Scores of people have signed up to speak as Vancouver city council holds a public hearing on a planned Indigenous-led megaproject that stands to reshape a residential corner of the city’s west side.
Councillors are set to debate the official development plan for the Jericho Lands proposal, an ambitious plan to redevelop the 90-acre site across 4th Avenue from Jericho Beach Park.
The proposal envisions 13,000 new homes housing 24,000 people more than two dozen buildings ranging from four to 49 storeys tall. The work would take place in phases over a 25-30 year horizon.
The project is a partnership between the MST Development Corporation and the Canada Lands Company (CLC), a federal Crown corporation. The MST Development Corporation is the for-profit development arm of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation).
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As with any development project in Vancouver there are strong feelings, and the scale of the proposal has only amplified those.
“It’s too big, it’s too dense. Yes, we do need housing on this site, I’m not against developing it, but I think there are much better ways to do it,” said Susan Fisher, a member of the Jericho Coalition which opposes the plan.
“We think it would make a whole lot more sense to build low- and medium-rise buildings on this site, they could be built from mass timber, from modular forms, and they could much more quickly.”
On the other side are supporters like Abundant Housing director Peter Waldkirch.
“Vancouver has a severe housing shortage and one of the reasons we do is because it is so impossible to get anything done in this city,” he said.
“We already approved the Jericho Lands policy statement over a year ago, it’s been in consultation since 2019, and here we are fighting about it again. I think it’s time Vancouver stop bickering and got building.”
The development plan heading to council envisions 2,600 units of social housing, and 1,300 units reserved as secured market rental and below-market rental to be included in the project.
It envisions integrating the new community with a future extension of the Broadway subway line to UBC with the inclusion of a station at the heart of the development. Senior levels of government have yet to allocate funding for the proposed extension.
And the plan includes 12.4 hectares of parks and open space, child-care facilities with 259 spaces, 15,000 square feet of cultural facilities and a 10,000 square-foot non-traditional library described as a “house of learning.”
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