Bring on the North Van Nimbies! The Lonsdale Citizens Coalition will be frothing at the mouth over this, I'm sure...
NSCU plans big new headquarters
Town hall meeting to discuss Lonsdale and 13th development
BY BENJAMIN ALLDRITT, NORTH SHORE NEWS
NOVEMBER 17, 2010
North Shore Credit Union unveiled early plans for an "iconic" new headquarters at 13th Street and Lonsdale Avenue during a City of North Vancouver council meeting Monday.
The proposed building would have three floors of commercial space for the credit union and 10 storeys of condominiums.
In his presentation to council, credit union vice-president Doug Smith emphasized the company's longstanding ties to the city.
"We will shortly be celebrating our 70th anniversary in the City of North Vancouver and I was looking at our articles of incorporation where the 10 inaugural members of the credit union signed the papers to create us, and lo and behold there were a couple of City of North Vancouver employees that were on it," said Smith.
Over the following seven decades North Shore Credit Union has grown to be a $2-billion institution, said Smith. More recently, it has outgrown its current head office at 11th Street and Lonsdale Avenue. In fact, the "head office" is now spread among three buildings, one of which is not on the North Shore.
"We've been looking for a new location for the last couple of years. We looked in Upper Lonsdale, we looked in Lower Lonsdale, we looked in the District of North Van, we looked in the District of West Van and we looked downtown, and all of those are viable options for us," he said, adding that 70 per cent of the credit union's new business is off of the North Shore.
It is still the credit union's preference to stay in the city, Smith said, and since the closure and sale of the Shell gas station on 13th Street last year, NSCU and developer Wesgroup have been developing a plan for a brand new building.
"We intend to create a new standard of architecture on Lonsdale," said Wesgroup vice-president John Conicella. "An urban form that we can all be excited about and people can point to and say this is a special place to work, to live and to recreate."
The proposed space for the credit union would be 40 feet high and provide roughly 70,000 square feet of office space. The residential component would be 120 feet high, likely providing 100 apartments totaling 90,000 square feet. The underground parking would have space for 280 vehicles.
The whole building works out to a floor area 4.34 times the lot size, substantially more density than the 2.3 FSR permitted in the official community plan. While Wesgroup and the credit union's delegates provided attractive drawings of the proposed building, they stressed that plans were still in the early stages of development.
"Both of our organizations are open to considerations of what the community benefits could be beyond just making this a great-looking project," Conicella said.
Coun. Rod Clark said it was "absurd" to provide close to 300 parking spaces for a building sited on a prime transit route.
"If there is ever a place where transit would be a good way to access the site, it's there. We're in a downtown core and the transit is good, so I think you should be looking at bringing the parking to an absolute minimum," he said.
Clark also called for the developer to contribute to the city's affordable housing fund and to solicit more public input than the 54 people who attended a recent open house.
Across the room, Coun. Guy Heywood said it was awkward to ask developers to simultaneously devalue their project by reducing the parking while also extracting cash for affordable housing.
Smith and Conicella asked council for permission to take their plans to a town hall meeting, but Coun. Craig Keating felt they hadn't produced enough detail to take to the public.
"Is this really a proposal that's ready for primetime?" he asked. "I don't want to create a situation where we're going out and having a session of 'Let's make a deal' where we talk to the public and find out what their tolerance level is and come back with something different. . . . I wish we had a clearer picture of the density."
Richard White, director of community planning, said there was some precedent for public consultation on sketched-out plans, including the current discussion over Concert Properties' Harbourside proposal.
Coun. Bob Fearnley disagreed, and said he welcomed early engagement.
"I don't have a problem with it," he said. "We've seen lots of developments come before council with no give, and they try to ram something through that the community is clearly not going to support. We're going to find out what the community's tolerance is, and there are certain things about this project that are good."
Council voted 6-1 to green-light the town hall meeting, with Keating the lone vote against.
Full story, and rendering, at:
http://www.nsnews.com/story_print.ht...42340&sponsor=