by Scott Daniel | A couple of weeks ago on CBC Radio, former Planning Director Larry Beasley – a guy who gets a lot of credit for re-making Vancouver into a dense, urban forest of “liveable” towers, podiums, and parks and as a result gets a condo tower named after him – declared “we have a new downtown to plan in the Flats.”

The False Creek Flats have already been reclaimed from the ocean.  Now it looks like they’ll be reclaimed from an intense century of industrial widget-making.  It’s a huge area, almost half the size of downtown proper, stretching east-west from Clark to Main Street, and north-south from Prior to Great Northern Way.
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The City planned to make this a high-tech hub back when it was the thing to do, but since that bubble burst, there’s a diverse range of land uses on the table.

• Keep some industrial jobs. Good idea.
• Keep the fish and food processing nearby to feed the city. Yes.
• More residential to relieve population pressures. Okay.
• An omnibus University and a brewery. Intriguing.
• A new north-south rail corridor. Makes sense when you look at it.
• VPD firing range? Done and done.

Not unlike the Dude’s rug, the old Finning lands really tie the Flats together. Finning Skytrain Station is the logical next stop riding west from VCC-Clark. Someday soon, Finning will serve students on their way to a Great Northern Way (GNW) Super University.

GNW Campus: We’ll Always Have Venice

Finning (HQ in Vancouver…who knew?) donated the GNW land to four universities: UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, and BCIT. They’re pooling resources to create the Great Northern Way Campus, which will probably be the Flats’ biggest draw. Over the past few years, they’ve been kicking around concepts for the campus including an intriguing departure from the city grid.

BCIT already has drawings for a new Centre For Digital Media on the site.  The architecture is meant to express Technology (the obvious choice) and provincialism’s handsome cousin “Regionalism” (i.e. it uses wood) and will include space for student housing (Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership (MCM) Architects).

If they go for the island concept, it will build momentum for “daylighting” creeks and salmon streams, such as China and Brewery creeks, which are both currently buried under the Flats (City of Vancouver).

City councillor Andrea Reimer argues that digging up the creeks is consistent with the Greenest City goals and that daylighting Eastside salmon streams will bring the waterfront back to East Van, increase property values, and lead to new amenities for the area.

Red Truck: A Mega-Micro Brew?

And while we’re speaking of big ideas, Red Truck Brewing Co. is looking to make a splash on the Flats with a new mixed-use industrial, commercial, office building. The plans are for a 70,000 sq. foot flagship “urban” brewery attached to an 8 storey office/manufacturing space (Ankeman Marchand Architects).

The City intends to make the area a sustainable Energy Precinct, building on the Olympic Village precedent by creating local energy utilities that conserve, produce, and distribute energy on a neighbourhood scale. Clearly, the Flats are the next big thing for Vancouver and will be a focal point for the Green agenda.