Loops at north end may be removed to extend street grid system
GERRY BELLETT
Sun
Removal of loops under Granville Street Bridge would allow for commercial development, improve waterfront access. — VANCOUVER SUN FILES
Vancouver city hall plans to take a hard look at redesigning the exits on the north end of the Granville Street Bridge early next year.
The aim would be to remove some of the traffic loops that create “ dead space” underneath the bridge, city planner Karen Hoese said.
Removing the loops would allow the city to extend its streetgrid system into the area south of Drake between Howe and Seymour streets.
“ If those maple- leaf- shaped loops were demolished it would create a proper street grid system, allow for commercial development in the area and give greater pedestrian and cyclist access to the waterfront,” Hoese said.
It’s a proposal that has often been bandied about at city hall, but now the city is considering implementing it as part of its overall transportation plan.
Meanwhile, the development company Rize Alliance has put the brakes on its plans to demolish the old Cecil Hotel just north of the bridge on Granville Street.
Rize Alliance plans to build a 21- storey residential tower containing 166 apartments on the site and linking it to the Yale Hotel with some sort of glassed atrium.
City council approved the plan in September but the state of the world’s money markets has caused Rize to slow down.
The demolition of the Cecil will reduce the number of singleroom occupancy units in the area by 50.
However, 43 SRO units in the Yale Hotel will be upgraded to city standards and turned over to the city as part of the deal.
T h e d e v e l o p m e n t w o u l d include a two- storey commercial area.
Luke Harrison, a spokesman for Rize Alliance, said the expected cost of the development is in excess of $ 50 million.
However, the company isn’t in any great hurry to market the suites.
“ We had thought we’d go to market at the end of this year, but a couple of things have slowed us down,” Harrison said. “ The civic strike [ last year] held us up, but now we are waiting to see if there’s going to be a correction in the price of Vancouver housing. There has been a feeling that prices were getting to be unaffordable here.
“ So there’s no rush to do the development. Thankfully, we’ve got good income- producing properties on the site,” he said.