OPENING REMARKS

Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley, Conference Chair and Moderator

March 23, 2004

On behalf of the Downtown Victoria Community Alliance, the steering and planning committees and the literally dozens of volunteers working behind the scenes…Welcome to the 2nd Downtown Victoria 2020 conference. Again we have more than 300 registrants: some who attended the first conference and others who are here for the first time.

Over a year and a half ago, the City Manager invited a number of business leaders to meet with City staff to discuss revitalization of the downtown core. The discussion evolved into a citizen-based initiative: the creation of the DVCA (Downtown Victoria Community Alliance). The DVCA reached out to a broad cross-section of interested organizations and individuals including planners, architects, developers, social service organizations, environmental and transportation experts, academics, business and neighbourhood organizations. The first forum looked at broad issues affecting downtown with expert speakers who could expand our knowledge of the ideas and approaches being tried in other places. We heard from futurists, planners, architects, business leaders, and social scientists from across North America.

In this forum we will look at much more concrete applications of ideas: we’ll learn more about what makes downtown residential work; we’ll grapple with new concepts in transportation planning; we’ll examine public spaces and connections; and most importantly, we’ll explore the strategies and structures that will make it possible for us to implement the ideas that come out of this conference.

Our goal is to create a vision for a renewed downtown Victoria which is beautiful, economically vibrant, populated, socially responsive; a centre of job growth, culturally rich, and a model of urban ecology and sustainability.

But first, what do we mean by ‘downtown’? It includes the area bounded by Belleville, Blanshard, the water and Rock Bay, but also the relationship of this area to the abutting neighbourhoods of Rock Bay, Vic West, Songhees, Burnside-Gorge, North Park, Humboldt Valley, Harris Green and James Bay.

What do we hope to achieve? Building a community of awareness and interest around downtown issues and opportunities; engaging the public in a discussion about the future of downtown; generating ideas that are both exciting and realistic for creating a healthier, more vital downtown; and building a consensus in support of the ideas. We want to: identify strategies and structures for implementing these ideas; create a repository of information on downtown issues; develop an ongoing visioning capability; and build an organization for sustained downtown stewardship.

The title of this forum is “From Ideas to Action—Making the Future Happen”. We are serious about this. We know that there is a certain amount of skepticism, a fear that all this will be little more than talk, so we took action immediately following the last conference. With the generous support of building owner Conrad Lacker and property manager Bud Dovey, we opened a storefront at 725 Yates Street to house all of the models, plans and displays from the first conference Approximately 2600 people visited the storefront and shared their enthusiasm with us. 267 comments and ideas were collected.

We created 8 working groups to tackle issues including:

• the creation of a Business Improvement Area
• public spaces and connections
• transportation
• downtown – a place of learning
• rehabilitation of heritage buildings
• downtown residential
• street youth; and,
• economic development

The task of each of the working groups was to identify what needed to be done in the short and long term and to get busy tackling some of the immediate issues. Their progress is on display in the Oak Bay and Saanich Rooms, which for the duration of this conference will be renamed the “City Room”.

The volunteers who worked to make this conference a success also worked hard to ensure the conference attracted a good cross-section of individuals. Every effort has been made to make this conference inclusive, including securing sponsorships for organizations or individuals with limited means. None of this would have been possible without our very generous sponsors.

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Bing Thom

Achieving the Optimum Mix of Residential, Commercial, Cultural, Educational and other uses Downtown. Examining the Strategies and Approaches necessary to ensure Livability, Sustainability and Productivity in a Revitalized Downtown.

Order of Canada recipient Bing Thom is an architect who has designed award-winning projects around the world, including the new city centre of Yuxi, China, the Southwest Waterfront Plan for Washington, DC, the Surrey City Centre in Surrey, BC, and other critically acclaimed buildings and urban sites. As a panelist at the November 2003 Downtown Victoria 2020 conference, Thom spoke of Victoria’s need to choose designs that would suit our city’s scale and character.

Thom introduced his talk with the comment that other cities are facing the same inner city challenges as Victoria. U.S. cities have destroyed themselves with the automobile, which, according to Thom, people love because it is a symbol of freedom. In China, planners have halted Shanghai’s rapid urban development. If they kept going the way they’ve been going, there would be nothing left of the old city.

According to Thom, we need to look at “The Big Picture”, the revitalization of downtown in a way that integrates living with work, education, culture and entertainment, and shopping. By contrast, Thom showed a slide of downtown Houston, a bleak concrete sprawl of commercial buildings and parking lots that is the result of no zoning.

Key Points:

• How do we bring people back downtown from the suburbs?
• In the last few decades, cities have grown exponentially compared to previous rates.
• Quality of life and sustainability are linked to a reduction of waste in terms of material, energy and time. In larger cities than Victoria, people can spend two hours in the car commuting, made more poignant by the profusion of double income families.
• Vancouver is an example Thom likes to point out. Over the last forty years a lot has happened to put Vancouver—and Victoria—on the map as among best tourist destinations in the world. By comparison, Vancouver City proper has double the CRD’s population in a much more condensed area.
• You can’t focus only on “empty nesters”. Young families are important to downtown growth.
• The idea is to live with More For Less [greater variety of urban benefits in the community as a trade-off for smaller living spaces]; personal space becomes smaller while public space—the living room of the city—becomes more prominent. That is the trade-off due to the construction costs involved.
• As a proponent of education in downtown cores, Thom cited the number of educational institutes in downtown Vancouver.
• Surrey, Vancouver’s largest suburb, was developing into a sprawl like Houston. Surrey citizens wanted a new concert hall built as part of a future town centre. Using Toronto and other cities as an example, Thom advised them that you shouldn’t start a downtown with a concert hall; it only works during evenings and weekends. The new Surrey City Centre became home to a university [a Simon Fraser University satellite campus] on top of a shopping mall. The City donated the land. The integration of commercial uses, municipal facilities, recreation and education in one complex, instead of separating them with vast parking lots as in many communities, creates a synergy of traffic. This plan reduced the amount of parking required because each feature attracts people at different times of the day. As well, a rapid transit stop was included to further reduce commuter congestion. Educational facilities, said Thom, not only provide a reason for people to be downtown, but also bring the energy of young people to the city’s core and streets. They need to shop and live, and help keep downtown alive. Mixed-use integration saved costs.
• In sprawling Fort Worth, the fastest growing American city with a population of over half a million, the downtown core was dying. Thom suggested diverting a river that runs by downtown to form water channels and an urban lake, establishing an axis for a previously unconnected area of railway lands, stockyards and the downtown core, and creating residential opportunities for young families.
• Victoria Harbour is one of the best pieces of real estate in North America. Thom suggested development incorporating a hotel/residential complex, restaurant multipurpose theatre, and reallocating/consolidating dock facilities to clean up the harbour.

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Michael Geller

Leveraging the Potential: Mustering Infrastructure, Amenities, Incentives and Leadership to Create Residential Dynamism Downtown.

Michael Geller is an architect, planner, real estate consultant and property developer with more than 30 years experience in both the public and private sectors. He is now working on planning the development of Burnaby Mountain Community at Simon Fraser University. Geller is a past president of The Urban Development Institute of Canada, and has served with the Canadian Housing Design Council, the Planning Institute of British Columbia, the Urban Design Panel of Vancouver, Vancouver’s Development Permit Board Advisory Panel, British Columbia Buildings Corporation, and Volunteer Vancouver. A long time advocate of sustainable, equitable and accessible communities, he has been called a pioneer of practices that promote environmentally sound residential development.

Geller introduced himself by jokingly recounting his failures, then referred to his multiple disciplines, remarking that we tend to judge what someone says by virtue of their position. There will be a different reaction to a planner or developer, for example, than there will be to an architect. He then seguéd into his presentation by raising the issue of Vancouver’s urban development over the last thirty years.

Key Points:

• In the mid-1970s, the prospect of revitalizing industrial False Creek in Vancouver’s core seemed to some to be a career-destroying proposal. Why would anyone want to live on derelict waterfront land in that part of the city? There was no park space, no public amenities. But over the years, the City of Vancouver created those amenities. Vancouver took the lead and created one of the most significant sustainable communities in North America.
• Following False Creek, Geller moved to Toronto to work on the city’s downtown harbourfront. The City of Toronto initially considered non-profit housing for the downtown St. Lawrence neighbourhood, while Vancouver had looked at providing mixed-income housing from the very beginning. Limited land space resulted in two schools, public and Catholic, sharing a complex with housing on top. 92 acres of downtown harbourfront, which was cut off from downtown by a raised expressway, required redevelopment. No one wanted towers and developers didn’t want to get involved because of the perceived low return on investment building low-rise density. People want views. The City changed zoning and towers were built including smaller low-cost units.
• Revitalization of urban waterfronts across Canada began.
• Winnipeg “upzoned” the railway lands to stimulate residential development, which didn’t work. In some people’s minds, the land became too valuable to build on.
• Balancing density with what the market can really deliver is an important lesson.
• Back in Vancouver, on the last city-owned cite on False Creek’s south side, a private developer worked with a community group to build mixed housing leased from the city.
• In the Vancouver suburb of Steveston, some members of the community wanted as many units built as possible on 90 acres of fallow land. They felt that higher density would be an incentive to public transit. For every approved unit, several hundred dollars went toward the building of a new Steveston community centre.
• In Victoria, in the mid-80s, developing the upper floors of heritage buildings was considered. The economics weren’t there. It is not necessarily cheaper to work with an existing structure. Sometimes it’s more cost-effective to tear down and build anew; but that’s not what you want with heritage property.
• Another study considered building on downtown’s harbourfront industrial sites. It was advised that buildings would have to rise above street level but consensus wanted development to stay below street level, and nothing happened.
• Vancouver’s BC Place is one of the most successful inner city developments in the world, but in 1984 not one Vancouver developer could be convinced to build the first high-rises. Developers from elsewhere saw the opportunities.
• Increasing density doesn’t always equal greater land value. A residential development at UBC incorporated townhouses.
• Vancouver modified zoning flexibly to encourage residential development by offering developers an attractive residential/commercial FSR [floor space ratio] equation.
• One key to success is to work with your “notional opposition” [those with different ideas about what needs to be done] to determine what’s best for the neighbourhood.
• Looking to the future, there is a tremendous resource in partnerships with the “third sector”: institutions, non-profits, etc.
• Coal Harbor development in Vancouver impresses people because the City got the developers to build public amenities and spaces.
• Just because Vancouver succeeded in developing its downtown mixed-use areas so well doesn’t mean it can happen in all municipalities. There was a confluence of factors such as inexpensive land and the quality of City staff. As value of land increases, developers may be convinced to do more things than they do at first.
• Rental housing is always tough to make work. There is very little return on investment. The coins in laundry machines can make the difference in rental profits.
• At Simon Fraser University, a brand new community is being built from scratch. Natural features are being enhanced, and discounted transit passes are being offered. Zoning bylaw allows legal second suites in apartments. This is an idea with possible applications in Victoria, as a mortgage helper.

Some issues worth considering:

• Rental housing is not usually profitable. Some suggestions to aid rental housing are: the second suite as cited above, bonuses to developers, private and non-profit joint ventures, breaking the addiction to government support, rebates on GST.
• What stores and supermarkets are accessible to people living downtown?
• What is the nature of Victoria?
• We need a housing plan.
• Developers don’t rush in; it takes a while, but once development starts, there is a herd mentality.

Panel Discussion

Michael Geller and Bing Thom, joined by panelists Pamela Madoff, Tom Moore and Max Tomaszewski.

Madoff:

• We need to look at downtown as a neighbourhood. Other communities in Victoria are strongly represented by their neighbourhood associations. No one—residents, property and business owners—is really taking on the challenge of representing the downtown as a neighbourhood. Instead of competing with the suburbs, downtowns should provide a desirable alternative. Downtown has to offer education, culture and entertainment as well as a mix of housing. Downtown has a synergistic relationship with the suburbs. This is a good time because there is a massive interest in North America in a “return to the city”. We should harness that interest.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• What is the role of the City in moving the planning process forward?

