Getting ready to make way for the 'approved' Fern Street development of 700 units in 3 towers of up to 25 storeys and possibly upwards of 1500 people (on what was 46 single family lots). The Fern Street access to Hwy 1 is a substantial choke point for all of us using Hwy 1 already.
Seylynn Development
Notice of Highway Closure and Disposition
55 comments:
I just drove to the Cap Mall area and back to Lynn Valley. What a zoo of construction in the CNV! As usual the signage was terrible, there was no direct detour presented and as soon as I got out of one construction zone I was smack dab in the middle of another one.
The DNV notification to the public regarding this entire issue is abysmal.
The two North Vans are densifying the heck out of our communities at our expense on all levels.
From reading the proposed Bylaw 7769 it appears that the only street that is to be closed is Bruce Street. Fern Street and the Highway One onramp/offramp don't seem to be affected.
Wrong, Mountain Highway and Fern Street onto Highway 1 is on the chopping block. What kind of deal did the DNV make with the developers?
There will be no where to go but North to Squamish and Whistler. We aren't going to be able to move off the North Shore. I wish to pummel those politicians and parks people who would not allow the Lions Gate Bridge to be changed from 1930's style three lane wonder! Such nonsensical vision we have from the powers that be. Perhaps we need a Port Mann style bridge third crossing and nix the "cute" seabuses! It makes as much sense as all the density driven development and road and hwy closures we are seeing on the NS. Who are these imbeciles giving direction for all this? Surely, we did not elect them?
We did not vote for them. They were elected by their Lib buddies and the developers who support them.
We barely fit into the 20% voter turnouts.
What planet are you on?
All existing councils were elected by the majority of voters that chose to cast ballots.
If that doesn't suit you then encourage your like minded friends to vote.
Otherwise accept that the majority of voters supported the incumbents and they're getting what they wanted.
Exactly, Anon 1:05 PM. I think the first five posts are by the same two who do nothing but whine but never offer any alternative or constructive solutions.
...and it's the NDP-aligned councillors in both communities who are most in favour of increased development, generally not the Lib/Con-aligned ones. More development > more housing > theoretically lower housing prices > more people > more tax revenue > more staff.
I wish that people would spend a little time studying the proposed changes to the roadways before they start complaining. It will actually improve traffic flow and return some semblance of a quiet residential neighbourhood to those who live on Fern Street which will become a cul de sac with the new configuration. Keith Road will be extended around the new development and the existing on- and off-ramps will stay with westbound cars presently using Fern Street driving around the Seylynn development where they can access Mountain Highway or continue up Keith Road and drivers heading east just turn left and head over the existing bridge.
If you take the time to study the design, it actually works. So, the sky is not falling and Mountain Highway and Fern Street are not being closed, just narrowed a bit. The developer is actually giving up more land than he's getting back with the minor changes on Fern Street and Mountain Highway. My guess is that the homeowners on Fern Street are applauding these changes - I would if I were one of them.
Talk about crying wolf! Sheesh!
Anon 9:39 PM, There are no NDP-allligned councillors in the District of North VAN.
Griffin,
Can you provide a link to the new street configurations?
Griffin, how does the public get to know this will supposedly work? It's a test and we are the guinea pigs. You and your family included. We are losing our community.
gxpreme We are not losing our community. Everytime there is a proposed change certain folks hit the panic button.
Remember whenb we used to drive straight onto Hwy 1 from Keith Rd?
They closed that simple entrance and came up with the crazy loop around complete with 2 stop lights which has caused nothing but tie-ups since the day it was installed. That was grounds for complaints. This change isn't.
"That simple entrance" was fine for me for years.
There were several problems with the design of the on-off ramp. First of all, it was too short, and it was already doing double duty, e.g. an on-ramp for those heading east on Keith, and an off-ramp for those heading down the cut and wanting to go to Seymour or Deep Cove. Problems arose when drivers heading for Deep Cove via Keith used it as a short-cut to get to the overpass instead of turning right onto Mountain Highway, then left on Fern, despite the sign that said it was not to be used for that purpose. This made the on/off-ramp even more congested than it was before. So MOH closed the on-ramp from Keith and made everyone go up Mountain Highway.
As for a link to the new highway design, use this:
http://www.dnv.org/article.asp?a=5513&c=557
It doesn't show how the on- and off-ramps will actually look but they are essentially the same except they end a little bit north of the present configuration to allow right/left turns into the new road and for Fern Street to become a cul-de-sac.
This notice appeared in at least two editions of the NSNews. Do you not get it??? Or do you not bother to read it?
Delivery of the NSN is not expected. DNV ads are buried.
The District ads are very easy to find in the NSN, and the paper is available at many locations, not just delivery. You obviously have access to a computer, so you can very easily go to the District website and find the information for all proposals/public hearings/announcements. Anon 12:07 you are uninformed because you choose to be.
