City council has scaled down a proposed 11-storey tower at East Broadway and Fraser to eight storeys by chopping off the market rental housing component of the predominantly social housing building.

At a July 20 council meeting, Vision Coun. Raymond Louie amended city staff's recommendation, saying the city should continue to explore providing 24 rental apartments within the eight-storey configuration. But he said reducing the building height from 11 storeys to eight balanced the concerns of neighbours who attended three long nights of hearings to express their dismay with the scale of the building and the number of social housing units proposed for their area and the need to provide more social housing in the city.

The development on the rezoned city-owned site will include 103 subsidize apartments, most of them for people who've been homeless or living in substandard housing. Thirty units would be for youth aged 16 to 24, and the squat Broadway Youth Resource Centre that occupies the corner will double in size, with multiple service agencies working at the site.

NPA Coun. Suzanne Anton and COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth wanted the controversial 11-storey building that included rental units to go ahead.

"Council completely failed," said Anton, the lone NPA representative on city council. "Their priorities around rental housing are so skewed as to be completely wrong."

She wonders why the city would consider giving relaxations to private developers who want to construct rental towers of 20 storeys and more in the West End, yet not allow an 11-storey tower with publicly owned rental units that would be operated by a non-profit in Mount Pleasant.

Woodsworth didn't like the design of the 11-storey building drawn up by local architectural firm Neale Staniszkis Doll Adams, but she emphasized the need for both subsidized and rental apartments in the city.

Both Woodsworth and Anton argued the location along the bustling transit corridor could handle the extra height.

"Dunbar," repeated a man in council chambers as Anton made this point Tuesday, referring to Anton's neighbourhood which has only low-rise buildings.

The draft Mount Pleasant Community Plan calls for taller buildings in the Uptown area around East Broadway and Kingsway, with a lower height of six storeys at Fraser.

Greg Scarborough, one of the Mount Pleasant Neighbours group that opposed the magnitude of the project, said its members are unhappy with council's decision.

The group wanted a smaller development, with say 50 units of mixed social housing on the site.

"[Reducing the height] was a bit of a smokescreen, really, to us, because they knew that they were unlikely to be able to build the top three floors anyway," Scarborough said.

Brent Toderian, director of planning for the city, said July 20 that the provincial government has been encouraging but has made no commitment to funding the market rental portion of the project.

Dennis Carr, assistant director of social infrastructure for the city, said the problem is that B.C. Housing is targeting homelessness, not mixed-income housing.

The province has paid the development costs to date, with reportedly no money for a redesign that could reintroduce rental units down the road.

crossi@vancourier.com