TransLink parking lot rolls over Marpole residents
Mark Hasiuk
Vancouver Courier
Friday, January 30, 2009
Last Monday, in a cramped, stuffy conference room at city hall, the development permit board held a public meeting. Approximately 40 concerned residents, mainly middle-aged and senior citizens from Marpole, sat shoulder-to-shoulder on plastic chairs, while the three-member board--and a handful of advisers and bureaucrats--sat comfortably around a large wooden table.
A single item graced the agenda: TransLink wants to build a five-acre parking lot next to the Vancouver Transit Centre at 9149 Hudson St. in Marpole, a stone's throw from the Fraser River.
Board member Brent Toderian, the city's director of planning, outlined TransLink's application, before TransLink's Bill Orr--a bookish, bespectacled man in a blue business suit--addressed the board. With his back to the glaring eyes of the gallery, Orr mumbled an inaudible greeting into the mic and was quickly interrupted.
"Louder! Speak up!" shouted a grey-haired man from the gallery. Orr shifted in his seat and continued his muted presentation before Toderian speared the elephant in the room. "Why aren't more of your staff taking buses?" Toderian asked.
After scant applause from the gallery, Orr explained--in barely audible tones--TransLink's commitment to public transit. We give our employees transit passes, he said, which are used by roughly 30 per cent of the 1, 200 employees at the centre in Marpole. "But," he added, "we have a shortfall of staff parking."
Following TransLink's presentation, several members of the gallery approached the giant wooden table and popped their "ps" into a skinny microphone.
"Don't let TransLink expand here," pleaded a grey-haired woman. "In my Marpole, my favourite neighbourhood."
Mr. Cowie, an elderly man with impeccable manners, argued that the Marpole waterfront could "be better than False Creek." He brought visual aids outlining his vision, which did not include a new five-acre parking lot. "I'll just leave these here," he said, placing two pieces of Bristol board on the wooden table. "In case you want to look at them later."
The board members stared blankly at Mr. Cowie, who thanked them for their time.
Terry Slack, a retired commercial fisherman and volunteer with the Fraser River Coalition, launched into a crowd-pleasing tirade that strained the boardroom sound system. "This project does nothing for the river. It actually erodes it," he thundered. "This project respects absolutely nothing!"
Midway through the meeting, a dishevelled middle-aged man wearing a coat, toque and backpack strolled through the front door of the third floor meeting room. Police, he announced in a well-rehearsed statement, turfed him from a city park, leaving his pet rabbits alone and in peril. "This is about the lives of sweet pets, who are intelligent," he said.
The gallery looked on, unfazed--a testament to the ubiquitous nature of homelessness in Vancouver--and the man left quietly at the request of board chair Chris Warren.
After more than two hours of discussion, the board unanimously approved TransLink's application to build a five-acre parking lot next to the Vancouver Transit Centre in Marpole. The board politely tolerated protests from the community, before giving TransLink exactly what it wanted.
Toderian thanked the "well-meaning folks" who shared their views, but noted that the city is running out of "land area we have left to do these unpopular things."
Surprisingly, the decision elicited no outrage from gallery members, who moments earlier displayed astonishing vigor. As they dispersed, there was little chatter. They played their role, in what Shakespeare called the "insolence of office," and now they were going home.
"It was absolutely predictable," said Wendy Turner, in the hallway outside the conference room. "The powers and institutions form the conclusions."
Turner, a retired schoolteacher and volunteer with the Eburne Lands Committee, said she'd keep fighting for the environment. And with a tired smile, she acknowledged the irony of a transit company expanding its employee parking lot.
"And if they need the land," she said. "They'll expand again."
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