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Entries from January 2016

Supreme Court ruling strikes down rezoning for controversial Yaletown city-developer land swap and two towers

January 28th, 2015 · 29 Comments

This was a bombshell yesterday. More to come. No one seems to know all the scenarios that might play out (could this void the city’s land sale with Brenhill? will public hearing process need to be changed?), all of which sound serious and complicated. Lots of interesting things in Justice McEwan’s ruling. He stayed out […]

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Retail Council will oppose transit plebiscite if it’s not harmonized with the provincial sales tax

January 28th, 2015 · 9 Comments

The people who sell us stuff are on pins and needles these days, waiting for the B.C. finance ministry to tell them exactly how a new transit tax might work. Unclear yet: – will it apply to alcohol – will it apply to exactly the same things as PST does, or will people need to […]

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The transit-tax debate roadshow first stop: Langley, where the argument is made: “Langley will get nothing. It never does.”

January 22nd, 2015 · 304 Comments

Made the trek to Langley (75 minutes there, 40 minutes back) to hear Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Jordan Bateman and pro-Yes campaigner Bill Tieleman face off, to get a sense of the main messages we’ll be hearing for several months. My Globe story is here but to add a few observations to what is in the […]

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Deadline for public comments on “origami” glass office tower next to historic Waterfront Station building is Jan. 22

January 21st, 2015 · 18 Comments

The design for this office tower at 555 West Cordova is creating quite a stir, with former planning director Ray Spaxman describing it as “the Martian has landed,” development consultant Michael Geller deploring it generally, and former Globe reporter Rod Mickleburgh calling it a “glass carbuncle.” Ray’s comments in detail (with others chiming in) over […]

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Too much development in Chinatown? Or just enough to revive it?

January 19th, 2015 · 19 Comments

The wave of change that has hit Chinatown in the last while is making a significant number of people uncomfortable. A proposed nine-storey development by the Beedie Group at the corner opposite Sun Yat-Sen Gardens kicked it into high gear, but there was rising unease even before that, with three major condo developments, a number […]

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Goodbye to the dean of Vancouver city-hall observers

January 14th, 2015 · 2 Comments

There was a time when I didn’t know much about Vancouver city hall except where it was on the bus route. I hadn’t even thought about becoming a journalist in 1975 and was just starting my journalism career in the 1980s. I never imagined that I would ever be interested in things like zoning, bylaws, […]

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Aircare-free vehicles start to pop up in Vancouver Craigslist

January 12th, 2015 · 2 Comments

I really related to this story, since my old clunker of a ’98 Chevy Venture did not pass its last AirCare test last year, forcing me to spend a few hundred dollars to get that dashboard light to go off. So, as the story says, (for those of you for whom clicking on a link […]

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Vancouver NPA and Green Party will support transit plebiscite

January 12th, 2015 · 143 Comments

Much hay was being made a week or so ago about the fact that NDP MLA Andrew Weaver wasn’t gung-ho supporting a Yes vote in the transit plebiscite. But the local Green Party rep, Adriane Carr, said she plans to support it in a motion coming to council next week from NPA Councillor George Affleck. […]

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Social column: Mayor and Chinese pop star dating; election injuries endure; holiday time for councillors

January 6th, 2015 · 82 Comments

Some people feel I haven’t done enough to document the personal lives of our politicians. So here is my new year effort. Green Party Councillor Adriane Carr is vacationing on the Sunshine Coast until Jan. 19, thanks to a very convenient city council schedule that has the first meeting not on the schedule until Jan. […]

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Where to put that coffee cup amid the row of recycling bins? High-powered researchers are here to help

January 6th, 2015 · 7 Comments

I am losing hours of my life these days, standing perplexed in front of rows of recycling bins, trying to figure out where to put the component parts of my garbage. To make it more confusing, every place I go to seems to have a slightly different system. Just dumped off a bunch of papers […]

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