Jericho Coalition Calls on City to Extend Public Input Deadline on Jericho Lands High-Rise Plan

VANCOUVER – A grassroots community coalition opposing a new plan for a massive luxury high-rise concrete towers development on Vancouver’s Jericho Lands is calling on the City to extend the deadline on its survey for input on the plan – which ends Sunday July 16.

“Vancouver residents, especially in the neighbourhoods directly affected by this enormous 13,000 unit development with dozens of high-rise luxury towers for up to 30,000 people, have simply not had enough notice from the city to reply to an online survey in the middle of the summer,” said Jericho Coalition spokesperson Bill Tieleman.

“There has not been a City mailing to residents of Point Grey and Kitsilano that will be in the shadows of the three 49-storey skyscrapers or the other 40 high-rises up to 45-storeys – nor has there been sufficient public advertising by the City to even let people know this is happening – that’s inappropriate for such a giant multi-billion dollar development,” he said.  “And it’s nearly impossible for the average citizen to even find the survey on the City’s website!”

The Jericho Coalition has raised the funds to call about 8,000 Point Grey and Kitsilano residents with a recorded message asking them to make their strong opposition known to the City before the July 16 deadline, Tieleman said, but it shouldn’t be up to a small volunteer group to have to let taxpayers and residents know what’s happening in their backyard.

Added Jericho Coalition member Susan Fisher: “The City has a fundamental duty to consult Vancouver residents about important decisions – and the largest development project in city history, one that has raised overwhelming concerns – certainly qualifies for full consultation, not an unknown survey online for a few weeks in the dead of summer.”

“That’s particularly true when the developer knew full well of strong opposition to its original 2021 proposal to build 10,000 high-rise units and, rather than reflecting community concerns, instead added another 3,000 units and increased the height and density of the project,” Fisher, a local resident, added.

Fisher said that the Jericho Coalition has proposed an alternative low-rise vision that allows for significant new missing middle affordable housing without the huge drawbacks of skyscrapers.

The Jericho Coalition, a group of concerned citizens opposing the current proposals for the Jericho Lands, consists of community members, including architects, engineers, planners, and environmentalists, who believe there is a better, more livable and environmentally friendly way to develop the Jericho Lands site that would better align with the accepted and approved guiding principles for this project.

A new video created by the Jericho Coalition outlines a substantially different vision for the Jericho Lands than that proposed by the MST Development Corporation, a partnership of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam),Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, and the Canada Lands Company, a federal agency.

The video “A Livable Lower-Rise Community for the Jericho Lands” is online at: www.JerichoCoalition.org It describes a low-rise, more livable and environmentally friendly way to create thousands of housing units without high-rise luxury concrete towers.

The Jericho Coalition alternative vision features four to eight-storey buildings with open courtyards that would be built with prefabricated modular wood components and mass timber rather than concrete and steel. This would result in lower greenhouse gas emissions, improved energy efficiency, and could even lead to a new indigenous-led forest industry sector, thus resulting in an additional revenue stream for the landowners.

Vancouver City survey at: https://www.shapeyourcity.ca/jericho-lands/survey_tools/revised-site-concept-plan