In a conversation that veered from West Vancouver’s scarcity of twentysomethings to a question about its abundance of NIMBYs, Mayor Mary-Ann Booth discussed the district’s future at West Vancouver Yacht Club Thursday evening.
Guests paid $70 (or $50 for West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce members) to hear Booth and Troll’s Restaurant general manager Holly Kemp talk about bringing the missing generation west of the Capilano River. The event was sponsored by Park Royal and British Pacific Properties.
“If you see a 25 year old, it’s like a rare bird sighting,” Booth said. “Where do they live . . . how did they get here?”
Noting that very few of her employees live in West Vancouver, Kemp surveyed the event’s attendees.
“In this room right now are the developers who are going to bring us that missing middle,” Kemp said before referring to the municipality’s NIMBY contingent. “How do we as the community . . . assist the council to change the mindset of a very difficult district?”
Most residents already support low-rise development, Booth responded.
“It’s up to council to have the courage to listen to those people,” she said.
The district is approaching a “pivotal point” regarding a potential development at 2195 Gordon Ave., a 1.76-acre site directly north of the West Vancouver Community Centre.
“I’m pretty comfortable that it’s going to pass,” she said, noting it offers condos, adult daycare, and below-market rentals for middle-income earners like teachers, firefighters and police officers.
The district is attempting to shift from a bedroom community to a complete community, Booth said, noting West Vancouver, along with the Squamish Nation and the City of North Vancouver, is part of the Housing Solutions Lab.
“Attracting and retaining staff is directly tied to high housing costs and it doesn’t help that West Vancouver is literally at the end of the line.”
Asked about the furor over the proposed B-Line route that would have removed parking spots and given buses priority along Marine Drive, Booth said council made the right decision to halt the transit expansion at Park Royal.
“We have to do things incrementally in West Vancouver,” she said. “We’re in a good place. Park Royal is even in a better place.”
The B-Line, now rebranded as RapidBus, may receive a warmer welcome next time it comes before council, Booth said.
“I guarantee, in the not too distant future, residents are going to be asking us to bring it the next step. But they’ve got to see it,” she said.
The bus brouhaha, which included protests, placards and lengthy council meetings, revealed an institutional problem, according to Booth.
“The B-Line highlighted one thing for me: the public hearing process . . . doesn’t really work. It’s quasi-judicial, it’s adversarial and it’s about winning,” she said. “We’ve got to do more listening to each other.”
In the meantime, Park Royal remains a sensible place for highrises, Booth said.
“It’s got the best busing in West Vancouver,” she said, adding the mall is soon set to unveil plans for a pool primarily for children’s swimming lessons.
Booth pointed to Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice Beach, Calif., as a possible inspiration for West Vancouver with a compact, vibrant mixture of business and housing. With 93 per cent of taxes coming from the residential class, it’s essential the district increases the commercial base by using airspace more productively, according to Booth.
She also suggested the community might be open to a film studio or a university campus.
“I think there’s a huge opportunity to partner with Capilano University.”
Discussing the frequency with which she supplies wayward travellers with directions out of Horseshoe Bay, Kemp noted there’s a lack of evening activity in West Vancouver.
“You’re not inviting the world to this district. You’re good until 6 p.m.,” she said.
To counter that, Booth said wayfinding work is underway. She also called the Horseshoe Bay local area plan a “the palette that we build on.”
Toward the end of the evening, Booth shared an anecdote about chatting with the relative of a former West Vancouver councillor. Amid setting up the apartment zone in Ambleside, that councillor got death threats, Booth told the audience.
“So I’ve really arrived,” said, drawing laughs from the audience. “People are going to remember me.”
The evening ended with a draw in which winners took home wine, a free boat rental and various gift cards donated by sponsors.
