Dear Editor:
(This is an open letter sent to the Burnaby mayor and councillors.)
Dear Mayor Corrigan and council,
In your 2012 inaugural speech you stated, "Whenever Burnaby embarks on a new ... land use plan, to ensure the plan is citizen-driven, we incorporate consultation that will involve and engage everyone… Maintaining citizens’ faith in the City’s consultation processes is critical."
With Brentwood, Edmonds, Lougheed, and Metrotown all now slated for or undergoing massive redevelopment, such a process is essential. Existing community plans provide the logical legal starting point for public discussions.
To quote a January [year?] report to your Council colleagues regarding Lougheed redevelopment: “More significantly still, a contemporary approach to planning, including a dynamic, responsive, inclusive, and interactive community and public engagement process, is required.” Council passed a motion “to undertake an Open House process to receive community and public feedback on the preliminary concepts and vision for the Lougheed Mall”.
This process has yet to happen for the Brentwood area. Instead;
(1) You claimed ownership of the private developer’s plan, calling it “our concept” at the first Public Hearing. Before that, in a CBC interview Coun. Paul McDonell called it “the crown jewel”.
(2) You, or members of city staff, cancelled outright one Public Hearing on Brentwood and pulled redevelopment from another agenda at the last minute.
(3) You, or members of city staff, set the legally required hearings before council in late summer 2012 and during Christmas time 2013: a classic timing tactic that minimizes public input.
Thus“citizens’ faith in the City’s consultation processes” has been sorely damaged.
The following are some specific concerns about your “process” of non-consultation.
CONCERNS
You are using a rezoning process that is inappropriate for an undertaking of this scale and regional impact. That process was intended for zoning changes, not for building a city within a city. Only homeowners within a mere 30 metres receive notification. For many Brentwood projects this includes very few or none. Only one sign notifying of the rezoning needs to be placed on a property of 28 acres.
Compare the process for a similar redevelopment in Vancouver: Oakridge Mall. Before any Public Hearing has taken place there has been a year of on-line and open house public input opportunities, impact assessments, and guarantees of public-owned amenities and affordable housing.
But here in Burnaby you have held no public info/input sessions outside two Public Hearings in 16 months. You approved the developer’s “Master Plan” after only one public hearing held late summer. You left public information and collection of public input to the private developer at under-publicized summertime meetings.
Collateral damage leading up to the approval of Shape’s “amazing” Master Plan in September 2013 included prior approval of closure of the Brentwood bus loop in June – with zero input from transit users.
You apparently accept Shape’s estimates of how fast we can walk in five to 20 minutes. But the estimates on their map [5] are for unencumbered, able-bodied adults who can walk as the crow flies with no traffic lights to navigate. As the Shape PR says, “amazing”.
The reality is that loop closure forces people to cross Lougheed – strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, and weather notwithstanding. They are conscripted to do the "hustle and bustle" to create the "urbane city centre" feeling prescribed in Shape’s plan [6]. But we'd rather forgo frolicking fashionably across a busy highway and have safe, convenient connections afforded by the loop instead.
What became of the official plan (see below) which calls for "pedestrian grade-separated crossing of the Lougheed Highway" and loop improvements, not eradication?
This for what has been dubbed “Transit Oriented Development."
This type of Transit Oriented Development penalizes and discourages transit use, and will add to the misery of Brentwood residents. They already cope with rat-running commuters from other neighbourhoods along Lougheed frustrated by construction delays - which may continue for the next 30+ years. And they will apparently be sharing residential streets with thousands of new neighbours.
At the Nov 2013 Public Hearing, you repeatedly invoked a little-known 1974 Community Plan as if it were written in stone, using it to brush off concerns about the impact of a proposed condo near Canada Way and Sperling on access for the fire hall and impact on local streams, schools, and traffic congestion.
Surely these plans need public input more often than at 40 year intervals.
Moreover, the sacredness of such dust-gathering plans appears highly selective: you never mentioned the official 1996 Brentwood Community Plan at public hearings.
That official Plan lists 16,500 people for Brentwood population, but in 2010 you gave an estimate of 32,000 in a presentation to another private developer. Was that just a slip of the tongue?
The terms "human scale", "village", and "natural environment" were cited as imperatives in the 1996 plan. The illustrations show high-rises of about 20 stories. But now citizens are referred to Shape’s "amazing" Master Plan (including images like cartoon stills from the Jetsons featuring 13 towers at 40-70 stories.) Not to mention the 52, 55, and 61 story towers under construction nearby.
We ask you on behalf of Burnaby residents: How many more towers? How high? How much congestion at Willingdon & Lougheed? And how many accidents for mobility-challenged transit users?
The Master Plan video shows not one person with cane, wheelchair or stroller; none overweight or bald; no children; no grass, no rain, no dogs; no buskers, beggars, or pipe-line protesters.
Where are the flesh and blood ‘human scale’ people living here now and our future neighbours?
Real public input would have spotted these flaws in Shape’s plan. (For example the rather ludicrous claim that Lougheed "will be pedestrian and cyclist friendly".)
But you have apparently adopted a fortress mentality: rubberstamp, duck, stonewall, and otherwise avoid real public input.
A final observation: a recent UBC engineering study found that the terrain of the lower mainland may amplify an earthquake to produce 3-4 times the shaking previously estimated, especially impacting “tall” buildings (Science News). Mother Nature has raised an issue you need to answer even if you won’t answer ours.
Our concerns are reasonable: safe and convenient connections for transit use; easy access for fire trucks, safe residential streets. And, to use your terms: "human scale" and "citizen driven" development.
Yours sincerely,
Helen Ward, Cherie Moses, Matthew Senf, Rick McGowan, David Field, Terry MacDonald, G. Bruce Friesen, Jackson Jung, via email
