Downtown Vancouver’s last tract of undeveloped land is set to connect and transform historical neighbourhoods while creating a new community.
Concord Pacific recently revealed plans for Concord Landing, an ambitious and expansive development on Vancouver’s northeast False Creek region, one of the last undeveloped areas near the city’s downtown core.
The 5,000-home,12-tower plan will span across the former Expo 86 lands between the Plaza of Nations and Science World and will link together Chinatown and Gastown to the downtown arterial transportation network.
“The overall vision is to reconnect the districts of Vancouver that are currently separated. There’s a paradigm shift in the thinking on how Vancouver interacts with its various communities,” said Concord Pacific senior vice-president of development Peter Webb.
He cited Georgia Street, which spans from Stanley Park in the west all the way to Science World as a “geometric connection and the ceremonial street of the city, but as it heads south it wanders off…in a disconnected way to the rest of the city.
“Through the idea of removing the viaducts we can reconnect False Creek back to Gastown, Chinatown and East Vancouver and stitch it back together for a much healthier organism,” Webb said.
The Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts were both built in the 1970s and are what remains of a scrapped downtown freeway project.
While recent changes to Vancouver’s view cone policy have allowed for multiple tall residential buildings as part of the project, Webb said the overarching theme is akin to a ground-level village with retail and community-focused areas.
Webb said Concord Pacific is working with Vancouver City Council and staff to address the area’s ongoing affordable housing but at the same time as a master plan developer the company is “always looking at future ways create interesting communities.
“European cities have been evolving for many more centuries than North American cities and the idea of closely-knit community and commercial spaces is very important,” he said. “Even though there might be towers above, as people come to grade there will be a sensation of a neighbourhood-oriented shopping community with owner-operator scaled commercial spaces.”
Before Northeast False Creek is reshaped the City of Vancouver must lay both the administrative groundwork and prepare existing infrastructure.
“Creating a comprehensive plan for an area like this is a significant challenge,” City of Vancouver special projects office director Matt Shillito said. “We’re looking at multiple different owners, a complex land area in and around existing communities and various infrastructure challenges.
“One thing about the area is the disparate, fragmented nature of land ownership which includes the public sector, in the form of both the city and the province, but also a multitude of different private landowners. Aligning those interests and objectives including the timing of moving forward is challenging,” Shillito said.
He added there is also a large and upfront cost to remove the two viaducts to enable a substantial portion of development along with the introduction of a new street network.
City of Vancouver general manager of engineering services Lon LaClaire said phasing the work of viaduct removal will be a substantial challenge.
“We do want to maintain access and circulation while this work happens and minimize disruption, but these are big structures, taking them down will be complicated and they pass over the Expo Line which is the most important piece of transportation infrastructure in our region,” LaClaire said.
The next step for the project is the submission of a formal rezoning enquiry to the City of Vancouver “in the very near future,” Webb said, and then “a public process that everyone can get involved in.”
More information on the Northeast False Creek development is available here.
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