Thread by @28floors

We received the message below through our web site, sent a couple of hours after the City-led Open House for the proposed Broadway & Birch development project. It is a sad commentary on the level of toxicity in any discussion of planning and housing in the City at present....

The email author’s suggestion that we are NIMBYs is simply a lie – our web site makes it abundantly clear we support the development of the 16 floor, 153 unit market rental project originally approved for this location. Unfortunately, a measured objection...

to the new project is seemingly taken as oppression in the current environment.
The email message really underscores how broken the City planning process is.
The Official Plan for the Broadway corridor hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, meaning that a rezoning application ....

such as this one is guaranteed to be contentious due to the significant precedent the proposed density represents for future developments along West Broadway.

The Mayor has already very publicly endorsed this project. The fact the application is coming forward now, ....

in the midst of the development of the overall Broadway Plan, makes the people we talk with very concerned that approval of this building sets a new benchmark from previously-approved projects.

A rezoning approval will be an unmistakable signal to Staff that Council ...

is supportive of much higher density along the West Broadway corridor as they formulate their recommendations for the Broadway Plan.

The online surveys for the Broadway Plan have not included questions about building height or density,....

yet we see headlines almost weekly for 40 story buildings at Broadway & Granville and 8th & Pine, 14 floors at Broadway & Alma, and two 20+ story twin towers on the current MEC site. What conclusions should residents draw?...

The various public meetings and “walkshops” organized by staff to engage the public in developing the Broadway Plan included, in several instances, participants from the developer community. Given the access to Councilors and Staff which developers already enjoy, ...

people not surprisingly wonder if the process is an exercise in pseudo-participation, with the outcome a foregone conclusion.
The current situation was years in the making, and the Mayor and Council must take steps to defuse the emotion, which now seems to be out of control...

The real danger here is that this Council will allow itself to be incrementalized one project at a time, as were previous councils. The current planning process needs to be revamped to get greater citizen input at the outset,...

rather than forcing residents to react when developers have already made presentations to Staff and Councilors to get their early buy-in and try to ummm – manage - the input of residents./ END