Why Tall Buildings Don’t Matter to Pedestrians - The 1520 Blanshard Street Proposal
I was recently at the Community Association Land Use Committee meeting (CALUC) for the new building proposed at 1520 Blanshard. It was a good meeting and a very interesting proposal. What struck me, having not gone to a CALUC meeting in a number of years, was how congenial it was. That’s not to say that there were not some critical questions regarding the proposal, but the questions were more restrained and polite than I would have expected. The proposal at 1520 Blanshard from Reliance Properties, is for what would be the tallest building on Vancouver Island at 35 storeys. A proposal of this height would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago. And yet here we were gathered to politely ask questions about it before it can be referred to City Hall for review. There were questions about why this height; what about parking; how blasting might affect a nearby heritage building, but no outright heckling. It made me hopeful that there is a growing understanding that once you get above a certain height the negative impacts on the ground level and surrounding buildings are the same (but the positive impacts can still increase). That building a building taller than 10 storeys will create the same shadows on the streets below as a 35 storey building. I have written about this topic before, but I thought the proposal of a new tallest building warranted going over it again.
Just to orient you to this proposal in case you haven’t seen it before, One Victoria Place, as it is being called by Reliance Properties, is located on the east side of a block in downtown Victoria. The property is bounded by Cormorant to the north, Blanshard to the east, Pandora to the south and a mid-block walkway to the west. The mid-block walkway is the one created next to the great Franc D’Ambrosio building, 750 Pandora. If you were to go down to this property now, you would find a diminutive modernist building called Rotherham Place. If it wasn’t such a colossally bad use of land, I would almost be calling for its preservation due to the incredibly poor, but interesting public spaces you find here. The actual foot print of the building is pretty small and it is surounded on multiple levels by public space. It sounds like something I should like, but if you have ever read any of my articles on ground floors (one of my favorites) you would know that ground floor office is one of the worst, as it provides almost nothing to the street to encourage people to want to be next to it. In between Rotherham Place and 750 Pandora is likely one of the largest public plazas downtown. It literally never has anyone in it. Even after the work that was done to encourage people to move into the plaza from the mid-block walkway, it remains almost always empty even on sunny days. This is really too bad because its location is conducive to getting some great light. As I have said many times before though, for a public space to be successful, it needs to give people a reason to go there, and there needs to be enough people nearby that need somewhere to go. It is failing in both of the key regards.
One Victoria Place actually plans to maintain a plaza in roughly the same location on the property though it will be a little smaller and it would be at ground level. Additionally, the plan would be for commercial food service space surrounding the new square. Within the proposed space are some large rocks for kids to clamber over. All of this solves the first issue I raised above which is giving people a reason to use the space, the building itself would actually go a long way to solving the second one of providing enough people that need the space. With a proposed height of 35 storeys, a floor / space ratio of 7.8:1, and a total of 321 units, this building will be home to almost a 1000 people. With that many people living above the plaza, it would go a long way to creating some vibrancy that once established would draw in more people. I know, that 35 storeys is quite tall. Certainly for Victoria, where the current tallest building is just 24 storeys (and even that one has only been there for a few years), this is a significant increase. I am not in favour of tall buildings everywhere, but I do think that height when appropriate based on use and design should be considered. This location is already planned to have a building at the same height as the tallest building at 24 storeys based on the Official Community Plan, (OCP) so a tall building will end up here regardless. That leads to asking what do we get for allowing an additional 11 storeys and a little more density, and what do we lose.
There are four main impacts that people will cite when speaking about new projects (Parking, Shadows, Context and Skyline), for the purposes of this article where I am looking at impacts on pedestrians, I am just going to talk about shadows and context. The information on the development site and on the Dev Tracker has more information on all aspects of the project.
When it comes to shadows, this is a very real and perceptible impact of buildings on the streetscape. When you walk downtown on a sunny day it is still likely that you will be walking in shadows half the time. It is also true that a bigger building will have a bigger shadow because that is just science, but the impact of that shadow lessons after just a few storeys for the person on the ground. If you are walking on the sidewalk next to a 10 storey building or a 25 storey building, the shadow will be the same. The further away, the more likely that a taller building’s shadow will be falling on other buildings, rather than a sidewalk. For this project you can view both of the shadow studies in the Dev Tracker linked above, but I have included one of them below. Just so you can understand what you are looking at, the yellow is the shadow of the approved building height, whereas the orange shows the additional height of this building above what is approved. The green is the proposed city park space on Blanshard. As you can see the additional height here has little impact when looked at from the pedestrian perspective.
As to context, a common issue that is raised is that a new building doesn’t fit within the context or ‘fabric’ of the city. This is often cited for proposals where there is a shift in use like commercial to residential or where the surrounding area has a significant heritage aspect to it. While there are some heritage buildings near this location, the current building is not respecting that context. And as I stated before the public space included with the current building is not welcoming and thus not used. When you look at the current building from Blanshard Street, it might be even worse than the empty public space. With imposing government buildings on both sides of the street, and no ground floor commercial, you can almost feel the vitality of the city being sucked out of the space. The proposed building, in my opinion actually improves on the context of the street through additional ground floor commercial along Blanshard and a pedestrian access walkway through to the plaza halfway along the block. Another piece of context is form and material and again we see in this proposal the use of bricks and stone, both of which seem to like the building to other aspects of Victoria’s built form. The podium of the building, that stands at six storeys, links it in height to the surrounding built form, from the pedestrian perspective. Overall, based on the plans I have seen, I think this project, will be a significant positive to Victoria. There is more though.
In addition to the large public plaza and other public space improvements surrounding the building, the proponent is making other contributions in exchange for the height and density. As I have written about before, Reliance Properties owns 780 Blanshard, that is home to the Rockslide Studios Gallery. As you know if you read that piece, I think that Rockslide could be the single most important cultural asset the city has. While it has not been confirmed to me, the developer alluded to Rockslide in the CALUC presentation, saying that they will make a financial contribution to help find a permanent home for Rockslide. I am hopeful that as this project moves along, we will see a deal between the City of Victoria, Reliance Properties and the society that runs Rockslide, to transfer 780 Blanshard to them on a permanent basis. It would be a cultural coup on a massive scale and really help solidify the rebirth of Victoria as an artist’s city. I have my fingers crossed and if it comes to fruition while also creating homes for 1000 people and building a brand new vibrant plaza, I think that we will have made a great deal for the city. That all said, I would love to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments! Also if you are reading this on the day it comes out, February 23rd, you still have time to let the City know what you think about this project at the pre-application stage (Click here). If it makes it through this stage, there will be many more opportunities to share your thoughts as well.