Madoff:

• I would discourage the City from being involved in anything entrepreneurial. The City can learn from the development community what works and what doesn’t. 75% of City planning department’s time is spent reacting to applications. An internal reevaluation of the process is under way, with the hope that the City can better show people how to do things rather than telling them what they can’t do.

Moore:

• There is a reason for optimism in downtown; 36 market housing projects within 15 minutes of downtown. 40% of buyers are investors. The housing boom will have a positive affect from a rental perspective. The real concern is those who are marginalized and most in need. We have to think creatively about how to provide affordable/supported housing. A 2001 Vancouver study suggests that the cost to society of subsidized housing is 33% less than the cost of allowing people to live on the street. The City needs to find some solutions. Funding falls short of the mark. The need is there. We have to partner with people who have land “banked”. [Land they’re not using.] Maybe the 1500 new units in development will significantly increase tax revenue. That revenue should be used to invest in infrastructure such as street safety and affordable housing.

Tomaszewski:

• We developed Mermaid Wharf, bringing 100 residents into the downtown area. Now we’re proposing to build lots between Fisgard and Pandora; 200 homes. Having developed in Gastown and Yaletown in Vancouver—the wrong side of the track—there is no problem filling these homes. We will see an ensuing increase and mainstreaming of smart growth and greening neighbourhoods. We need to intensify and densify municipal centres. Developers and planners must engage in a better dialogue with community groups, and vice versa. How does one increase density? Increasing density for a short period of time could kickstart development on the underutilized land on downtown’s north end. Maybe there should be penalties for underused land, as in New York’s boroughs. Height bonuses; the most valuable real estate in a building is at the building’s top, because of views. Are there areas that do not offend heritage sensibilities or affect view corridors? The greater revenues would kickback into the delivery of affordable housing. The bonus density issue has to be looked at in terms of what is appropriate for any part if the city and any given time. Some New Urbanists think that there should be a doubling of density outright.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• None of the new developments that have been identified as currently underway are what we could consider to be affordable. We see a lot of investors buying and then entering the rental market. What would a developer consider a sufficient incentive to build affordable housing, or is this simply not of interest to developers?

Tomaszewski:

• One could potentially start a land bank for affordable social housing in return for density garnered in any given development.

Moore:

• The City is looking at the Dockside lands. As they stand, the Dockside development plans include a discussion about affordable housing. The design panel recommended doubling the density and putting aside 20% for affordable housing. Some further study needs to done on whether that would be rental or supportive housing. This plan would mean 2,000 units in Dockside.

Geller:

• False Creek tried to produce low, middle and high-end housing in equal measure. This was partly due to federal grants that are no longer available. At Coal Harbour’s Bayshore development, the City [of Vancouver] asked developers to include 20% affordable housing. Instead, a payment in lieu option was suggested. Some developers may be willing to make contributions to offset the cost of housing elsewhere. As government programs have dwindled, the City has allowed developers to make payment in lieu in certain circumstances. This format enabled the only affordable townhouses in False Creek.

Moore:

• Moore elaborated on supportive housing, describing it as stable, safe housing that supports individuals with various medical and substance abuse challenges, under minimal supervision. Different government programs have enabled such housing in the suburbs as well as downtown, illustrating the synergy between the inner and outer city. There needs to be a continuing emphasis on the need for this type of housing. The other municipalities must kick in. It’s not just a downtown problem.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• What steps is the City taking to put this into a regional context?

Madoff:

• The City of Victoria already meets the regional growth expectations. We’re already on our way to being a sustainable city. Of concern is that during a current boom cycle such as we are experiencing now, we still aren’t including provisions for affordable housing. If we can’t do that now, when can we do it? We can’t count on government. Building partnerships is important. Banking property might not work. There is a false assumption that the City owns lots of land. That isn’t true. We may not have the same opportunities of banking land that Vancouver had. Mixed housing may have to occur in each separate development.

Audience Comments and Q&A

1. What we’re talking about is real economic vitality. Jane Jacobs [an internationally renowned urban planning theorist] suggests that housing must be associated with earning capacity—continued, increasing earning capacity to create vitality, not just retail trade.

Thom:

• According to a recent report, four Canadian cities were in the top 5% of world cities in terms of quality of life. But the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] listed these same cities near the bottom. How do you link quality of life with economics? We are lucky. A lot of people want to come here. We take this phenomenon for granted and need to leverage it. We need to market ourselves more.

2. I’d like to talk about issues around smart growth and building community. I’d like to see an increase in mixed use, mixed demographics, and mixed income. Community is about everyone coming together and everyone taking responsibility for their neighbors. This includes people with mental health problems and addictions. If we include these people our culture and community will be richer. If we provide incentives for smart growth, especially downtown, we can reduce car dependence, one of the things that destroys cities. Cars are expensive. The money saved could be beneficial to the local economy. What about anti-vacancy bylaws, penalizing landowners for vacant commercial property?

Geller:

• I am opposed to anti-vacancy bylaws. You try to fill up those shops by creating a healthy community, a vibrant community, and an economic community. In some municipalities, so-called “green light programs” streamline the process for developers with projects deemed to fall within smart growth guidelines.

Moore:

• With a strategic plan in place, we need to look at facilitating [good development] instead of reacting [against development plans].

3. There seem to be two schools of thought concerning affordable housing. One is to integrate affordable housing via certain percentage points in the development, or to increase density and provide a bonus to build affordable housing elsewhere. One problem with the second idea is that it can cause reactions in the neighbourhoods where affordable housing is slated. How can we attract young families who require affordable housing into the downtown if we set up affordable housing elsewhere?

Geller:

• I think we need to get some of the rich families with children downtown and change assumptions that only poor families live downtown. We’re going to have to change attitudes. The City of Vancouver mandates that at least 25% of units in new developments are designed to accommodate families with children. Most apartments aren’t designed with children in mind. We should have rich people and poor people, and it’s going to take generations.

Tomaszewski:

• New Urbanism in Europe says a lot about this issue. In Montreal, many families live in the inner city, and in Europe too. Answers in these areas can be found in countries such as Holland, Denmark, Germany and elsewhere. Mermaid Wharf was built right beside Street Link and its location was not an impediment to buyers. In Cook Street Village, we tried to put in 22 living units above shops in exchange for increased density on Sutlej Street. It was not passed but in the future I think more proposals like that will be passed and there will be intermingling of different uses in projects.

4. What about government support for affordable housing?

Geller:

• I feel that limited government monies should be put toward those in most need. But it shouldn’t go to market rental funding for the general public. If the money is limited, let’s target it, perhaps as supply side subsidization that goes directly to those in need, who can use it to find appropriate housing.

Moore:

• Current government funds are not meeting the need. We’re really going to have to be creative as a community and come together. And identify affordable housing as a priority. There are opportunities through fundraising. The problem is not as big as we think it is. Members of the community need to step forward to help finance ventures. This will give us leverage with government.

5. I am concerned with views and public spaces. My view of how the City is going is a canyon surrounded by tall boxes, with too much height on the waterfront. What can be done to keep the City livable, and keep the streetscape at a human level of one or two story buildings?

Geller:

• When I talked about Vancouver, I didn’t mean that Victoria should necessarily adopt the same approach, although the south side of False Creek may provide some relevant ideas. I don’t think it’s wrong for cities to be entrepreneurial. I don’t mean building condos. But Vancouver’s success was because the housing and properties departments took initiative in making land available or directing forms of development, and planners learned about the economics of development.

Madoff:

• I agree that we are lacking in a vision of the City as a whole. Portland has protected views. So does Vancouver. Here, I am seeing that the Sooke Hills will soon disappear. In a forum talking about housing and development, we’re afraid to talk about what it looks like. Victoria’s character is distinctive. I don’t see current projects responding to our sense of place. I am concerned that we are seeing more growth than since the turn of the century and I don’t think anyone has a grip on what the result will be, and that we may end up looking like anywhere else. An application for a small lot rezoning in Fairfield for a house can take a four hour public hearing. For a twenty-one story building downtown, no one comes. Downtown needs a strong base of support from all of us and the people who live and work there, or I don’t think we’re going to see much of a change to what is happening.

Thom:

• You have different problems here than in Vancouver. The scale here is very delicate and what you’ve done in recent years isn’t very good. You should keep the height down. I you want to build 500 units, maybe you should go elsewhere.

Tomaszewski:

• New Urbanism is about high density. Decide which downtown areas are sacrosanct.

6. [highschool student] Why are there still people on the street if we have supportive housing? Also, you can’t build heritage once it’s gone so we should keep it.

Moore:

• There isn’t enough supportive housing. People with chronic use issues [drug/alcohol] fall through the cracks.

Geller:

• All the issues we’re talking about today should be on the curricula in schools.

7. [another high school student] Why is housing such a big problem? Why do we want housing downtown if only wealthy people can afford it? They’ll bring in more cars.

Madoff:

• Two specific groups of people are attracted to downtown. Young people who can’t afford cars, and retirees or empty nesters who want to get rid of a second car. And now, some developments aren’t providing parking.

Geller:

• It is desirable to have people downtown because it makes it alive, safe and a better place to be.

8. What mechanisms enabled the City of Vancouver to be a full partner in the transformation of downtown?

Geller:

• Key leadership at the political and staff levels set the tone and direction. We created a False Creek Development group that worked outside of City Hall. That entrepreneurial spirit is important.

Thom:

• People in Vancouver got fed up and a Council came aboard who wanted to change things. Citizens need to step forward with their visions.

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Larry Beasley

Keys to Success for a Vibrant Downtown: Galvanizing Political Will and Community Leadership.

Larry Beasley is Co-Director of Planning and Director of Current Planning for the City of Vancouver. He is involved in new land use and transportation plans that are dramatically reshaping Vancouver’s inner city. With twenty-seven years of civic service to his credit, he has sat on Vancouver’s Urban Design Panel and leads City efforts towards a new Vancouver Convention Centre.

What you’re doing today is not an easy task. From my experience, conversations like this are going on in most cities across North America that have any sense of themselves. People are exploring ideas that for many years were simply not acceptable. We all know that generating downtown revitalization is hard—going the housing route can redouble the task. We have been for so long in a culture where housing and downtown haven’t been talked about. Fostering downtown housing is tricky! It is a very sensitive use—to the market; to the setting; and to political circumstances. So it takes strong civic will—political will and bureaucratic will—to make it happen. And it takes robust community support.

I want to talk about these aspects today—building upon the presentations this morning by Bing Thom and Michael Geller. I will cover the process and respond to several of the anxieties that are expressed by the skeptics.

Even with its difficulties, downtown housing can generate extraordinary benefits. That certainly has proven to be true in Vancouver, and it’s proving to be the case in other cities. Chicago, for example, is reinventing itself as a downtown place to live. So the other thing I want to do is call on the Vancouver experience to provide several clues to what you might want to do here in Victoria as you pursue downtown intensive housing. Now, clearly, every city has its own DNA—its own circumstances—so ideas can’t just be imported; but some ideas have a general appeal and some can be re-framed to suit your situation—so I’ll leave you to judge what’s ultimately good for Victoria. I can say for sure that the Vancouver model won’t fit here in Victoria—you have a different scale and history. We have to avoid all our cities becoming the same. The effects of globalization can be deadening as American architect Daniel Solomon argued so well in his recent book, Global City Blues. Wouldn’t it be terrible if all cities were the same? We should always be aware and anxious about the quality of life and what makes the city unique.

Any good process must start with a good idea. A community has to carefully assess its assets and its weaknesses to plot a viable future of growth and change. I know you’ve been doing that in your sessions last fall and now; and I know that you have concluded that among your growth strategies, facilitating inner-city housing has been highlighted as having great potential.

Those same strengths and weaknesses are germane to how you can best go about making a housing future.

In a nutshell I would say your strengths lie in your benign climate, your wonderful heritage, your delightful water bodies, the general level of amenities and the presence of the capital. To some degree, these same factors may represent your barriers to downtown housing: the attractive housing alternatives outside the inner city that come from such a livable region (“who wants to live downtown when there are such great choices elsewhere”); the burdens of heritage conservation and the land value pressures from government users permeating the downtown.

