What To Do With The Downtown Eastside

Is it a necessary revitalization strategy for a wonderful community or an unrealistic plan that doesn’t address the deplorable realities of the Downtown Eastside? It depends on who you talk to in the city. (Opinions are like nostrils, everyone's got them and one of them is right.)

The city released the Downtown Eastside Local Area Plan in late February, and now it is set to go to city council Wednesday for a vote. The plan calls for just over $1B in new spending (the province and the federal government would put up half), a large part of it for social housing--over 4,400 units, over 30 years. The plan also calls for substantive revitalization work in all the sub-areas, like a continued transition to a mixed-used area in Thornton Park and the Viaducts, a zoning review of Railtown along E Cordova and Powell--to accommodate more office use--and implementing the Chinatown Economic Revitalization Strategy.

Do you keep the area as a low-income community, or do you change more from within, in part, by inviting in condo developers? What happens to the people there, if you over-develop in that direction? There’s plenty of debate about the plan and what to do with the economically distressed, crime-riddled area of the city (over 18,000 residents, 67% low income). From a commercial real estate perspective, opportunities through the plan are plentiful, says Vancouver’s assistant director of planning Kevin McNaney.

The DTES plan seeks to revitalize key neighbourhood shopping areas, including local serving shops and services on Hastings Street, Kevin says. The plan also “seeks to encourage new commercial development” in the heritage areas like Gastown (maybe they could make it Hybridtown), China, and Japantown. The initiatives provide developers the chance to work with local business improvement associations to create a commercial mix “appropriate to each of the neighbourhoods in the Downtown Eastside,” he says.

In addition to retail, the plan seeks to create new employment opportunities through the rehabilitation of heritage office space and through the intensification of the industrial lands adjacent to the Port. We shall see what happens at council Wednesday. Snapped are street shots in and around the Downtown Eastside, taken this past weekend, including the 100-year-old Regent Hotel on Hastings Street E (top).