We approach the 1st anniversary of #Nanaimo City Council, a Council more broadly representative of our community…

Submitted to @NanaimoBulletin as a guest column — (declined).

We approach the first anniversary of our new City Council, a Council more broadly representative of our community than previous ones. Our aboriginal community, the non-profit sector, a small business entrepreneur, a neighbourhood and anti-poverty activist. There’s been tensions, there’s been missteps. Interesting times, and you know what they say about interesting times.

It’s reminding me of the inner city high school where nothing much ever happened. It had been a stable, even boring place. Students attended, played on sports teams, graduated much as their parents had before them. It took pride in its uniformity and conformity. But then the neighbourhood changed. The high school found itself attended by students from different backgrounds, with different attitudes and styles. It was dynamic, anything but boring. To the school’s Principal and administrators it was also dangerous. It was unruly and rebellion was in the air.

The Principal, who previously had only to somewhat regally walk the well-behaved halls, appear at ceremonies and to cheer on the football team, found it suddenly hard to cope. In a panic a crisis meeting was called in a kind of war room. It was decided that order must be restored. Dress and behaviour codes were quickly put in place with warnings of harsh punishments for non-compliance. All student creativity and any excess of youthful energy were to defer without question to the authority of the classroom teachers..

And as you can imagine things quickly got much worse. The poor Principal and most of the administrative staff went into a kind of bunker mentality, many left for work in less challenging environments.

The story ends happily though. Wise replacements at the highest levels understood that the new dynamic presented great opportunity. Rules that benefited all were established with general buy-in by the students. Old rules that mostly existed to bolster the institution itself were loosened or jettisoned. The school became a place students looked forward to going to and staff were proud to work at.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Nanaimo’s current upheaval had a similar outcome.

Frank Murphy

#Nanaimo: a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. https://t.co/nCw0VREsm0

— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) October 28, 2015

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‪ Wellcox Lands enviro assessment: meets provincial standards, can be industrially or commercially developed

Post by Nanaimo Commons.

Post by Nanaimo Commons.

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From Nanaimo Bulletin — Video chat with Nanaimo Councillor Bill Yoachim

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"Empire Days" an international embarrassment for #Nanaimo @CBC_Aboriginal

Seattle City Council replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day http://t.co/QexChigsVy pic.twitter.com/da6ixcdsrQ

— CBC_Aboriginal (@CBC_Aboriginal) October 7, 2014

Overdue by decades! @JJWmortgages "Empire Days" an international embarrassment for #Nanaimo @CBC_Aboriginal @dougswhite

— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) October 7, 2014

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South Downtown Waterfront Initiative On Council Agenda Today

Dr Witty has now briefed the Port Authority, the Snuneymuxw First Nation and the Regional District on the committee's final report and presents it again to Council this evening and will speak on the next steps. Also on the agenda a motion to terminate the lease on the northwest corner of the site now held by Island Pallet and begin remediation work. Agenda here.

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Post by Nanaimo Commons.

#NanaimoCouncil Tweets

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Island Corridor Foundation Announces Tentative Agreement that Promises the Return of Passenger Rail to Vancouver Island

Island Corridor Foundation announced this morning at a press conference at the Train Station on Selby Street in Nanaimo that there is a tentative agreement between the ICF, Southern Rail and Via that promises the return of passenger rail to Vancouver Island. Needs ratification, if approved it will free up $20 million in fed, provincial and regional district funds to begin rail and bridge repair. That work is expected to take 9 months. There is the possibility of passenger service into the city-owned Wellcox property on the waterfront.

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From The Sidewalk Ballet, Jan. 2013 —City of Nanaimo to Purchase 26.7 Acre Downtown Waterfront Rail Yards

Pending an environmental review, the City of Nanaimo has announced an agreement with Canadian Pacific to purchase its rail yards. The area was excluded from the 2008 Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines and piecemeal redevelopment of Port Place immediately to the north has proceeded without a master plan for this area.