So to start, you need to put together a framework, building on the assets and recognizing the weaknesses into a coherent strategy that you think can work here in this time, in this place, to bring about housing investment and housing consumption downtown. And you need to draw out the simple theme of this as clearly and as directly as possible so that the general public can understand it and the development community can endorse it.

The simpler the vision, the better—the packaging of it must be clever. In Vancouver, having started with a very complicated Central Area Plan that created the blueprint, we packed the basic ideas into two simple words—“Living First”. This tells the whole story; it resonates with the public; it acts as a conscience to the bureaucracy; and it is an understandable cue to developers and property owners of what their community needs and hopes that they will do. It is a simple premise for change that everyone can buy into. And around it can be a swarm of plans, investment schemes, marketing activities, incentive programs and whatever else is necessary to make it happen—but all of this detail will not confuse your basic intent.

Perhaps equally important, the clarity of your proposition will give you the courage and will to experiment, to do the counter-intuitive thing, to take bold chances to make the simple dream come true. Your are going to have to try things you haven’t tried before. You are going to have to worry that things might fail. You will find—as we continue to find in Vancouver—that the “yes, buts….”, and people’s scepticism and people’s worries and the momentary popularity of alternatives can push you off track or bring progress to a standstill unless the prime mission is constantly remembered and repeated.

So a simple clear vision is an essential starting point.

Now the role of the City in all of this is so important. Given the extraordinary plurality that we live in and the cooperation among interests that is necessary for anything to happen in our culture, having the City in a leadership position is vital, since no one else can finally take on such a profound role, especially when laws will have to be changed, resources will have to be marshalled and a whole direction of development will have to be shifted.

I commend to you a simple principle. The City must plan the city. It does it with all its citizens; it works with the development community and interest groups; and it searches for common ground so that people can act together—but when the going gets tough, the City has to be there in its political leadership and the processes of its bureaucracy to push forward. And if the City is not with the program, it has very little potential for success.

In Vancouver if it had not been for Mayor Gordon Campbell and Mayor Phillip Owen—and councillors like Gordon Price and Lynne Kennedy and many others—our “Living First” strategy would not have thrived. They have to gamble and they have to take risks and when they do, things start to happen.

We had to re-invent City hall—transform our bureaucracy—to make “Living First” a reality. We had to put in place a collaborative system among departments because laws had to be re-written and reconciled and standards had to be broken and created. We had to reform our development approvals process to bring efficiencies and time improvements into big applications. We had to find new financial support for our planning, which led us to a policy of “cost recovery” for planning work. We had to change our capital investment program to bring cash to the table when needed. We had to bring in incentives in some areas and think about disincentives in other areas. And we had to sponsor initiatives to model new ideas.

You may have to go even further than we did to foster downtown housing where there is not a coherent, let alone strong, existing market to build upon. I just spent time in Calgary talking about fairly aggressive measures for their downtown housing program because it is not happening spontaneously and when developments do happen, they are not optimum from a public perspective or a marketing perspective.

There are many ideas out there that they were talking about: a surtax on vacant land; new applications for local improvements; parking relief or auto co-ops; live-work provisions; public/private partnerships; strategic property purchases [Vancouver’s Land Bank really helped the City move forward with housing propositions]—all of these options may be worthy of consideration and all can be risky.

So municipal leadership, in creating plans and strategies and galvanizing people and taking direct action is essential.

But we all know that Cities don’t build cities. That’s done by builders and developers—so a residential growth strategy has got to have a strong endorsement by the development community. In Vancouver we had to put together a strong, positive collaboration with the industry, which as come to be called the “co-operative planning model” for making change. There is no question we spend too much time, energy and resources on confrontation in our planning and development culture—probably because there is so much at stake—but we have found that much of that value can be refocused on creativity and mutual problem solving if we just collectively decide to do so. This takes an act of strong will on everyone’s part.

It is all about interest-based problem solving rather than positioning. It is about talking through the contradictions—spending time to understand the needs of all parties who will be part of the housing equation and the community that results. And it’s about looking for the “win-win”.

Now, I’ve already described how municipalities have to change. Well, the development community must change also. Capital investment has to shift. For more intensive downtown housing, the traditional products just don’t work well—they have to be evolved and diversified. My experience in Calgary last week certainly emphasized this. It’s true, some new inner-city housing has been built but it generally reflects a suburban model; it doesn’t work well in the city; it doesn’t meet civic urban design objectives; and it hasn’t sold that well because it misses the needs and expectations of the target consumers. Unless their development community wakes up, Calgary may kill the opportunity before it really gets off the ground by souring the market. Victoria has to avoid this at all costs.

But the issue goes further than missing a market—an equally vital concern is building and widening a market. In Vancouver we’ve done OK with the empty nesters and young singles but we still haven’t tapped the full market of families with children. While families are flooding back downtown (we have more kids downtown than in Point Grey) we could do so much more. The Urban Development Institute and the City are exploring ideas on this right now: how to create more flexible units—second units as mortgage helpers; how to better utilize garage spaces, how to bring facilities on faster—and I hope Victoria can benefit from these experiments.

So collaboration and very active learning by the development community are essential.

However, nothing is going to be able to take off and be sustained to build downtown housing without wide understanding and endorsement by the public—the citizens, the voters, the consumers.

For a strategy of downtown development and housing, a wide and rich public conversation is necessary. And such a program has to touch everyone. I like to characterize the public as illustrated by a pyramid. At the top are the community’s leaders, the activists, the City Hall junkies, the people who will join and work hard on committees. There are very few of them but they are important. In the middle are special interest groups and their members. They are not as heavily involved but there are more of them and they care—especially about specific things. They are also important. At the base is the large number of average citizens that don’t have much time nor the inclination to be involved but they want their city to evolve appropriately and they want a say too. If nothing else, they vote at the polls and with their pockets as consumers, so their preferences must be understood and they need to be supportive of any civic improvement plan. So they are also important.

A good public involvement program will overlay a variety of techniques and events to let each of these groups participate in their own time and in their own way and to genuinely affect the final plan.

A dream phase is helpful. A program of discussions on issues and possibilities— such as this session today—is important—and you’ll need many more of these. Direct dialogue with interest groups and leaders must happen. It must be clear who gains and who looses in the initiatives and the losing aspect must be reconciled. Discussions have to be iterative and protracted—not just at the beginning but also regularly as change unfolds.

Ultimately a City must have some level of consensus based on a real understanding if a strong policy—such as downtown housing and intensification—is to be robust over time—and believe me this type of agenda for urban change will take time!

So public involvement with majority buy-in is essential.

And finally, related to these last several points, a strategy for downtown housing and revitalization in Victoria will need some special, explicit arrangements among those agencies and key stakeholders that can and need to act together to make change.

I commend to you to convene a formal protocol for joint action and support involving at least:

• The City
• The Provincial Capital Commission
• The Port Corporation
• Key major landowners and developers
• The representative organizations for the business community
• The representative organizations for existing downtown residents

A little money should also be involved—pooled to fund a dedicated team of planners to move the agenda forward.

Any one of these interests acting independently or in contradiction to the generally preferred plans can create difficulty for you all, so you need to act together.

Now, I want to shift our attention—to talk about my experience in Vancouver with inner city housing and offering whatever cues I can that you may find useful here in Victoria. After all, we have enticed over 35,000 people to move downtown over the last decade, so we have sorted out a number of issues you are facing today.

A residential future—or a mixed residential/ commercial future—has some very special features compared to a purely commercial future for downtown.

First, residential land use, as I said at the beginning, is a very sensitive land use. Its success depends upon decisions by thousands of consumers (as compared to one corporate decision-maker for a whole office building). Also, residential consumers have been socialized to prefer suburban alternatives. A residential downtown is all about enticement of people. So the product has to be very attractive and very good. Architecture and urban design quality are essential. It’s not just about aesthetics. It’s not just an academic matter. The product has to be good or the consumer won’t buy it. So, in Vancouver, we had to make our regulatory system discretionary to get the best designs; we had to have a strong arrangement for design peer review; we had to occasionally be prepared to say no to a bad development proposal. Back to my Calgary example—the natural process of development will not necessarily lead to the best results for the market. Urban Design matters!

A second sensitivity for residential use is the impact of incompatible things nearby, particularly regarding noise, security and privacy. So a careful plan has to be in place to sort out uses into compatible clusters and provisions for construction have to be in place to mitigate impacts (like noise mitigation and crime preventative design). In Vancouver we actually un-mixed some of the typical mixes to create what we call “neighbourhood areas of tranquility” downtown.

A third sensitivity for residential use is that people need a community infrastructure and they want a sense of community where they live. When people look for housing, they also look for community facilities, child-care, schools and parks, so those have to be there. Also, we now know that people draw people, since people don’t like to live in isolation. This is where your plans and public investment strategy and a leveraging or bonus program and pilot projects and community mediation arrangements all come in, to bring “community” to a downtown residential future. This is also where your proactive social agenda comes in. Cities are about inclusion but people don’t want to see brutality on the streets and those at risk left to fend for themselves. They want a humane place to live and they want social action to achieve that. Ask any developer; they market the neighbourhood even more than the units. Citizens care about community.

And a last aspect I want to emphasize about a residential growth strategy is that it takes time. Commitments have to have staying power. Conditions have to be regularly monitored. Public support has to be refreshed. Public/private collaboration has to be renewed regularly.

In all of this you have to address up front those aching worries that people talk about. Here are the one’s I’ve heard about Victoria that I hope you will start to deal with right away:

I’ve heard it said that “land values are too high for a residential downtown.”

Maybe starting housing in clusters in available sites (for example those beautiful waterfront sites) will set off positive residential prices, fostering market values that can compete for the land with other users. Then infill can spread, based on a growing demand. There are also other ways to manipulate land values to favour preferred uses—although they can be more aggressive. Making the market work for you is the best way to go. I’ve heard it said that “heritage rehab costs are too high for housing to be viable in heritage buildings.” But your best market potential in Victoria other than on the waterfront, is putting housing in character heritage buildings. Either differentiate or up your incentives for heritage housing. Or create a transfer program and receiver locations for density to bring value back to heritage housing. Or create a revolving fund to deal with heritage costs. In Vancouver we opened up live-work as an allowable use in heritage buildings and that was enough to shift the pro forma.

I’ve heard it said that “we like the idea of downtown housing but there is no market.” All the demographics are working in your favour for downtown housing. Create the right product and they will come. If Houston and Fort Worth can do it, Victoria certainly can! Victoria’s setting and demographics are in its favour. Perhaps using a careful strategy focused on amenity locations first will kick start the demand and start the market going.

Contrary to what many people say, there are families that want to move into or remain in the city, who aren’t interested in the suburbs.

I don’t pretend to have pat answers to these issues—only a few ideas and a lot of enthusiasm to see you think creatively for homegrown solutions. So I suggest to you that these questions be addressed now as you move forward actively toward a downtown residential future.

Most of all, I want to leave you with a simple message from my experiences in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and other Canadian cities. You’re on the right track. The right track in saving your heritage. The right track in exploiting your waterfront. The right track in providing for downtown housing. All of these things will reinforce your existing economic base of government and tourism. All of these things will create the quality community that your people want. All of these things will address issues of smart growth, sustainability and less cars. And all of these things will give you a competitive edge over other cities.

And that is the essential challenge for us all. In a time of footloose people and wealth, those cities that are memorably different and memorably better will be the cities that will prevail and thrive. Victoria must be one of these cities—your history and your people deserve nothing less.

Audience Q&A

1. [Dunsmoor-Farley] Can you explain a little bit more about “cost recovery” to underwrite the cost of planning?

