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  #21  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 9:19 AM
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If I recall correctly, that senior's home on 41st near Cambie has no at-grade streetfront retail - that's a bit of a "miss" if you ask me. Even with Oakridge across the street, the built form along there should at least resemble Kerrisdale with streetfront retail.
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  #22  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 11:24 AM
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thanks for posting!

whats the "FUTURE EAST/WEST LINK" shown at Cambie & Kent? I assume this would be a Truck route to help relief Marine Drive?
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  #23  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 4:10 PM
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I think this is a provision for future light rail. I think I remember seeing a concept that included a marine drive connection from New West to Arbutus. I can't remember if that was just some one hereon SSP dreaming it up though.
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  #24  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 4:27 PM
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Maybe it is just me, but this plan doesn't seem to have the focus on density that I was expecting. The proposal seems to be to redevelop most of the boulevard into 1-6 storey mixed use buildings. Wouldn't it be more effective and lower impact to build a handful of high density nodes instead? e.g. the Langara highrises at 57th, build a set of those beside every station.
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  #25  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 7:39 PM
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I think this is a provision for future light rail. I think I remember seeing a concept that included a marine drive connection from New West to Arbutus. I can't remember if that was just some one hereon SSP dreaming it up though.
Yeah, sounds like DMU light rail on existing tracks (i.e. from the East Fraser Lands and beyond)
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  #26  
Old Posted Jun 9, 2010, 10:11 PM
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how long does that lot on cambie and 41st have to sit there? it seems like forever since it shut down - that would be a good spot for something tall
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  #27  
Old Posted Jun 10, 2010, 4:54 AM
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Originally Posted by Zassk View Post
Maybe it is just me, but this plan doesn't seem to have the focus on density that I was expecting. The proposal seems to be to redevelop most of the boulevard into 1-6 storey mixed use buildings. Wouldn't it be more effective and lower impact to build a handful of high density nodes instead? e.g. the Langara highrises at 57th, build a set of those beside every station.
That makes sense, but the locals are already going Full-Tilt-NIMBY just with the new towers at Marine/Cambie SE corner, and they are just beginning to realise that the other two corners (NW - PetroCan and NE) are supposed to get the same density.

Oakridge will be the next flashpoint when Oakridge mall starts building all their new condos & offices on their parking lots, and the other 3 corners of Cambie/41st start their cycle of demo & rebuild with increased density. Because of the station design, I suspect any new building on the SE corner include another entrance to the C-Line from the east side of Cambie.

Even Cambie/16th was a huge fight against the NIMBYs because it was a 'huge building that overwhelmed the neighbourhood' at six stories - even though they ended up with a new market (capers I think - before they moved to 8th/Cambie )
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  #28  
Old Posted Jun 10, 2010, 8:48 AM
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how long does that lot on cambie and 41st have to sit there? it seems like forever since it shut down - that would be a good spot for something tall
I assume your talking about the one on the North East corner. Where the old Esso gas station used to be.

Well I do remember back in the 70's as a really young kid when there was a Texaco at the north west corner of 41st and Knight. It closed down around the late 70's possibly very early 80's. That lot was empty till the current donut and chinese food shop when in at I believe the very late 90's. Possibly the early 00's. Now I do know a good portion of that time is due to soil contamination. But I don't know if it took longer than necessary. Basically could it have been developed sooner if there was reason to develop on the lot.

It has been about 10 years since the Essos at both 41st and Cambie and 41st and Knight have closed down. And if the Texaco lot was empty for about 20 years. Then it is possible we may have to wait another 10 years. It all depends on how contaminated the lot is.
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  #29  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 3:40 PM
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In other words, we shouldn't do anything:




If Cambie Street grows as hoped, City of Vancouver will lose big bucks
Canada Line corridor merchants can expect to get clobbered, again

By Don Cayo, Vancouver Sun
June 18, 2010

The proposed rezoning of Cambie Street properties served by the new Canada Line may cause economic hardship that erodes or outweighs any potential benefits.

Because two likely results will be to undermine City Hall's finances while once again clobbering the merchants who took such a hit while their street was torn up for construction.

The story is complicated, especially because allowing greater density in areas served by better transit will create an initial surge in revenue for the city.

But this will come at the expense of existing businesses in existing premises along the Cambie corridor. And when new developments inevitably start to rise in response to proposed rezoning, City Hall's windfall will quickly turn into a loss.