The DNV website is terrible. Not user friendly.
Most meeting written coverage is biased and often the council clips are either not available, or stop abruptly before the end of the meeting, or are bouncy, unclear, and parts are omitted.
Sounds to me like a lot of excuses to stay uninformed.
It is almost as bad as City of North Van council complaining that Shaw will not be air council live. If I am not mistaken can you not view council live or archived on their website? Hard to believe this is even an issue and was reported in the NSN. Slow day….
Open letter to District of North Vancouver mayor and Council:
I find it strange that all of council expressed concern about the low voter turnout in the recent municipal election, but the actions of this council over the past few years has been getting more negative towards the residents with respect to credible communication and input into district matters.
Council mostly alternates formal meetings in the chamber where public input is allowed and council workshops in the committee room where no public input is allowed.
The district no longer advertises what is on the agenda for the council meetings in the North Shore News though they still have a whole page on a regular basis for the District Dialogue. On that page in the Sunday, Jan. 8 issue they advertised that the mayor had a new Facebook page and that the council meeting dates for 2012 were on the district web site. There was enough empty space left on that page to say the week's council meeting was "cancelled," but you only found that out if you had a computer and went to the website. The district website now also informs that the Jan. 16 and 17 workshops are "cancelled."
When they do have a council meeting, there are many agenda addenda items added on the night of the meeting now.
The district has Facebook and Twitter pages, but they can still not respond to all the emails in a timely manner.
Perhaps when council recently changed many committees of council to be committees of staff it was not aware of all the legal ramifications. The one that could have the greatest impact on the public is that, while council committees are statutorily open to the public, committees of staff do not have this requirement. The abrogation of council's fiduciary requirements to uphold the interest of the public who elected them is thus considerably weakened.
I have heard that the district gave short notice to the community associations about future use of the meeting rooms at district hall on a regular basis for their meetings regarding the communication of district issues between the community associations.
I wonder why approximately 80 per cent of the residents do not bother to take an interest in their municipality and come out to vote.
Trust, credibility and respect take a long time to get but are lost in an instant and take a lot of time and effort to regain.
David Knee North Vancouver
Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/technology/lines+communication+cloudy/6025408/story.html#ixzz27nwDyLFh
I am not sure that you can make the assumption that 80% do not vote because they do not trust their politicians. While this may be true for some, I think it is more likely that most residents feel Council is doing a decent job and don't see a need for change.
IF Council starts making a bunch of dumb decisions, as I think is happening in Vancouver, or any Councillor becomes obviously past his or her "best by" date, then I think you'll see an increase in voter turn-out with the intention of electing a new face or two to get things back on track.
Right now, I think voters stay home because they're not too concerned with how things are being managed, and not because they don't trust their politicians. If that were the case, they would be out in droves to get rid of them.
I get the feeling Griffin just plain likes District council. He could be a supporter or just feels like they're doing a good job and that's Griffin's perogative.
Few people trust their politicians. That bond has been broken far too many times.
Most voters stay home because they don't bother to inform themselves and don't know the broad issues. Time and time again at election time I hear, "I don't know who to vote for because I don't know who any one is or where they stand". If these people do make an obligatory show to the ballot box they vote by name recognition...."uh,.. oh Little, think big, or Muri, I've heard of her!".
Those who do vote are probably mostly of the Liberal ilk which comprizes District council. It probably wouldn't matter if they felt they were doing a good job or not they would vote for them anyway.
John, you're partly right and perhaps partly wrong. I don't agree with everything that Council decides or the way they decide it and if I had my "druthers", I would change a few things. But this DNV Council functions better than many in the past, sometimes too well because I feel that they don't question things enough with the result that stuff gets approved without proper discussion. I also think that two or three of them are perhaps not as effective as they once were for reasons unknown to me. Roger Bassam is not in that group and has shown himself to at least be willing to question things and vote based on a cause and effect type of analysis. For the record, I did not vote for him last time out!
As to your comments that most voters stay home because they don't bother to inform themselves, well, this statement more or less confirms my opinion that voters remain ignorant by choice. And that may be because they're not particularly upset at anything going on, either in their neighbourhood or in the District generally. I know from experience that when they are, the tom-toms start beating and before long, everyone is speaking up.
The voters will be speaking up next election when they go through the idiocy of all the development taking place and how sad it is and how it will impact their lives before 2014.
So, Anon 2:21 AM, there's no chance that the new development will offer an improvement to some peoples lives? Not everyone can afford to live in a single-family detached home.
NV City is a rich little muni due to high development that yields high tax revenues. They have the Dist pay 2/3 of the policing, the majority of the rec costs, way more for the much bigger fire dept, maintainance of over 100 parks etc and the city folks can access these considerable resources anytime they want.