Beasley:

• In Vancouver, there were big areas that needed to be re-planned. Developers who wanted to take it on. But the City didn’t have the staff. So the City asked developers if they could help pay for planning. Developers agreed, as long as there were some benefits to them, such as: clarity on time, a shortened time frame, access to senior people in an organized way, etc. A cost recovery model was worked out. All the planning that was done, backing up most of the changes that have occurred in Vancouver, was paid for by developers who invested in the planning process. If planning costs less than fees, the City helps out the developer. If it costs more, the developer pays.

2, Could you elaborate on a “public investment strategy”, ensuring that public support is refreshed over time? Who pays for that process?

Beasley:

*{list-style:none} Ultimately, everyone pays for a bit of it. In downtown Vancouver, we were converting a neighbourhood to 11,000 new housing units. We didn’t want to push out people on to the street. The City invested in a community centre in that neighbourhood to suit the needs of street people. Down the street there’s another community centre suiting others’ needs, paid for by the developer through a development process requiring a package of public goods. To keep the public on side, you have to find different events and different ways to keep the conversation going, right down to the final development hearings. You have to invest in education in the schools: teach people about what New Urbanism can achieve.

3. What can we do with underused parking lots? How to create incentives for a pilot project on one of these lots, followed by a mechanism that encourages better use in other parking lots?

Beasley:

• There is no pat mechanism that works. Amsterdam’s public housing agency bought property occasionally. They invested in that property, while at the same time working in a collaborative arrangement with several developers, who were willing to be involved. A cluster of private development occurred around the publicly purchased property. This kind of collaboration may be something Victoria could consider. One positive move can foster more positive moves.

4. What do you mean by [the] creative consumers [cities want to attract to live and work downtown]?

Beasley:

• They are people who make their livelihood being creative. People with great ideas, who make a lot of money, and the companies come to them.

5. What has to happen [at the government level] to facilitate mortgage helpers? Can you comment on “bonuses” in terms of heritage buildings?

Beasley:

• Mortgage helpers depend on changing building codes, parking bylaws, etc. You have to go over all the different laws and adjust them. One way to assist with mortgages is that if you can create a housing situation in which a family doesn’t require a second car, they can afford to spend more on a home. A second rental unit in apartments helps offset costs too. In terms of bonuses, the City of Vancouver doesn’t increase density spontaneously. When increasing density, it usually addresses public needs. Increase density in some areas, and decrease density in others.

6. What advice do you have to develop non-service jobs downtown? Also, we have a vital working waterfront and I wouldn’t want to see all of it changed to residential.

Beasley:

• In recent years, the focus has been on [employment] growth sectors. We used to build office towers instead of housing, but now traditional offices aren’t what people are looking for. Smaller “idea” companies aren’t buying several floors of a building; they’re buying part of one floor. The living quotient is important. Mixed use makes a city robust. That goes for the industrial lands on the harbour. You don’t want to eradicate necessary industries and their work force. We should always be looking at a balance of living and working.

7. How do you make artists’ live/work spaces sustainable? Usually, artists come into a rundown neighbourhood because it’s affordable, then it becomes gentrified and they can’t afford to stay there?

Beasley:

• Gentrify, but keep the cultural core. Artists can be accommodated in existing buildings.

Gordon Price:

• Don’t enforce bylaws unnecessarily. See what happens.

8. Can you comment on prime waterfront lands being used for parking?

Beasley:

• Victoria Harbor represents a great opportunity for mixed-use development, which would encourage more housing nearby.

9. What do you think of safe injection sites?

Beasley:

• The disadvantaged on the street need to be considered.

Max Tomaszewski:

• In Vancouver we had the neighbourhood on side. No matter how attractive a place, people won’t move there if it isn’t safe.

10. Do you have any advice concerning a green building policy?

Beasley:

• It’s definitely an important part of the agenda. Citizens want green buildings. Vancouver is filled with green rooftops. Developers need to be able to afford the green process, which will be enabled as more manufacturers offer cost-effective [green] materials.

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Curtis Johnson

Downtown Mobility Innovations: New Approaches to Congestion Management, Parking, Transit and Non-motorized Travel.

Curtis Johnson is President of the Citistates Group, a network of experts on contemporary metropolitan areas across America. He has been Chair of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Council, was a community college president in the 1970s, and spent eleven years as the head of the Citizens League, a public affairs research organization. He is also an author and journalist. Johnson has been responsible for policy-shaping reports on subjects such as aging and retirement, citizen influence on the character of our regions, and governance choices that lead to the development of sustainable transportation networks.

Johnson began by saying that he had had a chance to spend a couple of days in Victoria, and advised the audience that we have a jewel here. He reiterated that across North America we are organized to make public decisions through various governments, in our case, at the federal, provincial and local levels. While each level has important work to do, a large bundle of problems and opportunities have collected at the doorstep of regions.

What is a region? It’s where the newspaper is delivered and the TV broadcast symbol goes. It’s where people drive into jobs or are devoted to particular cultural organizations. It’s the health care market. It is not the same physical boundary for all functions. It fluctuates. A region is an organic thing. We drive across jurisdictional lines as a region, but we’re not organized to make decisions on the basis of living in regions. The U.S., for example, has only two multi-county regional governments: Portland and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The smartest places are starting to have a discussion about what all these local decisions add up to, and what their vision of success is. Is it to be left alone? To grow in a defined way? Or is it economic opportunities for our children? Regardless, investments in public infrastructure and the protection of our best public assets are part of the answer. For too long we have planned and built our urban centers in isolation.

There is a profound relationship between the decisions we make about land use and transportation. Is there a sense of obligation among the thirteen municipalities of the CRD to make it add up? When it’s really bad, almost too late, that’s what will happen. Even in “tribal” south Florida, a number of municipalities have joined forces, realizing that they need a combined, single regional transportation authority. There were no solutions available that were not regional. A U.S. EPA report analyzing thirteen metro areas concluded that more pedestrian friendly environments and more extensive transit services results in, guess what, lower vehicle miles traveled, fewer auto trips per capita, shorter trips, less congestion and better air. A university study found that the single biggest factor in the propensity to use public transit is the presence of activity-rich destinations: employment, restaurants, culture and entertainment, services. Downtown Victoria is one of those destinations. Maybe Sidney and perhaps Langford. There would be more except for the design amnesia that came over us in the last half of the twentieth century; segregating uses and making cars the predominant mode of transport to the places we all have to go; the evolution of big box strip malls. We often have to use the car just to go to destinations within eyesight, due to how traffic corridors are constructed without consideration for pedestrians.

However, like good and bad cholesterol, some congestion is good: the high-density kind. We don’t mind waiting in line for a show or restaurant, but our mood darkens when stuck in traffic. Congestion isn’t a problem in places where nobody wants to go. It’s a sign of vitality. Congestion is not a disease; it’s a symptom. The disease is the development system.

Victoria’s system, like others across N. America, is riddled with incentives and subsidies that favour green fields over infill, that chases development farther away from expensive reinvestment in urban centres and neighbourhoods. Why is it so difficult to change course? Here’s a list:

1. Forms of development that invite a choice of transit are illegal in most cities, and a tough drill in others.
   

   There is a helpful burst of interest in transit-oriented development, mixing housing and commercial spaces near transit stations, emphasizing walking and turning sterile areas into real communities. Even in transit-hostile places like Dallas, areas around light rail transit are exploding with higher density development.

2. Bloated code manuals of prohibitive practices inhibit developers.
   

   Density need not be big and ugly; it can be subtle and seductive. Form-based codes, developed by spending time through a community process to decide what the community really wants on its streets, and defining it in a general way, can give developers what they need: clarity. Then you turn things over to the private sector to do what only the private sector can do. Now they don’t have to stumble through broken glass every step of the way on a project to get variance.

3. There is a lack of balance in public capital investment. Forget about urban centres if we’re not balancing capital investment in roads and transit.
   

   Avoid the technology trap; i.e. favouring one transit technology over another, whether it is buses, rail transit, monorail, or whatever. It is the corridors that matter. Identify the corridors then pick the most cost-effective, market-fitting transit technology for each corridor.

4. People are often apologetic about transit, saying it is good thing even if it doesn’t [identifiably] reduce congestion.
   

   The most recent annual survey of 75 urban areas by the Texas Transit Institute recently ranked sources of traffic congestion reduction and put public transportation way, way, way at the top.

5. People running transit usually fail to recognize that they are in a retail business.
   

   If you want people to use it you have to provide an experience that they want to repeat every day.

6. We are timid about using pricing as a major tool on roads.
   

   LA, Houston, Singapore, even London with a Socialist Mayor, are using pricing to reduce congestion. Charge for using high demand roads.

7. There is a tendency to ignore parking.
   

   Research shows that if you give employees the money first—where businesses are subsidizing people for parking—then tell them that they have to return it if they use parking, people tend to keep the cash and find alternatives.

The good news: Market Changes and New Kinds of Leadership

1. In most regions demographic changes are radically altering the politics of land use and transportation. Globalization invites immigrants who usually gravitate to urban centres. Elderly people are moving to places with amenities within walking distance. Young people attracted by the hi-tech industries are not content in the suburbs. They want urban life. About a third of the boomers are tired of traffic, house maintenance, and want to be closer to things.
2. Downtowns everywhere are being rediscovered. City centres across North America are growing faster than the peripheries. Many have higher real estate prices downtown. Despite costs and difficulties, downtown Victoria has to find ways of capturing these markets.
3. There is also a growing clamour for town centres in mature suburban communities. They want civic centres and gathering places. They want to park once and walk more. Over the last seven or eight years, Minneapolis/St. Paul’s Metropolitan Council gave out $100 million in assistance grants to enable this in surrounding communities. This leveraged between $2- to $3 billion in private sector and other public sector investment.
4. It is evident that the present pattern of development and transportation is not sustainable. If Victoria grows as expected over the next 25 years, to store their vehicles will take four square miles of pavement. If only one in six ventures out, 150 miles of new highway will be needed, and ten times that for local roads. More transportation choices must be adopted.
5. There is, however, new leadership. Moral persuasion—shaking the fist and making the high moral argument—doesn’t work. Some elected leaders are becoming the champions—which is their job—but few do. Then there is leadership in a crisis, which transformed downtown Portland. Another leadership source is forcing agents from the outside. In Atlanta, they followed every developer with concrete, creating congestion by design. The EPA lowered the boom on Atlanta; no more Fed money. Businesses began canceling expansion plans because the city was becoming unlivable. Atlanta created a radical regional transportation authority and began balancing their investment in roads and transit.
6. Aspirational leadership wants to make where one lives a better place. Sometimes the public sector is the leader, by making a list of what can actually be done. More often, nowadays, it’s the business community that involves a variety of stakeholders in a participatory, inclusive way. This is the practice of collaboration.
7. Part of what we have to do is redefine affinity. There are better ways now to engage citizens. We can use computer simulations to show people how things can be different/transformed.
8. We need to learn to love the NIMBY’s (Not In My Backyard). Invite them in as neighbours. Use all the tools at our disposal to illustrate ideas for the public. Give the NIMBY’s an ownership position.
9. Talk in the terms of a small town: the quality of being responsible for one another.

Panel Discussion

Curtis Johnson joined by panelists Gordon Price, Todd Litman and Bob Irwin.

Irwin:

• We need to integrate regional growth strategy and transportation plan—a regional transportation authority—and get the regional population behind it. I don’t see the political will to make it happen.

Litman:

• We had a workshop and sent out a survey to get the general population to consider transportation problems and solutions, and have produced a flyer of the results. Transportation leverages so much. People don’t want to drive if they don’t have to. They’d prefer to use other forms of transportation. Applying basic economic principals, such as giving people a choice between a parking space or cash equivalent, or apartment renters the option of a parking space or saving money without a parking space, things would change. If we corrected market distortions, we’d see a reduction in car travel of 25% to 50%. This isn’t being anti-car. This is giving people a choice. This is good for the economy, environment and communities, and represents consumer sovereignty. People enjoy downtown Victoria’s ambiance and anything we can do to make it more walkable, and offer a more diverse transportation experience, is good. People don’t come to Victoria to watch the traffic.

