The Olympic Village Neighbourhood

Preliminary design plans have finally been released for the Vancouver Olympic Village, with the first four properties going before the Urban Design Panel last night. (Click picture for a larger version).

According to the City's overview of the site, the Olympic Village neighbourhood will eventually form the commercial heart of the wider SEFC community.

To achieve this plan, a central plaza will be built in front of the historic Salt Building, around which several small shops and cafes will be built at street level. The commercial centre will be anchored by a liquor store, drug store and supermarket, which will be located at parcels 6, 10 and 9, respectively.

There will also be a community centre built at parcel 11, and an elementary school built at parcel 1.

Preliminary development applications have been filed for residential and commercial construction on parcels 2, 3, 6 and 10. We've summarized the proposals below, along with links to further information, including design plans.

• Parcel 2: 2 buildings, 13 and 5 storeys; 220 units total
• Parcel 3: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 169 units total
• Parcel 6: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 99 units total
• Parcel 10: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 179 units total

It's interesting to note that building heights are staggered as they step back from the water, as required by the initial SEFC community plan. Buildings on the north side of 1st Avenue will rise to a maximum of 13 storeys, while across the street (and outside of the Olympic Village), developers have proposed buildings that rise as high as 15 and 16 storeys.

So far, minutes from the January 9th Urban Design Panel meeting have not yet been released. We'll be sure to add links to this post, once they become available.

Comments

[Joe Lousa]

By my count that's 667 units, seems awful low for an olympic village. The community centre is nice but a school? There is already a underused school very close by. They should leave it as green space or some other public space. Hopefully the other parcels have more units in them.

[Yatata]

I disagree about the schools comment, there is a massive demmand for schools in the downtown area, and in order to make the area appeal to families, a school nearby that children can walk to (teaching independence as they no longer have to ask parents to drive them somewhere) is a major asset. If the goal is a less car dependant, self sufficient community, asking residence to drive an extra 10 or 20 blocks to an already overcrowded school would be going against the original intent. the only way this neighbourhood can succeed is if it is truly mixed in demograpic. one major mistake I see they have made is clustering affordable housing in entire buildings, making buildings themselved in a sense, single-use. affordable housing must be interspersed with market housing at 10% in order to be successful. what happens when there is too much affordable housing in one place is that is soon gets a bad reputation socially (it only takes one person doing something bad to ruin the reputation of an entire housing block.) to stem this, affordable housing must be peppered in at such a percentage that market housing is economically unaffected in terms of property value as they can "hold their own", and persons living in affordable housing are well assimilated into the community.

[Joe Lousa]

The issue is that there is a underused school right there within walking distance, this new school is overkill. There is no need for waterfront schools or social housing. We can build better quality/more units in slightly less desirable areas. I by no means mean shipping people out to the valley or creating slums, but afforable housing next to rapid transit makes more sense then affordable housing on the most expensive land in Canada.

[Ron]

The condo unit count does not equate to Olympic Village rooms - the floors will be reconfigured after the Olympics to create the units (i.e. combine rooms).

[Joe Lousa]

Makes sense, I'd imagine that there would be a village in Whilster maybe one in Sqamish so we might not need too many units. It also won't be like the NHLers will be staying in the village.

[editor]

Just to clarify, the ODP for the entire SEFC neighbourhood estimates that there will be a total of 7,150 units built in the area by 2018.

This translates into approximately 14,000 people.

During the initial planning stage, the City insisted that a minimum of 564 housing units be built at the Olympic Village site alone.

We've reconfigured our blog categories to provide easier access to our past coverage of the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood.

On the left of our home page under 'Categories', click on 'SEFC and the Olympic Village' for previous posts on the topic.

-eds.

[Brent]

A comment for Mr. Joe Lousa: there is no need for social housing? Really? Perhaps you're it's hard to see from the top floor of a glass tower, but down here there is a crisis. (A crisis ironically caused by glass towers replacing affordable housing). How can you say there is no need? Declaring that affordable housing has no right taking up prime real estate may seem understandable on the surface, however I can assure you this common point of view is a classic display of ignorance among the population in regards to basic principals of urban theory. What actually works - and creates vibrant functional and economically successful PLACES, is a little more surprising and complex than most know.

[Oscar]

Who is doing the drywall?