25 signatures reached
To: City of Vancouver Mayor and Council
Protect Chinatown from real estate speculation. Demand a public hearing now!
Dear Mayor and Council:
We urge you to refer the new Chinatown zoning policies to public hearing as soon as possible. Chinatown is a special historic cultural neighbourhood in Vancouver that needs to be protected from intense development pressures and real estate speculation.
The current zoning policies implemented in the 2011 Historic Area Height Review (HAHR) do not have the proper zoning protections typical of other neighbourhoods (e.g. density limits and site width limits). It leaves the door wide open for real estate developers to continue to propose and develop out-of-context buildings like Beedie's 105 Keefer and Westbank's 188 Keefer, and for speculators to assemble land, flip, and market properties at unachievable densities and therefore inflate land values in one of the lowest income neighbourhoods in Vancouver. Further, if the new protection policies continue to be delayed or not considered altogether, Chinatown will continue to degrade from the continued real estate development pressures, making it more challenging, if not impossible, to move forward with a UNESCO bid to designate Chinatown as a World Heritage Site.
You can start to put a stop to this now by referring the new Chinatown zoning policies to public hearing.
The process for the new zoning policies took over 3.5 years with countless hours of community consultation over multiple engagement formats and languages. Stakeholder groups in Chinatown, such as VCBIA (Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Association) and the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, even had their own special consultations with City staff. It is time to bring these zoning policies to public hearing.
Why is this important?
Vancouver City Council delayed their decision to refer the new Chinatown zoning policies to public hearing by three weeks and will be reconsidering the referral on June 5. If the new policies do not get referred to public hearing, this means they will die on the vine and Chinatown will be continue to be open season for real estate developers and speculators.
A newly formed group call "Chinatown Voices" made up of developers and property owners, like 105 Keefer's Beedie, are trying to derail the public hearing process and stop the necessary zoning protections for Chinatown. They already managed to get City Council to delay the referral for public hearing by three weeks. We can't let them win again.
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Why are the new zoning policies important?
The new Chinatown zoning policies contains new policies that will potentially help alleviate the intense real estate pressures and protect the historic built character of the neighbourhood. If some of these measures to do not get put in place as soon as possible, the door is wide open for more proposals similar to the 105 Keefer rezoning and make it impossible for us to move forward with a UNESCO bid to designate Chinatown as a World Heritage Site.
Major policy improvements include:
- Rescinding of rezoning policy that allowed for higher heights (so we don't get another 105 Keefer proposal)
- Restoration of the historic heights of the neighbourhood
- Addition of density, site width, and retail width limits that were never in place before
Full report here: http://council.vancouver.ca/20180515/documents/p8.pdf
Although the zoning policies can have even stronger protections that what the City has currently proposed, we need to first get the new policies to public hearing to stop more 105 Keefer's from getting into the City development application process as soon as possible.
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How can you help?
1. Sign this petition to urge City Council to refer the new Chinatown zoning policies to public hearing.
2. Share it with you friends and family to sign. The more people, the more pressure. We need to outnumber the "Chinatown Voices" group.
3. Subscribe to the #SaveChinatownYVR mailing list to keep updated on the next steps of this campaign:
http://www.savechinatownheritage.org/join-mailing-list
We can do this!
How it will be delivered
The petition will be emailed to Mayor and Council.