Price:

• The most important thing that Vancouver did was not to build a freeway system. There is no tax money spent on maintenance or replacement. Get rid of parking subsidies. Don’t build your way out of this but find a pricing system. There is an opportunity to build a transit system with existing strengths.

Audience Q&A

1. What about downtown-dedicated buses?

Litman:

• We need to offer people without cars a competitive experience with a totally integrated transit system. [Irwin concurred.] The quality of service needs to improve and show benefits over the car as incentives to the discretionary rider.

Price:

• In Vancouver, as downtown density went up, the number of car trips went down.

2. As a start, what would it take to get light rail transit to Langford? Would it be feasible to convert some existing [road] lanes to high occupancy lanes?

Irwin:

• Let’s identify corridors first. It will take an awful lot to implement a quality rail system.

Johnson:

• Once you identified corridors, it doesn’t matter whether it’s rail or bus—as long as it replicates a fast rail service. Where neither exist, rail is preferable.

Litman:

• Visit IslandTransformations.org. There is a section looking at ways of improving Victoria/Langford transportation. The best option was light rail. Visit the Victoria Transport Policy Institute for more information, at vtpi.org.

3. I feel that there is resistance to not using cars in Victoria. We need more frequent service. We’ve got to be prepared to put money into the system.

Irwin:

• Funding would be great but we should be careful about where we put the investment. There is no sure fund, but [what we’d like to see happen] in 2020-plus won’t really happen without dedicated funding.

Johnson:

• Unfortunately, the politicians you ask for funding won’t be around when the cheque is cut. We have to let politicians know that this is a priority.

4. Can we include bike routes in the downtown plan?

Irwin:

• Yes, but it takes a mindset of municipal engineers to make that happen.

Litman:

• A car costs about $2000 a year. $25 to $40 per household can make the difference between a good transit neighbourhood and a car neighbourhood.

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Judy Oberlander

Public Conversations in Public Spaces: Engaging Citizens about the Future of Downtown

Judy Oberlander is the Director of the City Program, Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre in Vancouver. For twenty years she has focused on heritage conservation work, in the area of preservation planning and community development. Oberlander has served on various municipal advisory commissions including the City of Vancouver’s Development Permit Board Advisory Panel (1996-98), the Vancouver City Planning Commission (1988-1994), and the City of Ottawa Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (1984-1987).

Oberlander introduced her presentation by acknowledging that she was not a Victoria expert but had visited on many occasions and wanted to comment on some downtown spaces as an urban observer, ones she liked and ones that could use improvement. How do we engage the public? How do we move from ideas to action?

Oberlander quoted from CITIES BACK FROM THE EDGE: New Life for Downtown by Roberta Brandes Gratz with Norman Mintz (John Wiley & Sons):

“Public discourse focuses every day on strengthening family values, rebuilding community, integrating people, building secure communities and eliminating crime. The importance of a ‘place’ of downtown, of the ‘somewhere’ that marks a community is not recognized as an appropriate starting point to address all these challenges in a multiple benefit way. Yet across the country efforts abound to recreate destroyed public places, rebuild undermined downtowns, stimulate new entrepreneurial opportunities and repopulate the stores on Main Street, and their upstairs apartments. Groups diligently repairing, restoring, reweaving and replacing those communities, Main Streets, public meeting places, small business, parks, cultural landscapes and historic buildings are actually repairing democracy.”

Oberlander saluted the conference for being a prime example of the statement above.

She showed slides of Boston, Aix en Provence, Seville, Montreal, Kingston, and New York to illustrate good and bad uses of public spaces. For example, the placement of a busy, polluting traffic circle around an ancient aqueduct in Seville, is bad. NYC’s Paley Park, a small public space created by a private sector proponent, is good; it started a movement across the U.S.

Before moving on to several slides of Victoria spaces during mid-Winter, she cautioned that it is important to look at what is going on behind buildings, as well as in front. Bastion Square was deserted. Government Street was quiet. She brought up the current, increasing storefront vacancy rates, 7.8% compared to 5.6% two years ago. That translates to half a mile of vacant storefront in the downtown area. An infill development indicates ways of bringing people downtown. Showing a slide of Douglas Street, she referred to the population of street people; a crowd was gathered in front of an empty storefront.

The ideas generated at the 2020 conferences, said Oberlander, are impressive and need to lead to action. She was struck by the age range of people visiting 2020’s City Room on Yates Street. She suggested that Victoria should connect with communities and institutions elsewhere [that are looking at downtown revitalization]. The City of Vancouver, for example.

How has older infill stood the test of time? What kind of legacy are we going to leave? Are our communities all going to look the same? Or are we going to make a statement about contemporary design?

Key points in the history of revitalizing some communities:

• Boston’s Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall were renovated in the mid-1970s, sparking a back-to-the-city movement in the U.S. It started out as an incubator for small businesses that were so successful, retail rent escalated and the chains moved in. What about uniqueness? Do we really need to go to Faneuil Hall to go to the GAP? What kind of retail experience does Victoria want downtown in order to compete with suburban shopping malls?
• A large sign displayed a map of destinations within a 15-minute walk from Faneuil Hall. A sample sign in the conference’s City Room echoed this with a map of destinations within 15 minutes of Victoria’s Centennial Square. A great and simple idea! Victoria needs to market its attractions in and close to downtown, including a living history component.
• Boston Public Garden is not unlike Beacon Hill Park. How many Victoria tourists find their way to Beacon Hill Park?
• Changes to New York zoning laws in the 1970s encouraged public spaces. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William H. Whyte is one of the most influential books on looking at the city. Whyte used time lapse photography at Manhattan cross-streets to determine how, why and where people chose to gather. He worked with the Project for Public Spaces (www.pps.org) to encourage more urban spaces.
• Small NYC urban spaces provide moments of respite from the hectic environment. Interior space is important too. In NYC’s IBM Tower (1980s), the developer received 10 sq. feet of commercial for every 1 sq. foot dedicated to plaza. This is an example of creating an incentive.

The role of interpretation, public art and engaging citizens:

• Pershing Square in Washington Square lies right in line with The Capitol, and is designed as a blueprint of The Capitol, with moveable chairs.
• Some public art can cause controversy, such as the Judenplatz in Vienna, the epicentre of the city’s original Jewish neighbourhood dating back to medieval times. It includes artist Rachel Whiteread’s Memorial to victims of the Holocaust.
• The 9/11 World Trade Centre site is a current subject of controversy.
• Sydney, Australia’s memorial to the Irish famine contains an evocative sculpture and a window engraved with the names of famine victims. It is situated near the barracks that housed famine refugees. Sydney has made public art an integral part of its urban environment program.
• The Creative City Movement emanating from Glasgow considers how cultural policy can become cultural planning. This means looking at the place in which an event occurred, and the story that must be told, linking cultural indicators with the economy and the environment. It considers the circumstances and needs of a city. How do the cultural assets contribute to uniqueness of place, to a more integrated approach to manage the built and natural environment, including urban design?
• From a centrally located model of its downtown core, Sydney provides architectural walking tours as one way of promoting its urban environment, a great way to engage citizens. Exhibitions are held regularly on the site. The University of Technology fuses old and new architecture; a business school is built above the façade of an old city market.
• In Aix en Provence, little markers in the shape of a ‘C’ lead people through the life of Cezanne…and the city. A central square in Aix en Provence has different uses for different times of day; “using the city”.
• Heritage conservation is an ongoing conversation. Downtown Victoria can show the legacy of what has been/is great design through each generation. In Nice, the old Roman arena is worked into the contemporary landscape. The new, hi-tech, modernist municipal library by Norman Foster is right next to the old Roman library, creating a valuable urban conversation.
• In New York’s Soho, a freeway was vetoed and artists took over the buildings and neighbourhood. This sparked Soho-like lofts all over the place. Jane Jacobs helped people understand how Soho could work. Ironically, today it’s a shopping mall with chain stores.
• The streets are kept clean by a private neighbourhood partnership.
• Soho today looks like an outdoor shopping mall. People have gone down to the Lower East side. A group of citizens rehabilitated a 19th century immigrant tenement as a living museum. This is real history. The museum has come to the community. This is a neighbourhood in transition. People can see how things have changed. Formerly vibrant streets are boarded up. A new revival has begun.
• NYC’s Battery Park has a good mix of mixed use.
• The City has become a place people want to explore; Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge could emulate the Brooklyn Bridge.
• In Montreal, there are two-way bike lanes.
• In Europe, old courtyards are being renovated. Victoria has plenty of courtyards where this could occur.
• Imaginative infill embellishes older European neighbourhoods.

Businesses can encourage people with outside displays. Have activities people can watch, like glass-blowing at Victoria’s Starfish glassworks. What opportunities exist in the nooks and crannies, like Victoria’s through-block connectors? How do we animate them? As well as urban design, what about the legacy of people living on the street?

Victoria can’t be just a museum for tourist, but a place where citizens come to enjoy urban life. Heritage conservation is a tool for community development. We need to talk to others about urban renewal. Moving [2020] forward to action depends on all of us. This is a chance to reinvigorate downtown’s business relationships. Implement demo projects to show people what is happening. And don’t forget to evaluate the successes. There will always be new challenges.

The non-profit Project for Public Spaces is looking for a western city in which to hold an upcoming conference. Is this of interest to Victoria?

[In conclusion] Whatever makes the congress of humanity more spontaneous and more enjoyable is not a frill. It is the heart and centre of the City.

Panel Discussion

Judy Oberlander joined by panelists Doug Koch, Franc D’Ambrosio and Crosland Doak.

Dunsmoor-Farley reiterated Oberlander’s notion of urban revitalization as “repairing democracy”. She reminded the conference that as well as all the work going on in a variety of meetings and committees, public visibility of our efforts and ideas is vital, which would be made easier if everyone in attendance went out and spread the word and continued the dialogue.

Doak:

• Some of the slides Oberlander showed of public spaces in Europe are particularly appropriate for Victoria. Some only work in their specific locations. One ingredient missing from this conference is the subject of open space for play and recreation. Living downtown, no one is going to be excited about living in high-density; that won’t mean anything to them. There aren’t any meaningful downtown open spaces on the part of the private sector. In the public realm, in older parts of the City, there are unique open spaces, but not in newer parts. If we’re going to bring people downtown, they need their backyards, whether it’s a balcony or a small plot of land, and real open space to walk the stroller, take out the dog, throw Frisbees, etc. We’ve got a lot of open space around us along the waterfront, but we haven’t done what we can with it. We need to look after the natural waterfront and improve the cultural waterfront. We need to be progressive about where the defining open space is. Instead of bonuses for little spaces in each development, maybe we could bank density for one large open space.

Koch:

• There is a strong need to plan for spaces that have to be reinvented. Bastion Square, for example, has gone through two reinventions in its history. The waterfront causeway needs to be reinvented. Semi-public spaces downtown are a challenge. Victoria’s old town has potential, like the re-development of Dragon Alley. Street rights-of-way should work in a multipurpose way; more outdoor cafes. In Chinatown, where retail displays spill out onto the street, there is little friction between businesses and street people. A survey reports that 76% of residents feel safe downtown during the day, but not necessarily at night. Downtown’s relationship with Beacon Hill Park has improved since the heritage redevelopment of St. Anne’s Academy.

D’Ambrosio:

• Victoria has good bone structure [for enabling positive open public spaces]. We have an infrastructure that has been taken care of for many years, and heritage and historic sites. Good public spaces are made by people’s activities and interaction. You can make the most beautiful planters and benches, but they don’t create a public space; activities do. The insecurities about being downtown are what people react to, preventing the activities that define public spaces. These insecurities include traffic, aggressive people on the street, etc. Considering both the “good bones” and insecurity means a multi-pronged approach. That means leadership based on a vision described by all the best elements of what Oberlander presented. We need public and private leadership, the political will to build and implement consensus. Vision comes from a variety of sources.

Oberlander:

• It’s important to work with developers to create systems that didn’t happen before. There is a need to change perceptions of what public spaces are and can be used for, and to find creative ways for the City to be a recipient of public spaces.

