The City of Vancouver is considering plans to redevelop a section of the downtown waterfront area between the backside of Gastown and the Burrard Inlet shore that is currently a railyard. Proposals include one by International architecture firm Perkins & Will that includes a cluster of glassy towers built near the existing cruise-ship terminal in Vancouver.Supplied
For a city renowned for its connection to the ocean, Vancouver’s central downtown waterfront is notably unwelcoming to its residents, dominated by gravel parking lots, rail lines and service roads.
In December, international architecture firm Perkins & Will took a run at solving this, reimagining the area between the backside of Gastown and the Burrard Inlet shore as a cluster of glassy towers built near the existing cruise-ship terminal. In their design proposal, those buildings would be connected to a new transit hub that would integrate the full array of transportation that is unique to Vancouver – everything from trains and buses to float planes and the SeaBus ferry.
This isn’t the only option on the table right now. Over the last three months, many of the city’s stakeholders – including other architecture firms, local landowners, former city planners, transportation advocates, tourism groups and more – have begun to envision how this area can be a place for the downtown to expand and redefine itself.
The flurry of activity comes after federal Liberal MP Hedy Fry convened groups over the past year-and-a-half to talk about the potential and challenges of developing the area – a discussion that came after the last city council voted to restart its 13-year-old “hub plan” for the area, after interest had faded in the intervening years.
“I think there’s a huge opportunity here in terms of developing a world-class waterfront,” said Councillor Lisa Dominato, who brought forward a motion on port planning last year with Green Party Councillor Pete Fry (Ms. Fry’s son). “This is an area we want to focus on.”
There are obstacles, of course, the biggest among them that the mostly-empty land that sits between Waterfront Road and the water belongs to the federally-operated port, while the rail lines on the other side of the road are used by Canadian Pacific and Canadian National for freight-car storage and train assemblies. As well, TransLink, the region’s transportation agency, has nothing in its upcoming 30-year plan about making improvements around the central waterfront.
But while conversations with those organizations continues, other stakeholders are hoping the outpouring of ideas, and renewed enthusiasm, will motivate change.
“It’s definitely a pretty unique opportunity,” said architect Adrian Watson at Perkins & Will, who believes his company’s design shows how a big transit station can be people- and environment-friendly.
Some of the other new ideas came in last December and January, when a group of about 30 people from a variety of fields convened at Simon Fraser University for four days of workshopping. The resulting scenarios included an Indigenous skills-training centre, new housing and hotels, a large public plaza, an Indigenous-themed gateway structure or sculpture that would become the new iconic image of Vancouver, and pedestrian paths with a prime view of the harbour.
“We realize in the city that this area’s time is coming and it’s becoming more and more relevant to sort it out,” said a former chief planner for the city, Larry Beasley, who facilitated the planning brainstorm after receiving funding from two major landowners – Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot and Cadillac Fairview.
Cadillac Fairview had previously put forward several proposals for an office building near the Waterfront Station, which it owns, but none have received an enthusiastic response from the city or the public, and are on hold for the moment.
Mr. Kerfoot has held the rights to the airspace over the tracks behind Gastown for years, since he proposed a soccer stadium on the waterfront in 2006. (After five years of back and forth with the city, the team decided to use BC Place as its home.)
The waterfront has the potential to provide room for some much-needed types of buildings in the already crowded central business district.
Vancouver’s tourism sector, in particular, is anxious to see more hotels downtown in order to support conventions. Prior to the pandemic, the area’s hotels were running at near capacity, and room shortages discouraged convention planners from booking in the city.
Given the post-pandemic shift toward hybrid working, many of the proposals envision not just new office spaces, but residential as well.
When it comes to the transportation-related bodies, there has been a varying level of interaction with the new concepts. TransLink’s vice-president of planning attended the gathering that Mr. Beasley organized, but neither the port nor the rail-line companies were present. Both are key players in the city’s economy, and have not expressed willingness in the recent past to give up any land they currently control.
In the mid-1990s, the Vancouver Port Corp. – renamed the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority – was prepared to sell up to 15 hectares of its waterfront land to either a casino developer or a new convention centre. But for the last couple decades, the organization has held the position that the region is desperately short of industrial land to serve port needs.
Some of the recent designs propose moving the rail companies’ holding yards further to the east, near the Vancouver Centerm Terminal, and building new towers directly on that land. Others saw a need to reserve tracks coming downtown for current and future passenger trains.
Asked by The Globe and Mail for a response to the ideas circulating, the port authority’s media department responded: “While we have not finalized any plans for the area, our focus as an organization is on developing industrial land that can support trade, in line with our federal mandate to enable Canadian trade through the Port of Vancouver. Any future development in the area would be subject to a variety of considerations, including federal regulations around development on port lands.”
Canadian Pacific’s media relations representative was similarly non-committal and emphasized that “CP’s Vancouver rail network is highly critical to our operations and supports the North American economy.”
The CN media-relations response was marginally more amenable: “The relocation of a rail line is a complex and costly process. However, CN is always open and available to discuss and review new development plans with stakeholders.”
The complications of dealing with the port and rail companies is something that Vancouver’s official city planners and engineers are monitoring closely as they hear calls from both the community and their own council.
“The reality is that … the city won’t put forward serious resources unless key stakeholders are at the table,” said the city’s engineering-department head, Lon LaClaire, as the four-day workshop wrapped up.
For his part, Mr. Beasley says early phases of development can move forward without having all bodies that own land immediately on board.
“If you look at the jurisdictions, there is some development that can happen whether the port is interested, whether the rail companies are interested,” he said. “And it becomes slowly possible to realize the full potential as more is developed.”
Ms. Dominato said the waterfront future is going to get a lot of attention at council, even though the city isn’t capable of resolving all the complexities or paying for everything needed. “The provincial and federal government has to be there and, if we make this a priority, we can get others in.”