Joyce Station Precinct

 
November 26 Alternative Open House

The first of two alternative open houses on Joyce Station Precinct planning took place at Collingwood Neighbourhood House on Thursday evening. The next will be held at the same location on Saturday 28 November 2015 from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

 

 

The event showed genuine concern to achieve effective communication across significant ethnic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Organizers happily posed for the photograph above, but asked that other participants be excluded from visual recording.

Here is the main panel presented in both English and Chinese:

 

 

Here are two sets of fact sheets about the affected area:

 

 

 

 

 
One Big Question

A glance through the complex online materials from the City of Vancouver’s 15 October 2015 open house raises this big question: How can honest area planning happen AFTER planners have already accepted a rezoning proposal from Westbank for a 29-storey tower at 5050 Joyce Street? This blockbuster initiative has been built into their own “option no. 3” on panel 11:

 

 

Panel 8 compounds concern with an upfront assertion of planners’ intention to pick-and-choose: “The following options are not exclusive options. Based on responses, staff will create a preferred option that may include components of each option.” Translation: City of Vancouver has gone on a fishing expedition for height and density, and will compound any expression of approval into maximum take-out. (Since developers and their agents routinely put in comment forms at open houses, expressions of approval will certainly be found.)

To make things even worse, the City of Vancouver proclaims on panel 19:

        Joyce-Collingwood is generally well-served by existing and planned facilities

and proposes little to no community payback for yet more density-dumping into Renfrew-Collingwood. So far the mass rezoning for the nearby large Norquay Village Neighbourhood Centre Plan — in the very same neighborhood — has resulted in no significant benefits.