Jericho Lands development passes new hurdle to help First Nations secure construction financing

Vancouver City Council has unanimously approved the Official Development Plan (ODP) supporting the long-term Jericho Lands development in West Point Grey.

The decision was made today, after City Council heard from approximately 70 public speakers last week.

From the outset, it was noted that the new ODP is not a necessary step in the municipal government’s processes, but it was a request of MST Partnership, the for-profit real estate company wholly owned by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

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Optional step of ODP provides better certainty to pursue construction loans

Converting the prescriptions and stipulations of the Policy Statement into the legal framework of the ODP provides a greater degree of certainty, helping to secure the substantial construction financing needed for a project of this scale.

After years of consultation and planning, the Policy Statement was approved by City Council in January 2024.

Typically, the City only requires the creation of a Policy Statement for large neighbourhood-size projects. The Policy Statement is essentially a general land use master plan that guides the design of the rezoning applications. The ODP is an optional extra step.

“The ODP was prepared at the request of the MST Partnership who have indicated to us that the policy statement wasn’t sufficient certainty for them to approach lenders to secure financing, to progress the project. In other words, to borrow money against the value of the land,” Matt Shillito, the director of special projects for the City of Vancouver, told City Council during today’s public meeting.

“They asked for a bylaw that established the development rights, land uses and floor spaces intensities and development obligations so that they can present them to lenders with certainty that that’s the development obligations and rights across the whole site and in order for them to secure funding or financing.”

The 90-acre project — redeveloping largely undeveloped lands that were previously used for as a military garrison — will introduce 13,000 new homes for up to 24,000 residents and at least 500,000 sq. ft. of commercial office, retail, restaurant, and creative industrial uses for a total of about 13.6 million sq. ft. of building floor area.

There will be low-, mid-, and high-rise buildings, including dozens of towers up to 49 storeys. About 50 per cent of the housing will be in building under 18 storeys, and roughly 35 per cent of the buildings will use mass-timber or wood-frame construction.

As the First Nations intend to own the Jericho Lands in perpetuity, the only ownership housing option available in the development will be leasehold strata, which is expected to be the primary housing tenure. This includes 3,500 “attainable” leasehold strata units.

Other tenures include setting aside 20 per cent of the Jericho Lands’ residential floor area for social housing, equivalent to about 2,600 units, and 10 per cent for secured purpose-built rental housing, with below-market rental housing accounting for at least 25 per cent of the overall rental housing component.

As a public benefit, it is expected the First Nations can financially achieve 16 per cent of the social housing component, equivalent to about 2,000 units. The generation of all 2,600 social housing units requires funding from the provincial and/or federal governments. If this is not possible, the Policy Statement and ODP provide some flexibility for the remaining units to be achieved as secured purpose-built rental housing or additional attainable home ownership.

SkyTrain to UBC “given it’s like a small city in itself”

Following today’s ODP approval, the next step to advance the Jericho Lands project will be the submission of the rezoning applications, with separate applications expected to be submitted for the various phases spread over the coming decades.

Last week, MST and City officials noted that construction on the first phase, entailing 4,000 homes, could begin in 2028, with the first buildings reaching completion in 2032 and the last buildings of the initial phase finishing in 2036. The first phase is located on the western end of the site, with the subsequent phases generally progressing from west to east.

The approved significant building density, heights, and uses is based on the expectation that the SkyTrain extension of the Millennium Line from Arbutus to the University of British Columbia (UBC) will be built, which could provide an on-site station within the western side of the site, and a secondary station nearby to the east of the property at the intersection of Alma Street and West Broadway.

The First Nations will provide space for the on-site station, and potential temporary usage of the grounds for the SkyTrain project’s construction staging and storage requirements, such as possible space for a tunnel boring launch pit, for example.

However, if the SkyTrain extension is significantly delayed or not built after the first phase, it could force a review of the permitted densities, uses, parking, and road network, given that a substantial portion of the transportation demand is intended to be met by the Millennium Line extension.

Currently, the provincial government is working behind the scenes in developing the business case to support the SkyTrain extension, including the recent completion of geotechnical borehole testing along the route. In January 2024, Premier David Eby also identified the UBC SkyTrain extension as a priority project.

“There have been many plans and many discussions about the future of rapid transit for UBCx to go out all the way out to the university campus. That is a vision for the city and its next stage that I think is incredibly important,” said ABC city councillor Mike Klassen during the meeting.

“This project at the Jericho Lands is one of the most important. It underpins really the importance and the necessity of making sure that that rapid transit gets built. It’s not lost on me that we are building a city and growing a city, and by adding more housing, we are also putting pressure on existing amenities,” continued Klassen.