Maybe the Dist is wise to emulate it's little sibling and increase tax revenue through more high density along major transportation routes.
What exactly constitutes a "major transportation route" in the DNV?
Mount Seymour Parkway, Dollarton, Capilano Road, Marine Drive?
But not Lynn Valley Road because it only goes to Lynn Valley, nowhere else.
The intersection of Lynn Valley Road and Mountain Highway seem pretty major and seem the ideal spot for higher density. This is the town centre, after all, no?
No. F R E A K.
Obviously a Lynn Valley naysayer. I'm not sure what (some) people in Lynn Valley really think. They want better transportation, better pedestrian access, better bike routes, and better shopping yet the don't want anyone else to discover it. Unfortunately, the population in all of the lower mainland is growing and people have to live somewhere. The North Shore municipalities are under pressure from Metro to accept a certain portion of that growth and it has almost nowhere to go but up (and not UP the mountainside). So why not put all this vertical growth where people shop and there is reasonable access to public transportation? With a little luck, they'll use it!
Why the name-calling, Anon September 29, 2012 7:52:00 PM? Can you not have a civilized discussion with a person who holds a differing view from your own?
Seems to me the density at the town centre makes the most sense, as already explained by Griffin. I'll take the density of high rises at the core of a community over non-descript 4-storey condos spreading themselves through low density neighbourhoods. Place density at commercial and transportation corridors where it belongs, thus preserving the single family neighbourhoods for a while longer. We are going to be impacted by the needs of the region, so we must go about providing accommodation for the increasing population smartly.
Let's discuss it as adults, not behave like spoiled children hiding behind the anonymity of a computer screen.
Who is paying you people? The Libs? Or Bosa?
Oh, I forgot, you are being paid by the taxpayers of the District of North Vancouver.
9:41 AM, who are you talking to?
Anon 10:04 I am speaking to the abyss.
So rather than being snarky, how about actually entering the discussion in a meaningful way? Why shouldn't higher density be placed at commercial and transportation corridors? The North Shore is no longer cottage country, so it's time to plan for density smartly and put aside unrealistic expectations of maiming the past.
That should be maintaining, not maiming. Need to disable that autocorrect function...
The DNV apparently used the hammer of 'threatening expropriation' to get the Mountain Hwy store owner 'hold-out' to sell (which is ethically 'problematic', because they were acting as a proxy for the developer), and then the DNV did a land-swap with the developer so he could complete the land assembly needed, and there was no value put on the land swap continuing the DNV policy of giving all of the benefit of up-zoning to the developer.
The Fern Street Closure was publicly announced (as Bylaw 7953) in the NS News. In the announcement, the DNV did its typically poor job of describing things. Fern Street will be closed west-bound.
Residents of Seymour-East will be significantly affected in terms of Hwy #1 access, both by the addition of 1500 residents (and their traffic) right at the present Fern Street access, and now by the road changes planned.
Come out to the council meeting tonight and speak against it.
Once again, somebody is crying wolf and trying to mislead everyone. Fern Street will be closed to through traffic and become a cul-de-sac giving some semblance of a quiet residential neighbourhood back to the people on Fern Street. Anyone heading east to the freeway or to Seymour will travel on a newly-extended Keith Road and end up at the current bridge and on/off ramps slightly reconfigured to make turning easier. It's really no different than now, except the road is in a different place.
As for the convenience store, I don't believe that the District could expropriate land to benefit a private developer. As I understand it, the owner of that property was holding out for more money, and through a complex negotiating procedure, came to terms with the owner of the development property.
And finally, in the land swap, the developer gave up more land than he got back, in return for one more floor on each of the highrises, as I understand it, which will have the net effect of the same number of units on slightly smaller property. And this project will generate almost one million dollars in amenity funds to benefit the neighbourhood, not exactly "no value" as stated by anon 09:26.
I really do wish that people would properly inform themselves before blowing so much hot air - you really do make yourselves look foolish.
BC is a huge province. There is plenty of room in southwestern BC for another 1 million people. But it requires a proper plan for the provision of serviced land that will be released every year to take up the bulk of the population influx ... in short, it needs a proper growth strategy to build the largest 'new city in the Province over the next 20 years or so, rather than today's short-sighted thinking of converting the Lower Mainland's present industrial and commercial land (and jobs) into condos.
