Burnaby moves to legalize six-storey wood-frame housing along Hastings
Council votes Tuesday on a rezoning that would cover 41 blocks between Boundary and Kensington.
BURNABY — The rezoning that goes to council Tuesday is, by the numbers, the largest single housing decision this city has taken in a generation: forty-one blocks of Hastings pre-approved for six-storey wood-frame apartments, no site-by-site public hearings required.
The staff report is blunt about the intent. Site-by-site rezoning adds a year and roughly $70,000 a door to exactly the buildings the region says it wants; pre-zoning the corridor removes both, and moves the argument from every project to one evening — Tuesday's.
The predictable coalitions have formed. The neighbourhood associations east of Kensington want the height stepped down mid-corridor; the builders want parking minimums cut further than staff proposed; and the merchants, whose buildings mostly become redevelopment sites under the plan, are asking the pointed question about what happens to a barber shop's lease when its block gets an appraisal bump.
What nobody at the table disputes is the arithmetic that brought the corridor here: a frequent bus route, a flat grade, aging one-storey retail, and a housing target the city cannot hit one public hearing at a time. Council's vote is scheduled last on Tuesday's agenda, which everyone involved recognizes as a hope, not a plan.
