28 replies to this topic

[gumgum]

I'm so ahead of the times. I've been calling it the Design District for ages now.
Victoria shops create Design District

Small stores band together for marketing

[Nparker]

I understood this name had been adopted some time ago. In the spirit of Lower Johnson now being called "LoJo", will this area now be called "DeDi"?

[Caramia]

Quite awhile ago I tried to trace the origin of the name. As far as I can tell the first time it was used was on a piece of paper on the window of the little art gallery on the South side of Herald. After that Sager's furniture used it in an ad, and the downtown2020 people used it. Then City Council picked it up.

[G-Man]

Let us not shorten every name down. I like Design District. It is a solid name.

[gumgum]

There's so much room for improvement in that area still. It needs to densify bigtime.

Things I'd like to see happen:
-Bambu lot to be finally developed
-Start developing Rock Bay.
-Lose the Capitol Iron parking lot for mixed use or a big open concept artisan/ food market.
-Redevelop the Robbins parking lot along Finlayson in Chinatown.
-Open the waterfront to the public. Pubs, pathway, restaurants.
-Do something with the Janion and the parking lots around it.
-Sorry but that Volvo garage has got to go. At least sell of half of the land for mixed use and keep the rest for the business. There would still be plenty of room.

I agree. Don't shorten the name.

[Nparker]

Let us not shorten every name down. I like Design District. It is a solid name.

I agree. Don't shorten the name.

Geez, I would have thought the "tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek" quality of my "suggestion" was rather obvious. I guess a sarcastic tone is not always evident in writing, but believe me, sarcasm was intended. For future reference I am NOT advocating the name "DeDi" for this area. In fact, I loathe the attempt to "manhattanize" part of old town with that ridiculous moniker "LoJo". Who the frak ever calls it that?

[G-Man]

^
Glad you were joking! It seems that every town is now doing this and it has become cheesey.

I think the garage could stay if it was developed to zero lot lines on the East and North side.

[Mike K.]

There are some amazing redevelopment opportunities in the 600-blocks of the district.

 

[Nparker]

There are some amazing redevelopment opportunities in the 600-blocks of the district.

From here through to Rock Bay has such potential, but I doubt it will see much development in my lifetime. 

[AllseeingEye]

From here through to Rock Bay has such potential, but I doubt it will see much development in my lifetime. 

Sadly (probably) too true; never understood why this part of "north downtown" was and has been allowed to get into such a dilapidated state - I am excluding the Rock Bay neighborhood which as everyone knows is undergoing the clean up process after a century + of being thoroughly polluted.

 

But just south of that, roughly from the zone between Douglas on the east extending across Government to Wharf street on the waterfront and "south" to Capital Iron, has become a no man's land of small ad hoc retail or commercial store-fronts, mixed in with seriously underutilized parking lots and a slough of crappy falling down buildings resulting in a disjointed and terribly haphazard mix of all of these uses. The area is a real sore spot IMO.

 

Cities like Vancouver or Calgary would've remediated and re-developed them in nano-seconds of course; for some reason that entire area has been allowed to slowly molder and decay here over many decades, and long after their "industrial" usage passed into history. I think it has lots of potential and could morph into something special but will take the political Vision and the Will to make something extraordinary happen. Unfortunately "Vision" is an attribute I only very rarely associate with Victoria.....

Edited by AllseeingEye, 06 March 2015 - 09:55 AM.

[Mike K.]

Redevelopment of this part of town will come, but for now nobody wants to pay top dollar along Rock Bay for a condo and nobody wants to engage the City in a multi year development approval process that may become obsolete once a cohesive development concept is created.

That area has awesome potential but realistically it's still two decades away from becoming the next "it" place to develop. 10 years ago the area around Hudson was bleak, now its pushing the downtown bookend and encouraging other developers to continue further north (the mixed use subsidized rental being the latest project). We'll start to see that west of Douglas once the design district starts to fill in, and it slowly is.

And really until the development community has a sense of what will happen on the BC Hydro site everything will be a gamble.

[29er Radio]

The next L,G,& E explores the potential in Rock Bay especially from a tax generating position. We break down how the
Atrium produces ten times the tax the land was generating before hand, and what that will look like for the site across from City hall. Next show we will get a better understanding of what value there is in all the parking lots in RB.