It makes no sense to build more condos in downtown Vancouver, or on the North Shore, when the jobs are all having to move out to the Valley and south of the Fraser River as businesses try to remain competitive ... in the past ten years, the biggest change in the daily commute for the region has been Vancouver residents commuting east and south to their 'relocated' jobs ... the present regional growth strategy (= more density) pretty much guarantees that there will never be affordable housing in the region because more density is not the answer. Density and its ills will finally break the 'brand that is Vancouver' sometime in the next 5 to 10 years and, that as a consequence, we will not see the full 1 million or so people move here ... why? density brings the urban ills of crime and many other quality of life issues (including the length of the job commute, and much higher land costs which make job growth very problematic) ... and traffic-wise, expecting everyone to ride bikes or take transit is hopelessly naive ... and, regardless, our North Shore politico's delusion that Metro will provide increased 'transit' resources if we only get firmly onto the density bandwagon is laughable.
If the problem can be fixed as described above, it will require 'banking' and then progressively releasing, over 20 years or so, the serviced land needed for another 1 million or so newcomers ... unfortunately, there is no local solution to making this happen ... local politicians and their bureaucrats will fight it, and the provincial ones that could undertake what is necessary are in complete disarray ... why the Province? - because keeping land costs down is necessary to keep the province's businesses competitive with Alberta's and the US and elsewhere, and to ensure affordable homes and jobs, and to ensure lower taxes; and, curiously, BC has to be somewhat unique in that only 3% of its land-mass is free-hold - i.e. 97% is Provincial crown land ... so the answer here is not the cities 'giving' land to developers to create affordable housing (a la Peter Ladner in recent months), it is the Province doing so.
Retirees and those close to retiring - and there are many 'boomers' getting to that age in the next few years - are the ones who in their own self-interest will act to 'bust' their own neighbourhoods for the money. Why? - so that they can downsize, and go and live somewhere else (that is nicer, because Metro's 'density-dance' has reduced their quality of life). For an example of this, we need look no further than the Evelyn Street development in West Van.
The future for the Lower Mainland does not look good, especially the developer-driven planning that we are getting on the North Shore. There is nothing that can or will change things here in the near future, not even grass-roots community interest because not enough people are engaged today in our local voting process, the politicians can safely ignore any community protests that are decidedly 'single-interest' in nature.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Open+talk+needed+when+comes+word/7248194/story.html
The voter turnout in the DNV and CNV in the last municipal election was 20% . That means that 80 per cent don't care. We must get public engagement.
And do you propose to hold a gun to their collective heads....??? You can't force people to come out and vote, and what it indicates to me is that people are reasonably satisfied with how things are operating.
If something happens to make people mad, they'll show up--it's pretty simple.
And there's the rub. The anti-change crusader believes that because he's outraged, everyone else should be as well. If this were the case, we'd see very different numbers showing up at the polls.
What it indicates to me is that people don't care enough about local politics and I don't think that equates to people being reasonably satisfied.
Well, John, you can conclude what you want, but I question whether folks who are satisfied with the service they're getting from the District feel the need to get involved to the level that you do - there's too much demand on the average person's time these days.
If there is a problem that is not addressed, and complaints get nowhere, come election day, they'll be only too happy to let the incumbents know how pi**ed off they are. And even by voting, I really don't think that they see themselves getting involved in "local politics". That is likely a term they reserve for those who actually run for office, campaign workers, or the ones who regularly attend Council meetings.
You can't say that people don't care enough about "local politics" just because they don't share your level of interest -- they DO care, they just don't call it politics.
I think many people subconciously feel that decisions at District Hall do influence their lives, but yes they're too busy with other interests and responsiblities.
I feel it's good for people to be more involved in those decisions and their community.
I also feel that many people can't stand what they perceive as the b@##&#!t in politics so they stay away from that frustration. This may be felt most strongly by those who don't vote.
What would be your opinion of election day results if 80% voted?
Of the people I know who choose not to vote, the overwhelming reason is that they feel nothing will change and if it's not the same people being re-elected, the attitudes seem to prevail. That doesn't exactly translate into b@##&#!t but it certainly tells me that they don't trust the system or the process(es) behind it.
My answer to them is that if their own attitudes don't change, then it's pretty much a given that nothing will change either.
Griffin,
Just to clarify my reference to "perceived b@##&#t" was of a general nature to all levels of politics, not just municipally.
On that note, hypothetically if there were a good variety of quality candidates running for District council and 80% as opposed to 20% voted, do you think those elected would change signifigantly?
Probably not. In those scientific polls conducted by Ipsos Reid and others, they poll very few people yet come up with a result that is extrapolated forward to represent the views of society at large. Perhaps the 20% who vote accomplish the same.
700 units which by Translink admission roughly 75% will be using cars, that should be interesting, the area can barely handle the current traffic at rush hour.
But that is partly because the roads as they are currently configured, are so poorly designed. With no dedicated east-west traffic corridor for those not wishing to go onto Highway 1 in either direction, of course things are going to get bogged down. Fix that and a large chunk of the problem goes away.
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