Redevelopment of these brownfields holds great potential of course but considering a track record here of opportunities lost over the last 10 years I fear the worst. Council will be asked to approve a budget for a "master plan [which] will include not just the land we’re buying but all of the CP lands and the waterfront lands,” says the City's GM Development Ted Swabey. The area should be the subject of a Design Competition geared to attracting top Planning and Architectural talent and badly needed fresh ideas.

There is an agreement in place with the Regional District to collaborate with them on a transit hub. The Snuneymuxw First Nation's reserve lands are to the immediate south and they hold both treaty rights and land purchase options which will directly effect the redevelopment of the site. The Island Corridor Foundation who own the rail line and stations on south and central Vancouver Island are among others who hold land rights and rights of way.

Scariest prospect of all a popular idea for a 5,000 seat multiplex. There simply does not seem to be either the Planning talent or the political will here to, if this goes ahead, create anything other than a piece of brutal architecture floating in acres of surface parking doing  damage to existing downtown neighbourhoods. Much lip service has been offered here about making "place not space" with appropriated urbanspeak aside, nothing meaningful to show for it.

Here's City Councillor Fred Pattje re the Port Place plans proceeding without a master plan for the southern waterfront:

“This is not proper urban planning in my view,” he said. “The Nanaimo Port Authority wants to do something significant with the assembly wharf and the Snuneymuxw have an interest in the Wilcox property. This whole area is Nanaimo’s last urban frontier and there’s no connection in the planning for any of it, so eventually we’ll end up with something really unpleasant."

City of Nanaimo news release

Nanaimo News Bulletin report Dec 14, 2012 City purchases waterfront rail yard downtown

Staff Report to Council Dec 17 2012

The Sidewalk Ballet: City of Nanaimo to Purchase 26.7 Acre Downtown Waterfront Rail Yards

Background The Sidewalk Ballet 03/22/13 —Nanaimo Council to be Asked To Approve Concept Planning Process for The South Downtown Waterfront

Details of the Planning Department report to Council on the Monday March 25 agenda: pdf here.


BACKGROUND: 
The Official Community Plan Implementation Strategy identified the need to undertake an Urban Nod13 Plan for Downtown Plan Study Area #2, which is the area commonly known as the Wellcox Yard and Assembly Wharf area south of Downtown, as a priority in the short term. 

More recently, the City has made an offer to purchase 26.7 acres from CP Rail which is the 
northern portion of the Wellcox Yard. That offer to purchase was made public in a press release issued on 2012-DEC-13. Staff is now seeking Council direction on moving forward with a land use planning process for 
the South Downtown Waterfront, which will include both the Wellcox Yard and Assembly Wharf lands. The plan area is defined as follows: 

• The southern boundary aligns with the Snuneymuxw First Nation (SFN). 
• The western boundary is along Esplanade and Front Street 
• The northern boundary includes the existing BC Ferries land and water lots (servicing 
Gabriela Island). 
• The eastern boundary is undefined but extends into Nanaimo Harbour within the Nanaimo 
Port Authority (NPA) jurisdiction. 

An illustration of the plan area, referred to as "Concept Plan Area", is contained in the attached 

Terms of Reference. 
This project is guided by several Council bylaws and strategic documents, noted in the "Related Documents" section below. In addition, the NPA, SFN, the Island Corridor Foundation, business operators, and others have shown interest in establishing a long term vision for the area. 

The next step would typically involve development of a Neighbourhood Plan (also referred to as an Area or Master Plan). In this case, staff is recommending an additional step in a multiphased planning program: the development of a high level Concept Plan. 

The Concept Planning process is recommended due to challenges related to planning in an area with multiple jurisdictions, as the City, SFN, NPA and Province each have authority and ownership over portions of the plan area. In order to harmonize land use and coordinate servicing and development, staff recommends a collaborative, non-regulatory, high level process. As this first phase is conceptual, it will not result in a Council bylaw. Instead, the intent is to establish a shared long term vision and guiding principles for various decision makers to take into account when considering planning, development and investment within their respective portion of the plan area.

For those areas where the City has jurisdiction, the next phase of the planning project could be development of Area/Master, Servicing and Infrastructure plans in 2014, subject to availability of resources and Council approval. 