ABC city councillor Lisa Dominato added, “Our staff touched on the fact that while it’s not decided that there will be an extension to UBC, I am quite confident that that will come through. I think there will be a solid business case. I can’t imagine not having rapid transit to UBC given it’s like a small city in itself. ”

Creation of the added “new city centre” of the Jericho Lands

In 2023/2024 dollars, the total public benefits and infrastructure package of the Jericho Lands is worth about $1.3 billion, with the social housing component alone accounting for over half of this figure. Other public benefits include over 30 acres of public park and open spaces, air space for a future new additional public elementary school operated by Vancouver School Board for up to 550 students, childcare facilities for 259 young kids, after-school care facilities for 240 kids, a 15,000 sq. ft. arts and cultural space, a non-traditional Indigenous learning library, a 50,000 sq. ft. community centre, an expansion of a local fire station, and various street-related and utilities upgrades.

Dominato says when full built out, the Jericho Lands is effectively the creation of a “new city centre, but a city centre that will have [community] services” and amenities.

“It’s not simply, ‘let’s throw up some housing and it’s going to have other services and retail and office,” she said.

During the proceedings, it was noted that if a financial contribution is required by MST for the SkyTrain extension, in addition to the in-kind contribution of the provision of land for a station, it could impact the project’s ability to achieve other public benefits.

MST will also work with West Point Grey Academy (WPGA) — an independent Kindergarten to Grade 12 school that has had its home on the Jericho Lands since the 1990s, and carries an enrolment of about 1,000 students — to establish a new facility for the school in the development.

To address the concerns expressed by City Council last week over WPGA’s future, as a “commercial” tenant designation had been proposed by the First Nations, Shillito said WPGA will be classified as an institutional use in the ODP, which includes schools in the City’s zoning and development bylaw.

The ODP review and approval process was originally intended to be a straightforward, carbon-copy approval of the previously endorsed Policy Statement. However, for critics and opponents of the project, it became a renewed opportunity to voice their concerns — chiefly focused on the immense scale of the proposed development within a traditionally low-density neighbourhood, and the required new and improved amenities to support the new residential population.

“The way it potentially imposes on views has been talked about a lot, but we don’t know what that feeling of that experience is going to be out on the ground. And I think that some of the concerns that have been stated around shadowing, I think are a bit overstated. I think that this will be designed into an absolutely world-class, beautiful community,” said Klassen.

Green city councillor Pete Fry asserted that future generations will view the Jericho Lands project as a demonstration of foresight and long-term vision.

“I think when people do look back on this in 30 years from now, it will make perfect sense because it will be part of the larger fabric of our city and the kind of ways that we are moving towards living in cities, which are more dense, compact environments, have better access to green space within walking distance, and try and do stuff that can minimize our carbon footprint, while accelerating the use of mass transit, which this project will do as it achieves that UBCx line hopefully faster than it would if we did not pursue this,” said Fry.

About a decade ago, the three First Nations partnered with federal Crown corporation Canada Lands Company to acquire both the Jericho Lands and Heather Lands sites from the federal government to pursue long-term redevelopment opportunities.

Unlike the Jericho Lands, the partnership did not pursue an ODP for the Heather Lands project — only a Policy Statement was created for the redevelopment of the 21-acre former BC RCMP headquarters campus, situated just west of Queen Elizabeth Park. Construction on the project began in 2024, beginning with site preparation and demolition.

Upon completion, the Heather Lands will generate approximately 2,600 homes, including nearly 1,700 leasehold strata units, over 500 social housing units, and 400 secured purpose-built rental housing units.

Both the Jericho Lands and Heather Lands are owned by the First Nations under freehold title and should not be mistaken for reserve lands, such as the Squamish Nation’s Senakw project. However, these developments — and the broader flexibilities granted by the City of Vancouver — are also widely viewed as a step toward reconciliation.

“I think it behooves us to think back even a hundred years ago to when there was a significant displacement of the Indigenous people who were here, why this reconciliation matters, what this does mean, and why we see projects like Senakw moving forward as a form of reconciliation and recognizing that I think they were euphemistically referred to as squatters,” said Fry.

“And those squatters were actually villages and Indigenous people who had lived here on these lands for generations and hundreds of years, thousands of years. So when we talk about change, I can only think about the seven generations and looking back at what the change must’ve been like for folks who were on this land first and experienced these momentous changes… So change is the one constant we can expect in this life.”

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• City of Vancouver to turn Jericho Lands project into an Official Development Plan
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