Vancouver city council approves Goh Ballet's 25-storey student housing tower, overriding planners

Rendering of application for rezoning of 2345-2349 Main Street. Photo by City of Vancouver

Article content

Vancouver city council has set aside its planners’ advice and approved, in principle, the Goh Ballet’s plan for a 25-storey student housing tower on Main Street.

Article content

With an amendment from Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung, council struck a staff recommendation to send the project back for more work, and instead approved the rezoning application subject to conditions, including a requirement that the 305-student-housing units be owned or leased by a public, post-secondary institution. The project will also require further review and work with city staff before any building can proceed.

Article content

Article content

Article content

City planners had recommended against approving the tower, warning the lot at Main Street and East 8th Avenue is too small to properly hold a building that size — a “conspicuously tall building out of scale with the low-scale Main Street Village context,” the staff report said.

Article content

Article content

The rezoning can’t take effect unless council also approves, at a future public hearing, the heritage designation of the century-old former Royal Bank of Canada building on the site.

Article content

The site on Main Street in Mount Pleasant has been for years the two-storey home of the Goh Ballet Academy. The academy has partnered with developer Westbank and is proposing a 25-storey building that would have 315 dormitory-like student housing units, each with a private bathroom and kitchenette. The proposal would also preserve the bank’s century-old heritage facade — but staff said it does on a lot too small to properly hold a tower. Staff recommended council shouldn’t approve the application this week, but instead refer it back to staff to “explore other alternatives to develop the site.”

Article content

Around 10 of the units, on the lower floors, would be set aside for Goh Ballet students, teachers and choreographers.

Article content

Article content

Handout photo of the Goh Ballet’s production of the Nutcracker from 2023 performed at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver. Photo by David Cooper /Submitted

Article content

Coun. Lisa Dominato, who seconded the motion and has long pushed for student housing, said the century-old building no longer works for the academy — describing dancers putting out buckets to catch water dripping through the ceiling. The tower, she said, would give the school a modern home a block from the future Broadway subway line, well-placed for student housing.

Article content

Article content

Coun. Pete Fry repeated some of the staff’s concerns about unit sizes, shadowing, parking and loading, but he voted in support after seeking more clarity from staff about the conditions attached to the approval.

Article content

The site sits in Main Street Village, an area the Broadway plan “generally does not consider rezoning applications” for, staff wrote, “in order to retain the low-rise shopping village character.” The Goh Ballet proposal asked council to make an exception.

Article content

Staff said the lot is too small for a tower. Its frontage of about 19 metres is less than half the 46 metres the Broadway plan requires, the site has no rear lane and the design leaves no room for the setbacks that let neighbouring properties redevelop. Without assembling adjacent lots, staff said they could support only a six-storey building.