To understand why, consider how differently business and residential properties affect the city's financial health.

About 92 per cent of assessed properties in Vancouver are residential, leaving just eight per cent commercial — a number that is steadily declining as the city increasingly becomes a place to live but not to work.

This relative handful of business properties pays half of the city's total property taxes. Yet the cost of services they use — streets, police, fire protection and such — adds up to only a quarter of City Hall spending.

Thus for every $2 businesses pay in property tax, the city spends just $1 in return, leaving a 50-per-cent "profit" the city can use to subsidize homeowners. And subsidize they do, spending about $1.50 on residential services for every $1 in residential property tax.

So what does this mean for Cambie Street redevelopment?

Peter Forward, an associate with the property tax consulting firm of Burgess Cawley and Sullivan, walked me through a detailed look at a representative sample — a cluster of seven buildings, mostly one-storey community retail blocks, just north of the Canada Line's King Edward station.

The city's annual "profit" from these buildings — the amount of money it can expect to have left over after all property taxes are collected and all services provided — will be:

- As things stand: $87,385

- With rezoning: $148,315

- With redevelopment: $41,974, or less than half as much as now.

Multiply these figures by the number of properties that will be similarly affected up and down the Cambie corridor, and the impact on civic finances is huge. Not to mention the impact on the tax bills of tenants in the Cambie buildings.

Here's how Forward arrived at his numbers (I've rounded them for ease of reading).

As things stand

The land on which the seven buildings sit is assessed at $15 million and the structures are pegged at $4 million, for a total of $19 million.

The business tax rate — which in Vancouver is five times higher than the residential rate — will generate tax bills totalling about $175,000.

Based on city-wide averages, the cost of services for these businesses is $87,500. This will leave an additional $87,500 to be spent on other things.

With rezoning

The maximum allowable height of buildings on each lot will rise to at least six stories. This means the maximum square footage of new buildings will be twice what's allowed now. Since assessments are based on "highest and best use" (what could be on each lot, rather than what's actually there), the assessed value of the land will double to $30 million. Even if the old buildings are treated as teardowns and assessed at nearly no value, the total of $30-plus million will be more than 50 per cent higher than the assessed value today.

The new assessments mean businesses in these same old buildings will see their tax bills soar, as will city revenue. The new total will be $296,000, up from $175,000.

Even though there's no logical reason for the cost of serving the same businesses in the same buildings to rise, Forward generously assumes the city will spend more to keep them happy. So he designates $148,000 of the new tax total as consumption cost. This leaves a surplus of $148,000, up from $87,000 now, that the city can spend on other things.

With redevelopment


If new buildings on each lot housed one floor of commercial tenants and five floors of residences, the total value of land and buildings would soar to $140 million — more than nine times what it is today.

But with only the commercial occupants paying the business rate, and with the residents paying just a fifth of that, the total tax revenue would rise to only about $550,000 — just over six times more than today. Of this, $317,000 would be paid by the ground-floor businesses and $233,000 by residents.

With businesses paying twice as much in tax as they consume in services, their portion of the tax bill would generate surplus revenue of $158,000 — a nice increase for the city. But with residents' tax bills adding up to only two-thirds of the cost of services they consume, they'd create a "loss" of $116,000.

This would leave a net surplus of $42,000 for the seven properties, or less than half of what's left over today.

In other words, a snazzy redevelopment project for this little bit of Cambie — just what the city is aiming for with its Canada Line-related plans — will cost the city tens of thousands a year in forgone revenue.

And as other parts of the street are similarly redeveloped, the annual losses will soar to hundreds of thousands, and then millions.

Not to mention the plight of those poor Cambie merchants — the very ones who went through hell and back during the Canada Line construction. They can look forward to sharply higher tax bills in the short-term, and the longer-term prospect that their premises will fall to the wrecker's ball.

dcayo@vancouversun.com

Visit Don Cayo's blogs, one on taxation issues and on one globalization, at vancouversun.com/blogs

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business...#ixzz0rJWMO6RF
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  #30  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 3:45 PM
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It's not that we shouldn't do anything, it's that we need to increase residential taxes slightly, increase the efficiency on how the city spends it's tax dollars, and intensify commercial properties greatly as well not just residential.
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  #31  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 4:04 PM
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^ property and business taxes are already extremely high as is, rather excess within the city budget and services needs to be reduced.
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  #32  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 4:13 PM
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Originally Posted by cabotp View Post
I assume your talking about the one on the North East corner. Where the old Esso gas station used to be.