Audience Q&A

1. What about First Nations involvement?

Oberlander:

• We need to look at what was here that is no longer here, and decide how to tell the story. There are many definitions of cultural diversity: art, history, tradition, etc.

2. Ownership of an area happens when people walk around. How do you see transit? Are buses or rail better? What about parking?

Oberlander:

• I’m not a traffic expert. Incentives are needed, and an integrated approach. Help people plan a trip downtown by giving them information on what you can do in a certain period of time.

Koch:

• We need parking strategies that stop people at the perimeter and get them around without a moratorium on surface parking.

3. About the need to market culture, is there an opportunity for a cultural plan?

Oberlander:

• Film, music and other cultural festivals can occur in association with BIAs and individual businesses. A couple of cities do waterfront movie series. There is an opportunity here to use the waterfront as an “amphitheatre” with the City as a cultural backdrop.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• I’m impressed by Portland’s outdoor concerts and musicians. We don’t need just big events, but buskers as well.

4. Can we use the tops of parkades for cultural events?

Response:

• It would be worth investigating; or maybe green rooftops.

5. How do we balance green space with the natural environment?

Doak:

• We should design our green spaces first, identify existing spaces and find ways to green them.

Koch:

• The City takes the development of green space seriously.

6. I am frustrated by inaction. How do we make the street a place where people want to hang out?

Koch:

• We’ve had success with streets such as Broad Street. Public art is part of our policy. A lot of thought has been given to Douglas Street, but what has happened to the economic culture on Douglas is not due to street design.
  
  Doak:

• Sidney has kiosk on the street selling coffee, papers, etc.; that’s one way of activating the street.

D’Ambrosio:

• This conference is taking place as a result of frustration over inaction. People are working on initiatives.

Oberlander:

• Beautification [in and of itself] won’t change Douglas Street.

7. Artists move into areas, improve them, then are pushed out.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• We will be examining that issue.

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Kevin Montgomery-Smith

Leadership Strategies and Structures for Implementing Change – The Portland Experience.

Kevin Montgomery-Smith is Vice President of Downtown Services for the Portland [Oregon] Business Alliance, which runs the Portland BID [Business Improvement District]. Downtown Services offers programs for downtown property owners, addressing issues of housing, retail marketing and recruitment, commercial real estate, image marketing, restorative justice, and traditional clean and safe programs. In St. Louis, Montgomery-Smith managed the publication of a comprehensive incentive manual for housing development and new businesses and a major marketing campaign for all seventy-nine St. Louis neighbourhoods. He worked in Business Recruitment and Development for the St. Louis Development Corporation, and served as Housing Development Manager for St. Louis, then Portland. He provided leadership in areas of community justice, public space planning and maintenance, public safety, and general livability issues and assistance to street populations with chronic mental illnesses.

[Montgomery-Smith’s presentation was chronological and heavily fact-based. Below is an edited version of his speaker’s notes.]

Introduction

Historical Framework [of what happened in Portland]:

Pre-1972

1952
An Urban Renewal Project is blocked, displacing thousands.

1958
Failure of the Urban Renewal Districts prompts the creation of the Portland Development Commission.

1960
Lloyd Center Shopping Mall opens outside of downtown. It is regarded as America’s first modern shopping mall.

1968
A Downtown Waterfront Plan calls for the Return of Open Space.

1970
The City denies a Permit for a 12-story parking structure in the heart of downtown. The current population [City Proper] is 379,967.

1971
The State Bottle Bill passes, to address littering.

1972

A Downtown Plan is predicated on immediate issues: loss of retail sales, historic buildings and residential base. There is leadership in place to implement change. The Environmental Protection Agency fines Portland under the auspices of the Clean Air Act. The Downtown Transportation and Circulation Management Plan places a moratorium on surface parking. Public inebriates and general street order maintenance issues prompts the creation of the Hooper Detox Center, named after the last person to die of alcoholism in the old city jail. The Downtown Plan emphasizes the creation of a downtown that does what the suburbs can’t. This includes:

1. Retail Core Definition
2. Transit Improvements
3. Parking Policy
4. High Density Office Corridors
5. High Density Housing Development
6. Pedestrian amenities
7. Waterfront Access
8. Entertainment/Culture
9. Historic Preservation

1973
Oregon Senate Bill 100 requires jurisdictions to submit Land Use Planning and establishes the creation of the Urban Growth Boundaries.

1974
Harbor Drive closes to begin the creation of Tom McCall Park.

1976
Cancellation of the Mt. Hood Freeway Project begins light rail/pedestrian/bicycle access planning.

1977
A Transit Mall opens; bus traffic is more efficient and less intrusive.

1978
A metropolitan governing body on land use issues is formed.

1979
An Urban Growth Boundary is established.

1979
Property and business owners in downtown create the Association for Portland Progress to focus on downtown issues.

1983
The dedication of Pioneer Court House Square.

1985
Portland’s first light rail section is dedicated.

1987
Central City Plan implements zoning with consideration of views, transportation, an active arts district, and the redevelopment of the Rose Quarter.

1988
Creation of Portland Development Services, Inc. and the Business Improvement District, for the delivery of enhanced services to the core business district (third such district in the USA).

1990
Portland’s Convention Center opens.

1990
Measure 5 re-energizes the initiative process and changes the fiscal dynamic of the City.

1995
Rose Garden Arena opens.

1997
The Housing Preservation Act passes.

1999
The North Macadam Plan is adopted. It calls for mixed-use development in a 140-acre district on the west side of the Willamette River beneath the Ross Island and Marquam bridges.

2000
Chinese Garden opens.

2000
Money Magazine Names Portland the most livable city in America.

2000
The City Proper population is 538,180.

2000
The Association for Portland Progress and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce merge, forming the Portland Business Alliance.

Leadership Strategies

1950-60s

Urban planning came of age in Portland under Terry Schrunk’s administration. Schrunk was noted for creating the Portland Development Commission, the creation of the Lloyd District, the first proponent of removing Harbor Drive for the Waterfront Park Plan, and oversaw the creation of the 1972 Downtown Plan. The City was also seeing a marked increase in neighborhood organization and citizen interest in civic capital projects affecting residential districts. Social activism grew from an influx of young residents, many of them veterans of the civil rights and peace movements. The population increase included those “from back east”, with a progressive social agenda based on an eastern political and business model. They are willing to make trade-offs.

1970s

Dominated by the “new leadership”, the government was led by Neil Goldschmidt, a former civil rights activist in Mississippi, neighborhood activist, and legal aid lawyer. Mayor Goldschmidt was dedicated to the State-dictated urban planning process. He was also willing to give up power in order to establish Metro governance and benefited greatly from a class of bureaucrats and leaders that came from the same growing demography. The younger population brought new ideas and a fresh approach to growing problems. For example: the privatization of the detox center for chronic street alcoholics in order to minimize the affect of public inebriates on street order, city backed loans for the rehabilitation historic homes, the creation of the Office of Planning and Development to coordinate city goals and review design, development of the Transportation and Circulation Plan, and embracing the business community. Partnering with the business community on prosperity strategies based on sound economic planning models led Portland to new heights in the 1970s. We wanted to make things work… but we wanted it to be different. We understood the economic and social imperative to City planning and especially to programming Downtown as an economic engine. We established a vision based on the “Portland Process”, but had the strength in making a decision, sometimes on pure political gut instinct.

Citizen Advisory Committee

Opposing the Jane Jacobs “organic growth” of a neighborhood, Portland leaders believed that the City must be designed. That meant working through the democratic process, engaging those that cared about creating a consensus vision, and a commitment to implementation.

Design Structure

First Type: Urban Renewal District [URD]

1. Economic Development Goal
2. URD Advisory Committee
3. Portland Development Commission
4. Tax Increment and Tax Abatement Authority
5. Strength: Dollars and Staff

Second Type: Planning Process

Bureau of Planning

1. Livability, Efficient Use of Space, Beautification, Environment Protection
2. Answers to the Mayor, Planning Commission
3. Also Oversees Zoning/Land Use Compliance/Design Review
4. Safeguards
5. Empowering Neighborhood Associations
6. PDC: Budget/Development Review
7. BOP: Application Process Vetting
8. City Council Appeal
9. Land Use Board of Appeal (State)
10. Oregon Court of Appeals
11. Utilizing the business association as URD Advisory Committee with the same # appeals process as the neighborhood associations.
12. Business Participation: Early, Willing Partners
13. Creation of the Portland Improvement Committee
14. Permanent Status and Incorporation of the Association for Portland Progress
15. Creation of the Business Improvement District
16. Clean and Safe Programs
17. Residential Facilitation
18. Retail Recruitment
19. Market Research
20. Policy/Land Use Advocacy
21. The Social Imperative
22. Street Order Maintenance
23. Hooper Detox Center
24. Homeless Shelter Reconfiguration
25. Community Court Restorative Justice System
26. Open Spaces
27. Parks and Recreation: More than 37,000 acres throughout the City

The Reality Check

Portland didn’t just happen. Construction of much of the infrastructure, primarily subsidized by tax increment financing administered by PDC, has returned more than the architects of urban renewal could have ever expected. Planning documents written thirty years ago in the Downtown Plan and twenty years ago in the Central City Plan are still cited as guiding principles for development today:

1. Coaxial retail and transit centered on downtown
2. Emphasis on housing
3. How close are we to our social and economic goals… and what’s holding us back?
4. Housing/Jobs Balance
5. Current Employment Data
6. Housing Median Family Income Distribution in the Central City
7. Current Employment Data
8. Portland Comprehensive Plan: goals of neighborhoods developed to mirror income distribution of the entire City.
9. Tax Base Impact
10. Population Impact
11. Business/Retail Retention and Recruitment
12. Social Imperative vs Economic Imperative
13. Power of the Process
14. Increased Number of Those Needed for Decision Making (Housing Only – Potential to Touch ALL of the Following) Development Delay and Cost
    Largest Overhead Cost in Doing Business is Government
15. 1990 – Measure 5: Changed the fiscal dynamic of Oregon and is one element of the roller coaster economy of Oregon.
16. Also changed the “leadership role” of government – more representational leadership – our messy democracy, unhinging deal making and compromise.
17. Unpredictable nature of State funding/local taxation demonstrating their affect in the current recession – job creation and services provided
18. Rise of “sedimentary budgeting” and the cost of maintaining what we have built and the continued pursuit of shared goals.
19. Every cost has a constituency… zero based budgeting unlikely
20. Challenging the constituency runs the risk of facing the initiative process
    The process on several occasions runs rough-shod over the search for real solutions
21. Change the mindset

Conclusion

We are a City that has benefited from forward thinkers and dumb luck. I know that I stand on the shoulders of giants… but those that made the City a model to be copied look at the City and the problems facing us and understand that we have arrived at our greatest challenge. The very creation of what has made Portland is stretching limits, pushing uncoordinated decision making, and continuing to attract those that would force an agenda over rooting out solutions. We’ve behaved so long like children that want a pet or two or three and have no idea how to feed it, walk it, or clean up after it. The historical business/city partnership is strained… government needs more resources and the business community wants to see the ROI. The City has also moved more toward to the left. We have a second and third generation of leaders. The political will was once based on sound business principles of investment and return and now are based on best intentions. We must change the view of business as an open checkbook to fund City shortfall. The City must rely more on coordinated service outsourcing to minimize expenditures and expect adherence with comprehensive goals. Not only must we respect the initiative process (civil service insurance debacle); we must provide leadership that builds trust, minimizing its use and power. Portland is a unique and wonderful city that “happened” because people decided that it was time for something new and different. It was the political will, business savvy, and progressive thinking of a group of young leaders and powerful philanthropists that saw, sold and shared a vision. The political will to make a change has provided a wonderful tapestry for those of us that are standing on the shoulders of giants to paint. My understanding of where we’ve been great and where we are falling down makes me believe that the city is on a collision course with even better times…for when pushed we will build broken partnerships, cut deals, and look to the future with another shared vision of how we grow together. Believe it or not…we’ll just decide to do it.

