Encircled by STIR
The upcoming open house for a STIR (Short Term Incentives for Rental Housing) project at 4320 Slocan Street has led Eye on Norquay to take hard look at the end result of STIR incursion into Vancouver. Between 18 June 2009 and 15 December 2011 the City of Vancouver took in 26 STIR applications for 27 locations. The mapping of those addresses shows an interesting distribution. Most of the STIR projects have clustered in three separate locations:
• West End and Downtown near Granville bridge — 8
• Along the Cambie corridor — 6
• Surrounding Norquay — 8
[Note: This map is also available as a downloadable pdf]
Eye on Norquay has previously commented on the deficiencies of one particular Norquay-area STIR project. That coverage includes links to other examinations of the STIR program.
In simple summary, the density-without-amenity approach of STIR shows that the City of Vancouver really has no planning for much of anything besides developer profit. The extreme concentration of STIR projects in the Norquay area also demonstrates that the Renfrew-Collingwood Community Vision has flatly lied to area residents:
Each proposal for a new housing type has been made conditional not only on an increase in community facilities and programs needed to serve any population growth generated by the new housing type but also on assurance that parking and traffic impacts would be addressed. [p. 30]
Besides dumping density onto eight sites surrounding Norquay, with no addition whatsoever to the almost nonexistent facilities in Norquay, this initiative further allows these market-rental projects to dispense with normal parking requirements so the developers can have an even fatter bottom line.