Well I do remember back in the 70's as a really young kid when there was a Texaco at the north west corner of 41st and Knight. It closed down around the late 70's possibly very early 80's. That lot was empty till the current donut and chinese food shop when in at I believe the very late 90's. Possibly the early 00's. Now I do know a good portion of that time is due to soil contamination. But I don't know if it took longer than necessary. Basically could it have been developed sooner if there was reason to develop on the lot.

It has been about 10 years since the Essos at both 41st and Cambie and 41st and Knight have closed down. And if the Texaco lot was empty for about 20 years. Then it is possible we may have to wait another 10 years. It all depends on how contaminated the lot is.
Which makes you wonder why the City doesn't bring in a law to get those gas station sites remediated within a specific period of time. The Expo lands were done faster for pity's sake!
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  #33  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 4:35 PM
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Our property taxes are not high, for instance my inlaws in Regina pay more then we do plus they have to pay for water, residentially we are quite cheap if you compare across the country, as far as business wise, we could use a slight reduction and the city has been doing that for years now so we're on the right track there.
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  #34  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 6:29 PM
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Originally Posted by cabotp View Post
I assume your talking about the one on the North East corner. Where the old Esso gas station used to be.

Well I do remember back in the 70's as a really young kid when there was a Texaco at the north west corner of 41st and Knight. It closed down around the late 70's possibly very early 80's. That lot was empty till the current donut and chinese food shop when in at I believe the very late 90's. Possibly the early 00's. Now I do know a good portion of that time is due to soil contamination. But I don't know if it took longer than necessary. Basically could it have been developed sooner if there was reason to develop on the lot.

It has been about 10 years since the Essos at both 41st and Cambie and 41st and Knight have closed down. And if the Texaco lot was empty for about 20 years. Then it is possible we may have to wait another 10 years. It all depends on how contaminated the lot is.
Developers are notoriously gun-shy about touching any property that ever had a service station on it. There was a 7/11 on Granville & 13th that was knocked over about ten years ago to become a parking lot. Turns out that there was a service station on the property from the 20s to the 70s which was knocked over to build the 7/11. Except nobody bothered to clean up the gas that leaked into soil for 6 decades - they just re-paved the property for the 7/11 parking lot. Despite being a prime property close to Shaughnessy, it will likely remain a parking lot until the soil is remediated.

I read that the King Ed station on the Canada Line was a bit of a nightmare because they discovered under Cambie, King Ed and the former strip mall there was the remains of the leaked gasoline plume under the property. This had to be cleaned up before the tunnel and station could be built. Apparently they are trying to sue all the previous owners of the land to get back their costs for cleanup that should have been done before the strip mall was built.


I've heard that is a reason why the Evergreen line will fly over the intersection of Clark Rd & Como Lake - to bypass the Mohawk station and the former (esso?) station on the Safeway side of Clarke. By starting the tunnel north of the intersection, they won't have to worry about digging thorough leaked gas plumes from these stations. Presumably someone has already done their core samples along the route so there won't be many surprises when the digging starts.
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  #35  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 7:37 PM
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Which makes you wonder why the City doesn't bring in a law to get those gas station sites remediated within a specific period of time. The Expo lands were done faster for pity's sake!
Some of the gas companies 'sell' the former stations to a numbered company with no assets other than the land, so there's nobody to sue to reclaim the land. The numbered company may try to do a minimal remediation until the VOX levels are low enough that they can sell the land to be redeveloped. Hopefully they've sat on the land (as a parking lot) long enough that the next owner has forgotten it used to be a service station property. Any developer worth his salt would do their due-diligence before buying any land, but in a crazy market people will buy first then figure out what they've got.
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  #36  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2010, 9:55 PM
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uh, what?

With businesses paying twice as much in tax as they consume in services, their portion of the tax bill would generate surplus revenue of $158,000 — a nice increase for the city. But with residents' tax bills adding up to only two-thirds of the cost of services they consume, they'd create a "loss" of $116,000.

