Why has Vancouver City Hall Put Gastown’s Heritage Conversions on Hold?

May 3rd, 2008 Categories: Downtown, Real Estate

At least seven Vancouver Gastown condo projects are in limbo as City Hall nixed its heritage revitalization program.

City Hall established a Heritage Building Rehabilitation Program for Gastown, Chinatown and the Hastings Corridor in 2003 and it was scheduled to run til 2008. It was designed to cover cost shortfalls for complete building rehabilitation. It also included a density bonus and property tax relief.

The City has now declared that Vancouver’s Gastwon Heritage program will be suspended pending further study. Of the 12, 5 were allowed to proceed and the remaining seven were excluded.

The density bonus is a key incentive to redevelop, rather than tear down heritage buildings to redevelop rather than tear down heritage buildings. It allows developers to increase the square footage of buildings in other area.

Salient Group has had seven buildings in Vancouver’s Gaston Heritage program and “$100 million of investment going into incented projects that goes directly to bolstering the economic environment in these areas.” They are selling some of the density it’s been given and incorporating some of it into its new projects.

Salient’s Fung said that until “the city determines how it’s going to implement its heritage revitalization incentive program, further investment in the area by Salient is at a full halt”.

Vancouver’s senior heritage planner, Marco D’Agnostini, said the Vancouver Gastown Heritage Program was suspended “because the city was concerned that a potential surplus of transferable density would reduce its market value”

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Weigh in – what is you opinion on Vanouver’s Gastown Heriage program? Is it good for the neighbourhood? Should it continue or not? Do you live in the neighbourhood and if so, has the Heritage Program been a benefit to it and how?

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 am and is filed under Downtown, Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Maggie (author) said:

i couldn’t agree with you more, will. hopefully city hall will come to their senses and renew the program. personally, i thought it was a smart idea for the hood.

# 5 May 2008 at 12:35 pm

Vancouver’s Gastown Heritage Program On Hold » Vancouver Reflections - Shining the Light on Vancouver Real Estate - by Maggie Chandler said:

[...] did a post on this recently and thought I’d follow it up with City Hall’s explanation. So here it [...]

# 27 May 2008 at 2:47 pm

cyrus van helsing said:

gastown is nothing more than a run down eyesore,with buildings on water street in a pathetic shape,it is time laws were made to make the landlords clean up the exterior of their properties,the brick roads are in terrible shape,the hotels are in a mess,nothing but panhandlers,homeless,drug addicts and mentaly disturbed people wandering the streets,how is this going to look when the olympic games open.most of the problems are from the city hall,who couldnt care less,or are to lazy to do something about it because its always the same old story from these goofballs who run the city and while they sit on there fat behinds,i lived in gastown fore 18 years
and all the city can do is waste tons of money getting useless reports that have never worked out.

# 9 March 2009 at 11:21 pm