Staff recommends Council consider approval of the attached Draft Terms of Reference, which lay out the Concept Planning process. The Sidewalk Ballet: Nanaimo Council to be Asked To Approve Concept Planning Process For the South Downtown Waterfront

From The Sidewalk Ballet — Nanaimo's South Downtown Waterfront Initiative

From: frankmurphy@thesidewalkballet.com
Subject: S Downtown Waterfront Initiative Survey
Date: 9 October, 2013 1:20:50 PM PDT
To: sdwaterfront@cityspaces.ca

Comment submitted earlier to your online survey —

Some preliminary thoughts — Early effort to build a public identity for the initiative — the new website, the boots on the ground fair that invited people to discuss the site while touring it, encouraging citizens to attend the (brutally early) committee meetings — is positive and welcome. I'd like to see this phase followed by one where the committee itself and its consultant move to a proactive role in educating people that to be truly successful in realizing the potential of this extraordinary site, there will need to be some discomfort inducing change in the way we have imagined and designed our city. More on this later but for now: I'm referring to dynamics such as Nanaimo's low population density and accompanying car dependency. A number of external factors impact the potential of the site and it's important (though generally in Nanaimo considered impolite) to air them in the earliest days of this process. For instance I'll draw attention to First Capital's Port Place blank wall and expanse of surface parking which has done probably irreparable harm to the Front Street streetscape and made a key piece of the site's interconnectedness puzzle a huge challenge. Also more later on connectivity. 

I'm still trying to get my mind around some of the complexities here. The combination of primary property ownership and rights of access in covenants and existing leaseholders are confusing me. Fascinating and full of potential but confusing. (See map).

While the City-mandated study area is quite rightly the entire waterfront area between the Snuneymuxw lands and the Gabriola Ferry (some say a at-least-broad-brush-stroke study should have been done as part of the 2008 Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines), it's the City, Port and Provincial Crown lands north of the trestle bridge that hold short and medium term potential for redevelopment. Do I have that about right? And the redevelopment of this portion will require a shared vision with the Island Corridor Foundation and the Port Authority and will impact the existing leaseholders. Seaspan's right of access through the site holds the key to moving to the next step if I'm not mistaken. And in case this was all starting to look pretty simple, there is a memorandum of agreement between the City and the Regional District to locate a "transit hub" here. What exactly is meant by a "transit hub" in a sprawling City with a commercial highway running through its downtown scares the bejesus out of me. I see examples elsewhere of transit interconnections by design creating prosperous successful human scale urban "place". Time for an indication that we have some idea of how to do that here.

My initial focus will be the Esplanade and north waterfront connections. Key I think is identifying the characteristics and purpose of "precinct" here. Central is public space. Waterfront access is a primary opportunity of course but there's the chance to do something so much better than just a sea wall. Connected public squares and plazas connecting both at and to the waterfront and through the site. Connected and integrated. This is in general not something Nanaimo has done well. In terms of primary use, Nanaimo has long needed a downtown satellite campus of Vancouver Island University. As Gordon Price has pointed out one of the our biggest urban planning mistakes has been the remote isolated locations of university campuses.

http://www.thesidewalkballet.com/2013/02/from-price-tags-biggest-public-sector.html

A public sector education and training cluster here (ideally including the SFN) integrated with a convenient modern transit system (passenger ferry, light rail, inter city bus all included) holds much promise seems to me.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading Ken Greenberg's Walking Home about his experiences over his career working on many sites not unlike this one and close with this thought —

Who will break it to Nanaimoites that for any potential to be realized here there will be virtually no surface parking?

Frank Murphy
Selby St Nanaimo
www.thesidewalkballet.com The Sidewalk Ballet: Nanaimo's South Downtown Waterfront Initiative

Background: From The Sidewalk Ballet — City of Nanaimo to Purchase 26.7 Acre Downtown Waterfront Rail Yards

Pending an environmental review, the City of Nanaimo have announced an agreement with Canadian Pacific to purchase its rail yards. The area was excluded from the 2008 Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines and piecemeal redevelopment of Port Place immediately to the north has proceeded without a master plan for this area. Read more: The Sidewalk Ballet: City of Nanaimo to Purchase 26.7 Acre Downtown Waterfront Rail Yards