This would leave a net surplus of $42,000 for the seven properties, or less than half of what's left over today.


this seems to me like really weak reasoning. basically, it assumes that these ratios are static and that the 'redevelopment' option there is no more efficient than the 'as things stand' option. sorry, but even a cursory knowledge of how cities work suggest an obvious j-curve effect here with the efficiency. now, i'm sure these guys know their thing, and maybe cayo simplified things to make a general point here, but getting tax-to-services ratio variation in a timeseries and creating some sort of index to measure the effects of density on that ratio - this would be like the first thing you'd want to do before going into any details about what costs what. just up and going with a basic arithmatic on this, to prove a point so counterintuitive, it just strikes me suspicious
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  #37  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2010, 2:24 AM
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Originally Posted by cabotp View Post
I assume your talking about the one on the North East corner. Where the old Esso gas station used to be.

Well I do remember back in the 70's as a really young kid when there was a Texaco at the north west corner of 41st and Knight. It closed down around the late 70's possibly very early 80's. That lot was empty till the current donut and chinese food shop when in at I believe the very late 90's. Possibly the early 00's. Now I do know a good portion of that time is due to soil contamination. But I don't know if it took longer than necessary. Basically could it have been developed sooner if there was reason to develop on the lot.

It has been about 10 years since the Essos at both 41st and Cambie and 41st and Knight have closed down. And if the Texaco lot was empty for about 20 years. Then it is possible we may have to wait another 10 years. It all depends on how contaminated the lot is.
yes that spot

but i believe its a single lot house just next to it on 41st - would be kind of weird for them i guess to have a tower or something dense right there as neighbours - which would than probably make 41st densify and so on and so on
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  #38  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2010, 4:04 AM
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uh, what?

With businesses paying twice as much in tax as they consume in services, their portion of the tax bill would generate surplus revenue of $158,000 — a nice increase for the city. But with residents' tax bills adding up to only two-thirds of the cost of services they consume, they'd create a "loss" of $116,000.

This would leave a net surplus of $42,000 for the seven properties, or less than half of what's left over today.


this seems to me like really weak reasoning. basically, it assumes that these ratios are static and that the 'redevelopment' option there is no more efficient than the 'as things stand' option. sorry, but even a cursory knowledge of how cities work suggest an obvious j-curve effect here with the efficiency. now, i'm sure these guys know their thing, and maybe cayo simplified things to make a general point here, but getting tax-to-services ratio variation in a timeseries and creating some sort of index to measure the effects of density on that ratio - this would be like the first thing you'd want to do before going into any details about what costs what. just up and going with a basic arithmatic on this, to prove a point so counterintuitive, it just strikes me suspicious

The key point of the article would be "But with residents' tax bills adding up to only two-thirds of the cost of services they consume,..."

The problem with that reasoning is that you'd never allow residential growth unless commercial growth ran in parallel with it (so as to maintain the existing ratios). That's unrealistic. (So, as mentioned by others, the remedy is to shift the tax burden to residential properties so they bear the burden of the services they consume).
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  #39  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2010, 4:19 PM
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It's not that we shouldn't do anything, it's that we need to increase residential taxes slightly, increase the efficiency on how the city spends it's tax dollars, and intensify commercial properties greatly as well not just residential.
Jlousa is right, we need to adjust our residential tax rates. The article does make sense in it's first point and that is something to think about.

On the second point though, that could be said for any area that increasing in value. Obviously property taxes are going to go up if the value of land is going to go up and as a result rents are going to go up too. However, if there are a couple hundred (or thousand) extra people living in the area, businesses would likely see an increase in business, so this should all be a wash. As for the wrecking ball, well duh, this should be obvious. If you have a business in a single-story POS building at Cambie and 16th and you look across the street to the 5 (6?) story condo/retail building with Shoppers in it, what do you think is going to happen. If the land is under-utilised, it's only a matter of time before someone buys the land who wants to redevelop. The city has to grow up, residents and business owners can't expect the status quo forever.
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  #40  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2010, 4:53 PM
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The key point of the article would be "But with residents' tax bills adding up to only two-thirds of the cost of services they consume,..."

The problem with that reasoning is that you'd never allow residential growth unless commercial growth ran in parallel with it (so as to maintain the existing ratios). That's unrealistic. (So, as mentioned by others, the remedy is to shift the tax burden to residential properties so they bear the burden of the services they consume).
uh, well, maybe the costs of road repairs, tree removal, water infrastructure, etc vary at rates directly proportional to population density rates. but i'd want to see that sort of relative variation in service cost-population built into the model before i'd form any opinion about raising residential property taxes or shifting tax burdens. otherwise, it's just arithmetic and oratory.
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