At the southeast corner of 12th and Clark, a developer has figured out a way to build on a lot that’s been vacant for at least 30 years – long enough that many people can’t remember what once stood there.At the southeast corner of 12th and Clark, a developer has figured out a way to build on a lot that’s been vacant for at least 30 years – long enough that many people can’t remember what once stood there.
“Unfortunately, passive house requires a very thick wall. We did the economics of it, and what would people rather have, a very highly insulted building or a building that has more space? And we decided the space is more important. I wouldn’t say is overrated, but we are living in a temperate environment and it’s a bit of overkill to do passive house for every single building here.”
Mr. Wong figures they could have gone to a maximum of eight storeys with the tight footprint, but it was a moot point because they weren’t about to do another revision. The developer had already invested nearly three years in soft costs and time, so he didn’t want to go back to the drawing board. Now that they have the rezoning approved, Wong figures it will take two more years to get the development and building permits to begin construction.
“I have to say, to be blunt, we have some of the most frustrating colleagues to deal with at the Urban Design Panel. It’s so frustrating… they killed all the good stuff. We had an open door with circulation to an open courtyard. We still have an interior courtyard, but we had to close it off. I’m 65 years old, and I’ve designed close to 22,000 residential units, mostly in Singapore and different parts of the world. We have experience in this.
“In general, the Grandview-Woodland Plan has fairly modest densities, which can make projects hard to pencil,” he said. “The GW Plan only envisioned 1.7 FSR for this site, which sits at the intersection of two busy arterial routes and is two blocks from the busiest SkyTrain station in the region.” “Typically, homeowners want a premium over what their home is worth on its own, otherwise there is no incentive to get four or five neighbours to sell at the same time. Developers can only afford to pay that premium if they can build a profitable project on the site. In general, densities in the Grandview-Woodland Plan are not high enough to make these assemblies viable, which is why there has been such little development completed since the plan came out in 2016.