An area's quiet rise; Downtown South was quickly embraced by urbanites, but that growth spurt has come with a price
Vancouver Sun
January 19, 2008 
By: Frances Bula

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's West End has always been the flagship symbol of dense urban life for Metro Vancouver. …

DIVERSITY DRAWS DENSITY

But Downtown South is also having its problems as the city, park board and schools scramble to provide services for the population explosion. …

Added to that, another strange thing happened: children started showing up in record numbers. Although city planners studiously insisted that developers build child-friendly places, everyone seems to have been surprised by the response. The latest census statistics showed there are around 600 children living in the area.

HIGH COST OF AMENITIES

….The city had planned to create 189 child-care spaces by last year. Only 74 had been created, while the waiting list for spaces throughout the downtown grew to 1,800 by last year.

The city had set a target of 688 units of social housing. Only 533 had been created.

In all, Ramslie concluded it would take around $80 million to provide the missing parks, child care, social housing, and street improvements this populous little area needed by 2021. In response, council approved a drastic 50-per-cent increase in the fees they charge developers to help pay for community amenities, up to $13 a square foot. But even the increased money doesn't solve all problems.

FINDING SOLUTIONS

Behind the scenes, staff have also been taking extraordinary measures to try to muscle in some of those services….

To create daycare spaces, the city's real-estate director, Mike Flanigan, has put a lot of pressure on developers to provide child care in their buildings. Henry Man of Magellan Developments is putting a 37-space daycare into his Atelier project at Homer and Robson.

Man admits he didn't really want to. In spite of the considerable reward of extra floor space the city gave his project in return for building the daycare, Man says nothing really makes up for the complications that a daycare in a building brings, from the endless meetings to the architectural redesign required to comply with, for examples, rules about hours of sunshine for the outdoor play space. And it's not even a marketing advantage, since he can't promise buyers with children will get a space in the daycare, while buyers without children may be put off by the idea of a unit near what they fear will be a noisy area.

But Flanigan and his staff talked him into it. "At the end of the day, they were persistent."

However, even the real-estate department can't work its magic with the schools. The school built at the eastern end of the peninsula, Elsie Roy, has achieved the dubious distinction of being the only public school in the Lower Mainland, possibly in North America, where parents camp out overnight just to get their kids a spot in the regular kindergarten program.

The province's education ministry is refusing to build the other elementary school planned for the area at International Village, saying there are empty spots in nearby Strathcona, on the other side of Main and Hastings -- an option unlikely to entice people who moved downtown so they wouldn't have to commute.

Gilda Philps, the head of the parent committee at Elsie Roy, says local realtors tell her the school crunch is a major factor. "Families are leery because of the school. If they can't get in, they're not sure they want to move here."…