We don't have to wait for success, we can facilitate it. As an alternate to engaging with citizens on what they want to see in their neighbourhood, perhaps suggest to the owners in that neighbourhood that they can do whatever they want with their land as long as they create a value that will produce 10X or more in tax revenue from the existing use.

As an example and not to beat a dead horse, the St Andrews School site generates $1400 approx. a year in taxes. When
citizens say no, they are saying no to balanced budgets and vibrant cities. IMHO

[Mr Cook Street]

We don't have to wait for success, we can facilitate it. As an alternate to engaging with citizens on what they want to see in their neighbourhood, perhaps suggest to the owners in that neighbourhood that they can do whatever they want with their land as long as they create a value that will produce 10X or more in tax revenue from the existing use.

I've often wondered what the impact of much smaller infill projects are on the city's revenue. Something like 8 on the Park which puts eight condos where there was one SFH. Looking forward to listening!

[Nparker]

....As an example and not to beat a dead horse, the St Andrews School site generates $1400 approx. a year in taxes. When
citizens say no, they are saying no to balanced budgets and vibrant cities...

I do hope our new mayor keeps this in mind when the St. Andrew's proposal comes up again in the near future.

[thundergun]

I've often wondered what the impact of much smaller infill projects are on the city's revenue. Something like 8 on the Park which puts eight condos where there was one SFH. Looking forward to listening!

 

I'm also looking forward to listening. 29er - most of us can easily understand the revenue generated by these developments but have you ever looked into the increased costs with them, to find out the net impact? Most of the them are one-time costs like planning department salary/overhead allocations, inspections and potentially some capital costs like sewer upgrades, new sidewalks etc. You could estimate and amortize these costs over a standard useful building life (say 40 years) to come up with an average yearly benefit. I'm certain it's a net positive in every case but think it could be an interesting topic to discuss with subject matter experts.

[G-Man]

As an example and not to beat a dead horse, the St Andrews School site generates $1400 approx. a year in taxes. When
citizens say no, they are saying no to balanced budgets and vibrant cities. IMHO

You know this may be the first time that I have seen what a current undeveloped site generates in tax. It would be good for developers to state this in their presentations to the public. Here is what the City gets now here is what it may get in the future if they can develop the lot.

[Mike K.]

I don't think we should necessarily facilitate anything until we have a cohesive idea for that part of town. There's no point in rushing to develop the land if all we'll end up with are Regent Park towers and Manhattans (I'm alluding to their atrocious ground level treatment). We need design guidelines that encompass all properties and a locked in commitment from the City for what will and won't be approved. Currently the downtown plan and general development plans for nodes that so many worked so hard to create is being chucked when residents simply don't like what's being proposed despite it fitting in with the plan we have in place. Think St. Andrew's, think 212 Cook, etc.

 

So let's do Rock Bay right from the start and not end up (once again) with a patchwork of mistakes that we wish we hadn't approved just because and which we'll have to work around.

[29er Radio]

A plan will mean nothing to the owners or the users and it has a big chance of enabling a bunch of pie in the sky ideas
that will not be economically feasible. Most of the owners in rock bay don't need to do anything and wont do anything
unless it makes sense for them and their future generations. The banks and "tenants" wont do anything unless it makes
sense so reality already provides us with ways to ensure a development makes "sense" now and into the future.

[LJ]

Redevelopment of this part of town will come, but for now nobody wants to pay top dollar along Rock Bay for a condo and nobody wants to engage the City in a multi year development approval process that may become obsolete once a cohesive development concept is created.

That area has awesome potential but realistically it's still two decades away from becoming the next "it" place to develop. 10 years ago the area around Hudson was bleak, now its pushing the downtown bookend and encouraging other developers to continue further north (the mixed use subsidized rental being the latest project). We'll start to see that west of Douglas once the design district starts to fill in, and it slowly is.

And really until the development community has a sense of what will happen on the BC Hydro site everything will be a gamble.

Yeah, we need an event of some magnitude to get the area redeveloped, like the Olympics did for Vancouver.

What about making some of it into a movie, arts college, and computer graphics sort of area with sound stages and all phases of movie, TV show production? Something cohesive for the greater area.

[lanforod]

Convince the aquilinis to build a 12000 seat arena and move the Comets here...