With a clean cut of red ribbon, the West Cambie Childrens Centre was opened Thursday morning, the final piece to the Remy facility at Cambie and Garden City roads.
The development, lauded for its dedication to creating a mixed-use and mixed-income building with both affordable housing and senior-specific units, has been turning over keys to new homeowners since the beginning of March.
Theres been a lot of change in the perception of a community, said Dana Westermark, president of developer Oris Consulting Ltd. The West Cambie neighbourhood developed primarily as a residential area, so there was a need for services.
Rather than separate these services into a separate commercial quadrant, its better to integrate them throughout the neighbourhood.
The inclusion of a daycare facility was an added value for young families in the development and surrounding neighbourhood, according to Westermark.
In addition, a grocery store will soon be built across the street.
So its going back to that old style of neighbourhoods where everything is in the one area.
The City of Richmonds Affordable Housing Strategy ensures when a development is built with more than 88 units, five per cent of them have to be affordable.
With anything less than 88, developers can instead contribute money to an affordable housing fund.
Dana was one of the first developers to put some pressure on this, said affordable housing advocate De Whalen.
Some developers were building only 85 units, so they didnt need to include affordable housing.
Whalen also pointed to the fact that in certain situations, developers choose to pool the required units together in a separate, off-site location.
Such is the case with the Kiwanis Towers project, where the Richmond Kiwanis Senior Citizens Housing Society partnered with Polygon Homes to replace deteriorating seniors homes with five separate towers.
Two of the towers will house the seniors now displaced by the renovation.
The Kiwanis Towers falls under a new policy enacted by city council, the affordable housing special development circumstance.
To be able to segregate housing, developments must adhere to specific eligibility requirements. Some of these criteria include securing rents below the Affordable Housing Strategy rents for low-end market rental units and targeting a specific population such as seniors.
With Kiwanis, the seniors housing development has been prioritized and is expected to be built before the market-value units, according to the city.
But for Whalen, these projects defeat the purpose of integrating affordable housing units.
These high-priced places have few seniors, no children or young families, she said. Its practically an exclusionary, gated community. The city is doing as much as they possibly can, but theres still an unbalance.
With Remy, a mixed social environment is encouraged and the new daycare facility adds to this mandate.
Besides creating a truer sense of community and diversity, it also lessens the impact on the environment.
Daycares by nature are small, two-storey buildings so itd be an inefficient use of land to just have it standing alone, said Westermark.
In addition, Remy uses the Alexandra District Energy Utilitys geothermal energy to heat and cool the building, which costs the same as using electricity and gas, according to Westermark.
It was also built using wood, a renewable resource though a point of controversy in 2011 when a fire burned the construction site to the ground.
Westermark assures the current building is fitted with modern fire safety and an integrated sprinkler system comparable to any concrete building.
The development has 258 suites in total, 33 are affordable housing units and 48 are to be rented at near-market rental rates for seniors.
Westermark exceeded the five per cent requirement, however, most developers do not.
The five per cent requirement is quite low compared to other communities, which Ive heard go up to about 15 or 20 per cent, said Whalen.
But the amount of required affordable housing versus development is a balancing act for the city.
Id compare the outcomes in those other municipalities to see how many units are being produced, said a city spokesperson.
We have a more aggressive affordable housing strategy.
Since 2007, 1,697 affordable units have been secured.
