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Metrotown-area development proposed to replace 4 low-rise apartments

Coun. Colleen Jordan pushed back on the proposal for packing all rental obligations onto one lot at double the area's recommended density
belford devs
The four marked sites are all part of a proposal for redevelopment, replacing five older low-rise buildings.

Staff have been given the go-ahead to work with a developer on a Metrotown-area project that would double the number of below-market apartments currently spread out over four sites.

However, the development faced pushback from one councillor, who expressed concerns about an apparent trend of packing non-market rental obligations into solitary, dense towers.

In a recent council meeting, staff sought approval to work with developer Belford Properties on a density transfer agreement involving four separate rezoning proposals. Those proposals include one at 6366 Cassie Ave. and 6433 McKay Ave., one at 6444 Silver Ave., one at 4355 Maywood St. and one at 6630 Telford Ave.

All four sites, located at four successive blocks just east of Central Park and southwest of the Metrotown SkyTrain station, are currently occupied by older low-rise apartments, and they’re surrounded by a neighbourhood of similar buildings. The five existing buildings currently hold 220 rental units.

Belford Properties proposed developments on the site in 2017, but the projects were set aside at the time, as the city began considering its tenant assistance policy, which is intended to protect renters from displacement as older buildings are replaced with larger, newer buildings. In short, developers must give existing tenants the option to live at the new development for the same rents they’re currently paying, plus annual B.C. government rent-controlled increases.

The city has also adopted a rental zoning policy, which requires developers of multi-family housing projects to include a significant portion of units as non-market rentals. The number of non-market rentals, with rates set at 20% below Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation-measured median rents, must equal 20% of the market units.

The developer is seeking to transfer all 220 replacement units plus the remaining required non-market rentals to the Telford Avenue site, which together with the Cassie/McKay site would make up phase 1 of the development. In all, the Telford rental site would see 420 below-market rental units between two towers.

The Silver and Maywood sites would either be built together at a later date or, if the market is less amenable, separately at later dates.

The resulting density from the transfer to the Telford rental site would be 8.18 floor-area ratio (FAR) – a measure of density that compares all floors’ combined square footage with the square footage of the lot. By comparison, the Cassie/McKay and Silver sites would have densities of around 3.6 FAR, while the Maywood site would have a density of 7.82 FAR.

Burnaby Citizens Association Coun. Pietro Calendino, chair of the planning and development committee, spoke in favour of the proposal, pointing to the inclusion of all of the combined required rental units from all four developments in the first phase and the addition of 200 new rentals in the area.

“It’s a good deal for tenants in that they will not have to undergo the disruption that they normally do with single-phase developments. In this case, many of the tenants can stay in their current buildings until that comes up for development,” Calendino said. “And then it would be easy for them to transfer into an already-built new building.”

Otherwise, tenants are usually required to move out of their existing rental units during construction only to move again when the new building is completed.

Independent Coun. Colleen Jordan, however, brought concerns about the density of the rental site, noting the 8.18 FAR was more than double the 3.6 FAR prescribed for the area in the city’s official Metrotown downtown plan.

She compared the site to another similar density transfer recently approved in Metrotown, that time on Kathleen Avenue, which also resulted in a rental-only building getting far higher density than previously stipulated for the site.

“I’m afraid what we’re doing here is basically creating tenant towers. That’s what Kathleen’s going to be, and that’s what I see these ones as being. … Hopefully this one has balconies and somewhere for children to play,” Jordan said. “I just think that this huge increase in density in order to accommodate the rental and the affordable rental and the replacement (rental) is getting way beyond what was ever envisioned in the Metrotown plan.”

BCA Coun. Sav Dhaliwal agreed the city should generally work to keep rental obligations to the same site as the market units they are connected to and said it would be more problematic if the rentals were entirely disconnected from the neighbourhood.

However, he agreed with Calendino, saying the city can be flexible “when a good deal comes through.”

Council voted 5-2 in favour of the project, which will come forward at a later time as a zoning amendment. Fellow independent Coun. Dan Johnston voted against the project alongside Jordan.

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Send him an email: dgodfrey@burnabynow.com