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Conference Wrap-Up

Panel Members: Judy Oberlander, Larry Beasley, Gordon Price, Jack Basey and Kevin Montgomery-Smith.

Moderator Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley presented a synopsis of a cross-section of key ideas derived from questions posed to conference attendees during lunchtime workshops, and asked panelists to respond. (A complete list of the workshop questions and responses is on Page 54.)

First, Dunsmoor-Farley mentioned how an interdisciplinary committee for the City, with input from area residents, had been formed to help steer the development of Victoria’s new arena. She asked the panel if this kind of process was feasible on an ongoing basis.

Beasley:

• Not only do they [interdisciplinary committees] work, you have to have them, especially to get anything creative or challenging done. In Vancouver, City departments used to be run by “war lords”. A Major Project Steering Committee was struck to coordinate a coherent response to development, as well as providing checks and balances.

Basey:

• In Victoria, there is departmental integration on a project-by-project basis. Last year, a Livable Cities Committee was formed to create cross-disciplinary, forward-thinking objectives to building a livable city in an integrated, efficient way.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• We need to make this more apparent to the public. [Onto the workshop-related questions.]
• Having a good range of public places throughout our downtown will make people’s experience of the city more enjoyable while increasing the quality of life for everyone who uses the downtown. We want to build on the existing public places that we have to make our city more hospitable to people of all ages and walks of life. What kind of initiatives would enhance the range of usage of public spaces that we have? What options do we have for adding more public spaces to our downtown? Identify three public spaces in the downtown core that have the most potential for improvement. What improvements would realise the potential?

Oberlander:

• One has to work with the constituencies involved. [For example] if you want to attract young people, talk to young people. I think streets, not squares, are an important place to start. In Victoria we can use our streets and alleys year-round. Locals can start an adopt-a-block program to “take back” an area. The waterfront is another important area to focus on.

Beasley:

• Don’t fall into the beautification trap. If a place is dead, it will still be dead when you beautify it. Look at the space’s urban ecology and look at changing the land use to make it thrive.

Price:

• Go out and buy property now, big enough for a soccer field so people living downtown will have large open space. Do it now; it’s cheaper than it will ever be. Don’t get the City to do it, get a real estate firm.

Montgomery-Smith:

• It’s going to be an expensive park. You’re going to have to change the nature of the economy and land use to do things like that.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• It has been shown that people who move downtown are attracted to the buzz of the city and the excitement of urban living. But downtown residents also say that the noise associated with other uses of downtown, such as transportation, maintenance, industry and nightclubs renders the city almost unlivable. How would you bring about a compromise between the different users of downtown regarding noise levels without damaging the vitality that attracts people in the first place? What initiatives could lessen the impact of noise on residents?

Beasley:

• Establish Good Neighbour Agreements that offer compromises that establish noise guidelines everyone can live with. Go directly to the owners of the businesses that are noise generators.

Price:

• Double-paned windows and air conditioning. If you’re living in a mixed-use area, you’ll need those protections.

Montgomery-Smith:

• These are generational views. The second or third generation raised in an urban area isn’t as bothered by noise.

Beasley:

• Make sure your zoning spells out that this is a noisy neighbourhood. Put signs in elevators.

Basey:

• Someone coming downtown should expect a certain level of noise. As we move into higher density, Victoria won’t be as quiet as it’s been. As well as Good Neighbour Agreements, you have to be able to enforce bylaws.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• The renewal of some areas of our downtown is held up by the refusal of building owners to develop or rehabilitate their properties. Often, the position of the property owners is not dictated by market considerations. How aggressive should the City be in encouraging development or rehabilitation of properties where it affects the renewal of a larger area? What incentives or disincentives would you suggest?

Basey:

• We do have tax incentives. But even a ten-year tax holiday is risky considering the costs of upgrading. The idea of density transfer is worth considering.

Beasley:

• The transfer program has good potential in Victoria. But the hardest people to deal with are building officials who quote health and safety regulations. Think about stretching/changing equivalencies and phasing in improvements, as well as density transfers. Tax relief doesn’t work for residential condominiums, but in San Diego and Portland, tax credits do work. We need to get all levels of government involved on this issue.

Montgomery-Smith:

• Code has to be about exteriors, not interiors, to maintain active use.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• What practical things can we do right now? Is it in our purview to relax standards and equivalencies?

Basey:

• That’s a longterm solution. We have to be aggressive about incentives, and maybe waiving fees.

Oberlander:

• A “green light system” can expedite the process. There are government programs that might help with heritage buildings as green and re-usable. The City isn’t a museum. Look at a balance of heritage that stays alive, rather than being mothballed.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• A walking/biking trail around the harbour, connecting the Galloping Goose, Westsong Walkway and Dallas Road was one of the most popular ideas from the first conference. How would you resolve potential conflicts such as the industrial uses along the waterfront at Dockside and the customs/security and vehicle storage requirements at the proposed Belleville Street ferry terminal?

Basey:

• This is an issue we’re looking at. We’ve had several meetings to further a waterfront walkway.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• It’s so obvious this should happen. Is there something we can implement right away?

Beasley:

• Push through anything you can, even if it’s temporary.

Price:

• Give the walkway a name and put up a sign.

Dunsmoor-Farley:

• One of the dilemmas in renewing districts downtown is that the businesses and residents that stimulate the renewal are often displaced by the success of the renewal. The area north of Chinatown, referred to by some as the “design district”, is an area in transition where positive change is occurring. How might we prevent the displacement of those [creatives/artists] who are bringing this area to life? Should we just leave it to the market and let them move to another area in need of renewal?

Price:

• Once you get into any kind of regulation you get into issues of equity and economy. If you want artists to stay, provide income assistance.

Beasley:

• Some artists do well and can afford to stay. Others prefer to live somewhere edgy.

Audience Q&A

1. We are citizens who must be in, not just of, a place, as participants. Our common cause is security. We need to be inclusive.

2. How do we include street people in the dialogue?

Montgomery-Smith:

• There are things we have to do to be inclusive, but we have to draw the line when people commit crimes. Portland has a Street Obstruction ordinance.

Beasley:

• The wealthiest people aren’t here today either. Go to people and ask them what their concerns are. It’s a long process.

Basey:

• This issue can’t be solved by this group. We need the involvement of all levels of government.

3. [Victoria Police community liaison officer] How do we engage surrounding communities with what we’re doing downtown?

Beasley:

• Vancouver councillors went to other municipalities and spoke to councillors there about everything happening in the urban core, and how their inaction was affecting the urban core. They were willing to do things.

4. I’d like to know more about Portland’s Clean and Safe program.

Montgomery-Smith:

• The Business Alliance created an enhanced service of 53 people who clean up the streets and provide extra security.

Prior to her closing remarks, Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley thanked the City of Victoria for its support financially, and in the time and energy of staff and councilors. She introduced City Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe.

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Charlayne Thornton-Joe

On behalf of the City of Victoria, and as the City Council Liaison for Downtown, I am pleased to be representing the Mayor (who extends his regrets for being unable to be here today) and Council (many of whom are in the audience) to officially conclude the second forum on Downtown Victoria 2020—From Ideas to Action—Making the future happen!

I pondered into the wee hours what I could say that could be as profound, engaging, and thought-provoking as our eloquent guest-speakers and panelists over the course of the four days of the two forums—and I decided that as someone quite uncomfortable with public speaking—that I wouldn’t even attempt to try.

However, I did want to say that this forum, and the one held last November—Ideas for a Better Downtown—have helped to galvanize community awareness about some of the complex issues facing the downtown, as well as engaging the public about what is important to them about our beautiful city.

The Downtown Victoria Community Alliance (DVCA) has been instrumental in bringing together community interests and leading a renewed drive to revitalize our downtown core. The Conference has been an important milestone in the development of a stronger partnership with the City, the business sector and social and community agencies to strengthen the economic vitality of the downtown core, and also, to begin to find solutions for its social concerns.

Way back in 400 B.C., Augustine said that “cities are made up of people and their hopes—not of buildings and streets.” We all share the dream of a vibrant, economically viable and healthy downtown for—not some—but for all of our citizens to enjoy.

In the Hospitality and Food and Beverage Industry, which is my background, there is a saying that if you like something you will tell several friends. If you don’t like something and just don’t intend to come back, you don’t complain—you just leave, and you tell even more friends about what you didn’t like—and you don’t come back! However, if you are unhappy, and you really want to come back, but you want to have things made better, then you do complain. In the case of Downtown, many of you found that you were unhappy with the situation, wanted to come back and bring your friends and families, but you wanted to have things made better—and even more—you wanted to know what you could be doing to assist! You are here, and many of you were also at the November forum because you care about the future of our City!

The Downtown has always been a priority—but never more so than now. Victoria—the City and the region—needs a healthy downtown if it is to thrive.

Since the Downtown Victoria 2020 Conference in November, we heard repeatedly that Victoria needs to protect its uniqueness. The two forums have expanded our knowledge of the ideas and approaches being tried in other urban settings. We have also had many opportunities throughout the two conferences to talk about how we can practically implement our own good ideas. All of us will have a role to play as we begin taking ideas from this conference and moving into action—-and the City cannot do it alone. The DVCA is to be commended for “getting the ball rolling” and organizing this event. But the DVCA have said from the onset—that at the end of these forums they did not want a document that would just sit on a shelf. More importantly, than perhaps even the conference itself, was to identify ideas, and to create action plans to define how these ideas might come to fruition. And they are well on their way…Since last November, committees have been struck, and some of the initial outcomes from these working groups are starting to show.

The City of Victoria’s new corporate strategic plan calls on all of us—the Mayor, Councillors and staff alike—to ensure Victoria is the most livable City in Canada. Our vision is to be exceptional stewards of our cultural and environmental assets, and leaders in enhancing the social and economic vitality of our region.

We have heard a number of thought-provoking strategies for adapting to a changing downtown environment, and integrating the economic, social and ecological forces to create a better city.

We look forward to the continuation of working groups to develop action plans—-and to begin implementing them.

The City will continue to be an integral part of Downtown Victoria 2020. We have established a strong working partnership with the DVCA, and City staff has been involved in the subcommittees working since the November forum. It has been a worthwhile process in bringing the goals of the business community into the strategic and operational planning processes of the City. We intend to play a pivotal role in ensuring the action plans to implement these good ideas are realized.

Just over a year ago, when I became a City Councillor and was given the Downtown portfolio, as I became more aware of the scope of the concerns, I felt overwhelmed and occasionally felt, in many regards very alone. When I look around this room today, and at each of the forums, I realize that I was never alone in this endeavour and in this hope for a better Downtown for all!

Much thanks is extended to the Downtown Victoria Community Alliance and its chair Mohan Jawl, and to Conference chair Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley. The numerous volunteer hours it has taken, on the part of the many committee members, has been greatly appreciated! And thanks also, to all of you, both guest speakers, panelists and those in the audience, who have all brought to the table, a piece of the puzzle that we call Downtown. You have provided us with many thought-provoking moments; success stories and varied urban experiences. More importantly, you have given us the impetus to think about how to use our landscape, our buildings and our streets to create a new sense of community.

As I started this conclusion with a quote from a philosopher, I feel that it is only fitting that I end this with a Chinese philosopher. Lao Tzu said, ”A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”. You have set the steps in motion, for a more successful and vibrant Downtown, and henceforth, more steps will follow.

Thank you.

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Closing Remarks

Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley, Conference Chair and Moderator

Thanks Charlayne.

Thank you to everyone who participated for their energy, hard work and enthusiasm; to all the speakers and panelists; to the sponsors; and a special thanks to the dozens of volunteers who worked behind the scenes to pull this off:

DVCA Board
Steering Committee
Planning Group
Volunteers involved in the working groups and those who staffed the City Space

A report and action plan will be drafted no later than the end of the summer. It will summarize the results of the two forums and all of the activities that have taken place in the interim. From this we will articulate an action plan of creative, doable initiatives that can be embarked on immediately. The report will be made public; we will make sure people know about it through the media

We will engage the City and others to discuss how we can work together to implement the plan. Most importantly, we need to build on the work that has been done, enlist partners to assist in the implementation of the plan and coordinate the efforts of all interested groups.

