Re: "Developers profit under byzantine zoning policies," Aug. 17.
Along with Courier columnist Tom Sandborn, I believe that developers are as frustrated by the funding extractions of DCL/ CAC as development watchers are.
However, developers have the resources to extract maximum benefits. At the same time, local community residents possess little ability to monitor what is happening, and they see almost nothing in the purported paybacks that planners and politicians so love to herald.
Here are two specific instances from the Norquay area of East Vancouver: the massive 404-unit King Edward Village at Kingsway and Knight generated a CAC of $251,328. The large 129-unit development underway at 2667-2703 Kingsway generated a CAC of $105,846. That latter sum went toward only a part of the cost of mitigating the shadow that the new 12 storeys would cast over a daycare facility immediately to the north.
Compare these supposed CAC benefits with the cost of a single unit from the two developments-obviously some pitiful fraction of one per cent. That amount does not begin to cover the impacts of the additional density on existing residents. Nor does that funding provide any significant amenity for the newcomers. This joke of a system continues to stripmine livability out of Vancouver. Developer profitability seems to make out fine, despite the whines. And the politicians that the developers fund just keep on getting re-elected.
Joseph Jones, Vancouver
