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  #1  
Old Posted Nov 18, 2010, 7:58 AM
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[North Vancouver] North Shore Credit Union Headquarters | 160 ft | 13 flrs | Proposed

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=
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  #2  
Old Posted Nov 18, 2010, 9:35 AM
red-paladin red-paladin is offline
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Quote:
"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."
It looks like garbage to me. The quote should be "We intend to build something that the architect already designed and was rejected in Surrey"
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  #3  
Old Posted Nov 18, 2010, 10:56 AM
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There's a North Shore Credit Union?



I'm sure most of us remember how that ship-looking tower got axed by gang/mob-like NIMBY pressure...that was such an amazing project.
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  #4  
Old Posted Nov 18, 2010, 9:03 PM
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I went to the open house a couple weeks back. Great presentation by Wesgroup and NSCU. The buildings itself is ok, nothing fantastic, but a great addition (considering the size of the office space) to the area. That councillor is a little delusional thinking that transit is so fantastic in the area. Transit is only fantastic at two places on the north shore, Park Royal and Lonsdale Quay, it falls off fairly quickly after that. I'd rather the city allow more density (height on the residential tower) and tell the Wesgroup to get more creative with the design that use the current proposal but who knows. Anthem is doing 20 storeys 4 blocks away and Onni wants to do 15 or 16 storeys (3 towers) across the street.
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  #5  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 5:36 AM
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Yeah, I made the mistake of thinking this area had great transit before I moved. In theory it should be a quick commute to downtown.

Why is the north shore booming all of a sudden when it didn't even do much during the 90s/2000s?
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  #6  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 2:58 PM
delboy delboy is offline
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where will this go? On the safeway site (which is a mess and is in desperate need of re-development)?

I too have noticed a lot of development all of a sudden, along Marine, Anderson walk and others along lonsdale, etc.....I wish they would put more effort into lower lonsdale though. I swear to God, if another hair salon opens......
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  #7  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 5:17 PM
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Shell site, Onni is developing the Safeway site, or want to (3 towers, 185,000 sq. ft of retail, which is bonkers).

There is some stuff happening in lower lonsdale. Intracorp has submitted a development permit for the SE corner of 3rd & Lonsdale (Futon place, Subway, Schlockbuster, Kingston Cafe etc) for a 4/5 storey building with 62 units. They are also working with Anavets on their site at 3rd & St. Georges. They both have been mentioned in the North Shore updates thread.

With regards to transit, it's not bad, but it's not great either. If you live within a couple blocks of the Quay it's great. A streetcar would be great up Lonsdale but there isn't the population there yet.
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Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 7:37 PM
golog golog is offline
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What's the gradient on Lonsdale?

Streetcars have maximum gradients of 7-12% (the Bombardier Flexity train from the Olympics was 7.5%)

Steel wheel on steel rails, with leaves, on hills is a serious limiting factor for some potential routes. I don't know about Lonsdale during the winter, but I can think of a few routes in Vancouver that have bus service suspended because buses will just slide out.

[max grade in NV generally are 8-12%, but do allow for up to 16% with topological constraints]

once the Seabuses near end of life, we should just tunnel and manage the gradient that way. North Van would take well to the service. Have a loop around Lonsdale, extension along Marine/3 St, eventually get spur lines to each of Cypress, Grouse, and Seymour. maybe even horsehoe bay

Last edited by golog; Nov 19, 2010 at 7:52 PM.
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  #9  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 9:06 PM
officedweller officedweller is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by golog View Post
What's the gradient on Lonsdale?

Streetcars have maximum gradients of 7-12% (the Bombardier Flexity train from the Olympics was 7.5%)
Lonsdale used to be a streetcar route, so it's do-able.
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  #10  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2010, 2:45 AM
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the page I found the maximum gradients of some streetcar lines from happened to show that every line above 10% had been retired

so I searched 'Lonsdale streetcar" and the following came up
http://www.cherrybouton.com/nshistory.html
Quote:
Streetcars
The streetcars first arrived in North Vancouver in 1906, and by 1908 they extended as far as Grand Boulevard and Lynn Valley.

The Lonsdale Avenue streetcar conductors lived through a few hair raising adventures, as occasionally the brakes would fail on the steep descent and allowed the cars to hurl themselves into the water of the inlet at the bottom of Lonsdale...
The three main drawbacks of a conventional streetcar line that come to mind are:
- small contact area between train and ground
- steel on steel contact which serves as the electrical return path
- they can't gear down

Even if within specifications, this would require heavy brake use and to the extent that deceleration is constrained by the rolling friction (brake too hard and it will slide instead), speed would have to be lower in order to provide a reasonably short stopping distance.

There are ways to design around such a hill problem if it exists, but it wouldn't be off-the-shelf. They could have interlocking gear teeth for the wheels+rail to bypass the frictional constraint, regenerative braking could take the wear off the brake shoes, they could have the track be above or below the hill along the route to minimize the slope between stops, ... Each modification would have its costs or drawbacks.

I'm guessing the Lonsdale streetcar fell out of favour once average cars/trucks/buses had torque and braking to make them a superior alternative.
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Old Posted Nov 20, 2010, 2:58 AM
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Seems like the solution is skytrain.
Wonder if you could build a LIM powered low floor street car that connected to overhead power. It would still be safe to walk across the street, plus the lim motor would be able to handle the grades easier. Of course it would likely be a one off system that costs an arm and a leg.

Back onto topic, at what stage is this proposal, and what is the current local attitude towards it?
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  #12  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2010, 6:40 AM
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Rusty Gull Rusty Gull is offline
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Well, the town hall will make or break this thing, and these can get pretty ugly in North Van, as well all know. I'm sure the Lonsdale Citizens Association is gearing up for war against the developer. And at least one councillor, the NDP member Craig Keating, has already voted against even sending this one to a forum. So the knives are already out.

Oh well - this one is (partly) commercial, so that means jobs and a boost for the municipal tax base. If the dim-witted Nimbies want to vote this one down, the North Shore Credit Union can take its building, and the jobs that go with it, to North Van District, West Van, or even downtown Vancouver.
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  #13  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2010, 4:12 PM
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jlousa -- No, skytrain wouldn't be ideal due to spacing of dc substations that might as well go along with a tunnel. My preferred solution would be a cable system like used for San Francisco's cablecars or gondolas. Trains going downhill could partly power the ones going up very efficiently, and after the hill they could unclamp to be powered like a normal streetcar.
--
There's always a NIMBY around, so it's just a matter of if council chooses to stand behind or ignore them. If there was one project I couldn't imagine being built outside of North Van it's the NSCU. It's funny though, 280 parking spaces proposed by the developer and a councillor suggesting that's too much (for 70k sq ft office, 100 apartments.) The exact opposite is happening across the inlet with developers citing $20,000 per space as a complaint.
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  #14  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2010, 12:05 AM
officedweller officedweller is offline
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Originally Posted by golog View Post
My preferred solution would be a cable system like used for San Francisco's cablecars or gondolas.
Gondola came to mind to me too.
Now wouldn't it be very cool it it went all the way to the Grouse SkyRide?
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