The future redevelopment of the TransLink-owned Oakridge Transit Centre (OTC) site at 949 West 41st is the subject of two upcoming open houses.
The property is zoned for single-family use but has been used as a transit centre since 1948. Prior to the opening of the transit centre, it was used as an army barracks. Today, the site is an operations and maintenance facility, primarily for vehicle maintenance, commissioning and decommissioning, as well as for storage of retired buses, according to Derrick Cheung, TransLink’s VP, Strategic Sourcing and Real Estate.
“We expect these services to be redistributed among the newer facilities in the winter of 2016,” he said in an email to the Courier.
The open houses are part of a City of Vancouver planning process leading to a policy statement, which will guide redevelopment of the 13.8-acre property. The OTC is located not far from Oakridge Centre mall, which is slated for massive redevelopment.
Brian Jackson, the city’s manager of planning and development, said the policy statement is necessary because it’s a large site.
“We think it will be predominantly residential, but beyond that, in terms of heights or densities and whether there will be any commercial uses, that’s the purpose of these first open houses — to determine the comments from the public and what they would like to see on the property,” he said. “We’ve never signaled to the applicant that we were supportive of towers in this location. Certainly, we could see mid-rise buildings in this area.”
Jackson said the city wants to see open space as part of the redevelopment and it won’t be nearly as dense as what’s planned for Oakridge Centre. “We are looking for a significantly less dense type of development on the bus barn site than we ever saw on Oakridge.”
Since nearby residents have for decades been dealing with noxious uses of the property, in terms of buses, Jackson suspects they may be looking forward to a change.
“But, of course, the scale of change will be of concern to them and the interface between what is being proposed on the site and development to the north, west and east,” he said.
The city expects to bring forward concepts for redevelopment in early 2015.
“I don’t see this as being a complicated site just because of its location. It’s really going to come down to the type and density of the residential that’s being proposed here and then the types of community amenities that can be delivered as part of the development application because TransLink isn’t going to develop it. Once they get the policy statement in place, they will likely turn around and either sell or lease the property,” Jackson said.
When asked what the land is worth and what TransLink plans to do with the property once the policy statement is approved, Cheung stated: “The Policy Statement is a vision or framework for land use, density and character of not only this property, but the larger community and it will be informed by public consultation led by the City of Vancouver. We believe the property will have more value if a vision for the community is more certain, but the last assessed value of the property in 2013 was for $72 million.”
The first open house is June 8 from 12-4 at VanDusen Garden Visitor Centre at 5251 Oak St. A second one June 12 is set for 5:30 to 8 p.m. at VanDusen Garden Floral Hall.
