#Vancouver Seawall "Canada's best public place" - it's also a neighbourhood & multi-modal corridor. @BrentToderian
Nanaimo’s seawall parks and neighbourhoods are first rate and our best asset. Our City Hall has just passed an upzoning for a pie-in-the-sky “Hilton” hotel development on the waterfront and our City Hall is considering privatizing large portions of our waterfront Georgia Park.
This stealth privatization is being done on 3 fronts:
• an outright “lease” turning parkland over to the developer for a loading zone area (semi’s and delivery vans servicing a 330+ room hotel, patio areas for hotel cafes and lounges and a “grand staircase” creating a flow from the hotel lobby directly down to the waterfront promenade).
• portraying the aggressive extension of its lobby into and onto our parkland by a “grand staircase” connecting to the harbour side promenade as a community benefit. “Connectivity” between Front Street through the hotel to the staircase. This staircase is to be included in lands under their control by a 60 year lease agreement.
• perhaps most objectionably of all, the agreement with Staff to apply the very modest Community Amenity Contribution created by the huge uplift in value created by City concessions to be spent only on areas immediately surrounding their property and in concert with their landscape architects.
Staff report to Council here.
Up-zoning to 114.3 m height and FAR of 12 approved Sept 3 at a well attended public hearing, a large majority of delegates speaking against the height and massing application and the park give-away . Sale of land currently designated lane-way that runs the property perimeter on the north and east sides (which alternatively could have been added to this park area which has been overdue for a redesign for at least 15 years). If there was a strong evidence based argument on which the City made these decisions, I didn’t hear it expressed by Council, it wasn’t made by the proponent at the public hearing and I see no sign of it in the Staff report.
The park lease provision, if the idea itself isn’t pulled off the table now just weeks before the municipal election, will require a referendum. Opposition to the loss of control over parkland, especially a much-loved and popular waterfront park, is strong, broad and spreading.
More background and further thoughts here.
Email to Councillor Diana Johstone
ReplyDeleteSubject: Georgia Park
Date: September 11, 2014 at 2:31:13 PM PDT
To: Diana Johnstone
Cc: Mayor&Council , GENERAL MANAGERS
Hi Diana, I see you intend to put forward a motion to have the proposed Georgia Park lease to the Front St hotel development go to full referendum not the unpopular Alternative Approval Process and if I understand correctly to have it included on the Nov 15 election ballot. Well done! This is an important step. The decision of the public should be clear and unequivocal. Personally, I’ve never been as certain about anything on the City scene as I am that the referendum will fail.
At the public hearing last week you mentioned the lease to build and manage the golf course at Bowen Park as an example of contracting with a third party to operate on a City park. I said I found that to be very different in that it is an example of a permitted use, for which a case had been made that it enhanced the park and increased our enjoyment of it. I searched the City website and read with interest the minutes from the July 2010 Council meeting. The golf course was recommended by the Parks and Rec Commission, which you currently chair I believe. A compelling case was made by the Commission report to Council that this use should be permitted as it brought considerable public benefit.
Which raises the question in regards to the hotel development, why have reports and presentations to Council not included a report from either the Parks and Rec Commission or the City Parks department? Can Parks and Rec make a compelling case for how a loading zone area with semi’s backing in and delivery vans coming and going enhances in any way out waterfront park? Hotel lounge and cafe patios? Staircase connecting the hotel lobby to our waterfront promenade?
Loyd Sherry made some excellent points in his delegation comments to Council this week among them that the loading access for a building on this Front Street property already exists in maintaining the lane-way. I’d add that genuine public access and connectivity between Front Street and the waterfront also can be readily accommodated by maintaining the lane-way. The existing plan serves hotel guests very well, allowing a flow from the hotel but citizens will always know and have a strong sense that they are on private property. Both of these aside, the addition of this strip to a redesigned Georgia Park produces far more public benefit than the relatively few dollars involved.
This project should not proceed until a Georgia Park open design competition is enacted and completed. I’d recommend the model used by the City of Vancouver to gather ideas around the proposed removal of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. http://nanaimocommons.blogspot.ca/2014/03/city-of-vancouver-georgia-and-dunsmuir.html.
Frank Murphy