To do this we need to create a more permanent structure to oversee the changes needed to create a revitalized downtown core—essentially a partnership of key interests.

The Downtown Victoria Community Alliance will continue to play a key role in implementing the ideas coming out of the conference and in coordinating with other organizations

Thank you.

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Workshop Results

During lunch on March 22 and 23, people who attended the conference were given an opportunity to offer input on a range of questions concerning various aspects of Downtown’s improvement/revitalization. Each table received a numbered questionnaire to discuss as a group. Here is a synopsis of the responses:

Question #1

Having a good range of public places throughout our downtown will make people’s experience of the city more enjoyable while increasing the quality of life for everyone who uses the downtown. We want to build on the existing public places that we have to make our city more hospitable to people of all ages and walks of life.

What kind of initiatives would enhance the range of usage of public spaces that we have? What options do we have for adding more public spaces to our downtown? Identify three public spaces in the downtown core that have the most potential for improvement. What improvements would realise the potential?

Responses:

• Turn existing parking lots into parks and green spaces: Johnson/Yates, Blanshard/Quadra, Cormorant/Pandora, Langley/Fort
• Turn Bastion Square into an Arts Centre.
• Establish a public space acquisition strategy to knit together a continuous network of public passages, squares and open spaces.
• Create lunchtime concerts in existing buildings such as churches or the Victoria Cool Aid gym.

Question #2

We want our downtown to feel vibrant and alive? We want a city full of art and music and activity on the sidewalks and in other public spaces.

What can we do to encourage a feeling of vitality and culture on the sidewalks? What is the role of citizens, of businesses and of policy makers in making our downtown more alive? Are there any others you see who need to be involved? Identify one or two specific initiatives that you would support?

Responses:

• Merchants need to use the sidewalk as an opportunity to promote their wares.
• Plan family events on the weekend evenings during summer.
• Use Broad Street as it was intended: for local artisans, musicians and markets that would attract residents and tourists.
• Provide more information about downtown activities and destinations.
• Drive musical groups around downtown on a truck.
• Create a “high street” that minimizes chain stores, emphasizing local and individual retailers, and encourage voluntary streetscapes and colour coordination.

Question #3

A walking/biking trail around the harbour, connecting the Galloping Goose, Westsong Walkway and Dallas Road was one of the most popular ideas from the first conference.

How would you resolve potential conflicts such as the industrial uses along the waterfront at Dockside and the customs/security and vehicle storage requirements at the proposed Belleville Street ferry terminal?

Responses:

• A City Planner is the #1 priority. This and other important issues will not get resolved without a proper plan from a qualified planner.
• Ask Vancouver how they did it.
• As an example, look at the new Washington State ferry terminal in Sidney, where a secure pedestrian walkway is accessible when ferries aren’t loading and unloading.
• An overhead walkway for ferry passengers. Vegetation. Keep working industries but enhance old buildings esthetically. Paving distinctions such as cobblestones.
• The trail doesn’t have to follow the water’s edge continually. Provide a variety of public space experiences. Signage. Traffic calming; determine traffic patterns and design trail(s) accordingly.
• Look at how pedestrians and cyclists can share the route.
• Establish prominent places for a harbour ferry, i.e. from Ocean Point to Laurel Point.
• Create a bonus density incentive to encourage trails through certain areas.
• Widen Galloping Goose for multiple uses. More green spaces and commercial amenities along the waterfront.

Question #4

Victoria is currently experiencing a residential building boom and units are being built in and around the downtown core in record numbers. Most of these units are not affordable to low income buyers and very few are purpose-built rental buildings.

What incentives do you think should be offered to encourage low income and rental housing? What roles do you see as appropriate for the public, private and non-profit sectors?

• The City must provide proactive leadership as a catalyst, setting a vision for the entire city.
• Collaborate on communicating the decision-making process.
• Involve the developers; they benefit from having people off the streets.
• More density for all downtown residential projects, generating tax revenues to provide incentives for non-market housing; density transfers.
• Tax concessions for non-market housing.
• Priority in approval process for non-market housing.
• Transfer social service savings to the provision of housing for the homeless.
• Non-profit sector to provide land, money and management of completed projects.
• Focus the initiative by determining what the downtown population will be in 2020 and what proportion of housing should be non-market.
• Consider areas peripheral to downtown where there are amenities and value is more cost-effective.
• Use underutilized floor space above street level. That should be a priority.
• The public sector needs to convince the private sector to invest. Legalize secondary suites.
• Lower downtown taxes, especially on heritage properties.
• Careful integration and positive public consultation to offset detractors.
• Use 4% GST rebate incentive to encourage low-income rentals. Reconfigure the City’s heritage grant program using a focus group comprising developers, financiers and residents. Encourage the creation of DPAs [Development Permit Areas].

Question #5

Retailers and other business people downtown need convenient access and parking for their customers. Some object to the dominance of vehicle traffic downtown and would prefer more pedestrian malls. Public transit is acknowledged as an important substitute for vehicle traffic, but ridership is insufficient to support even the current level of service. Cycling and walking are becoming more popular but in the short term will not significantly reduce traffic. Numerous other initiatives such as car-pooling and vehicle co-ops have been tried and met with limited success.

How would you reconcile these conflicting interests and what specific initiatives would significantly reduce vehicle traffic?

• Free or cheap downtown perimeter parking and a Free Ride zone.
• More downtown residential.
• Allow above ground parking in new buildings.
• Educate cyclists and motorists regarding their rights and responsibilities.
• Re-examine existing transit routes to see if they best serve riders.
• Regular, not irregular, transit service.

Question #6

Many downtown businesses see the deteriorating downtown street scene as a serious threat to their economic survival and want to see more aggressive policing of visible street populations. The agencies that service the street community say their clients are truly in need and are driven to the streets by desperation, not choice.

How would you bridge the gap between the conflicting interests of these groups and what specific, constructive, joint initiatives can you suggest?

Responses:

• Less flower baskets, more Street Link.
• Put more money into one-on-one interventions.
• Fund the Open Door.
• More flexible, creative space instead of abandoned buildings.

Question #7

One of the dilemmas in renewing districts downtown is that the businesses and residents that stimulate the renewal are often displaced by the success of the renewal. The are north of Chinatown, referred to by some as the “design district”, is an area in transition where positive change is occurring.

How might we prevent the displacement of those who are bringing this area to life? Should we just leave it to the market and let them move to another area in need of renewal?

Responses:

• Important to ensure proper mix to allow job market. Provide assistance to those choosing to relocate.
• Provide incentives for businesses and individuals to stay in the community: tax breaks, rental subsidies or other things which will blend the new with the old.
• Actively seek out specific businesses to renew the area. Encourage existing businesses and tenants/landowners to help lead and sustain the renewal.
• Ensure that building designs are appropriate to creative uses.
• Protect an area’s character by declaring it a highly diversified “Arts, Crafts and Design” precinct—a distinct destination with street level activity. Use an assortment of tactics to ensure mixed use, leveraging developers, government funding and fundraising.
• When an area becomes successfully regenerated, do not allow rezoning that would change it.
• Reno buildings need to be available across the economic spectrum. Where are the feds, the Province?

Question #8

Along with the harbour, Victoria’s heritage buildings help define the character of our downtown core. Many of these buildings have not been rehabilitated and the upper storeys are vacant or underutilized. The City and other levels of government have incentive programs to encourage rehabilitation. Notwithstanding the incentives most developers prefer new construction because it is more cost-effective and carries less risk.

Would you support a more generous incentive program? Are there other solutions you can identify to more effectively utilise and protect these structures?

Responses:

• The challenge is envisioning Victoria as a city that will support 600,000 people regionally while maintaining the illusion of no change.
• Stepbacked heights, sensitive and well-articulated design values.
• Prioritize viewscapes.
• Housing must be inclusive. Ensure roles for social housing groups and create new civil society entities that can partner with rental developers.
• Gut buildings but keep facades.
• Live/work spaces in heritage buildings for creative professionals can enliven neighbourhoods and others will want to move in.
• Investment in Heritage as an incentive to the film industry.
• Lower some of the City’s refurbishing expectations.
• Raise taxes on unused spaces.
• The City should work with the rest of the CRD to develop a regional vision/plan for heritage.
• Provincial building codes must be changed to allow more use of equivalencies.
• Sell buildings, don’t rent them.
• Definition of heritage needs to be clearer.
• Target incentives for specific locations.
• Review the standards for building codes. Are they appropriate for heritage?
• Do research to determine what the impediments to heritage development are. * Solutions may have to be tailored to each building.
• A ten-year tax holiday on selected buildings.
• Transfer development densities.
• Lower parking standards.
• More mixed use.

Question #9

The renewal of some areas of our downtown is held up by the refusal of building owners to develop or rehabilitate their properties. Often, the position of the property owners is not dictated by market considerations.

How aggressive should the City be in encouraging development or rehabilitation where it affects the renewal of a larger area? What incentives or disincentives would you suggest?

Responses:

• Vacancies give downtown a poor image.
• Use art around vacancies as an incentive.
• Tax shifting: a land tax over property tax so tax doesn’t increase when buildings are upgraded.
• What are the issues for landowners? Use this information to develop a plan they will buy into.
• Include landowners in the process.
• Use tax incentives to fill spaces with social programs or housing.
• Apply a vacancy tax to unused spaces.

Question #10

A larger downtown residential population will help to restore the economic vitality of the core. The current building boom in and around downtown will test this theory.

What amenities do you think are necessary to support this residential population and help it grow?

Responses:

• Grocery stores
• Culture, entertainment and cafes
• Amenities within walking distance
• Greenway connections
• Schools (of all kinds)
• Childcare
• Dog-walking spaces
• Recreation facilities
• A safe environment
• Public access to views
• Liquor and wine stores
• Local pubs
• Fitness centres
• Health and dental clinics
• Community gardens
• Public art spaces
• Green spaces; areas of tranquility
• Parking
• Noise bylaws
• Seaside walkway
• Identifiable police presence (especially at night)
• Safe injection sites
• Community events
• Social housing and services
• Playgrounds
• Relocate the Needle Exchange away from parks, schools, etc.
• Performance venues
• Remove the need for a second family car

Question #11

Safety was identified in a recent citizen’s survey to be a major concern and a significant deterrent to going downtown. Some suggest that the concern is based on perceptions, and the reality is not near so bad. Most of the street people and panhandlers, while disturbing, are not real threats to personal safety.

Is the problem one of perception? Would a more visible police presence downtown be an appropriate response or should they apply their limited resources to more serious criminal activity downtown?

Responses:

• We don’t need a greater police presence.
• Night lighting could improve safety.
• Active, populated shops and cafes add to a feeling of safety.
• Downtown churches could contribute to making downtown safer.
• Create a program that uses young and street people as “downtown gardeners”.
• Vacant buildings attract vagrancy.
• Major public buildings like a library bring more people onto the street.

Question #12

It has been shown that people who move downtown are attracted to the buzz of the city and the excitement of urban living. But downtown residents also say that the noise associated with other uses of downtown, such as transportation, maintenance, industry and nightclubs renders the city almost unlivable.

How would you bring about a compromise between the different users of downtown regarding noise levels without damaging the vitality that attracts people in the first place? What initiatives could lessen the impact of noise on residents?

Responses:

• Enforce noise bylaws in key areas.
• Educating businesses to be sensitive to residents’ needs.
• Reduce hours of operation of pubs and cabarets, and don’t serve drunks. No new licences.
• Some pedestrian-only streets.
• Electric transit.
• Coordinate commercial delivery times.
• You should expect noise downtown.
• Ticket noisy people.
• It’s a perception problem exaggerated by the media.
• Design/construction solutions to noise.
• Clauses in purchasing/rental agreements that identify noise considerations.
• Buffer zones.
• Reinforce security.
• Cluster noisy establishments.