laws on campus.
Peets is concerned about possible future disruptions saying that “when these residents discover that the university is not what they thought it was going to be, they will attempt to change it.”
Peets said, “I think things could have been thought through a little more before they were done.”
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