Resident group calls for more consultation on First Nations plans for Jericho site

A group of residents in West Point Grey is calling for the city and three local First Nations to hit the reset button on plans for a new community on the site of the Jericho Lands.

Last fall, MST Partnership, a development company formed by the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, released a pair of conceptual plans for the site.

Both concepts call for several uses and sizes of buildings, including some residential towers up to 38-storeys tall.

“This is a battle for the soul of Vancouver. And it’s about towers, it’s not about one location,” said Bill Tieleman, spokesman for a group of residents calling themselves the Jericho Coalition. “It’s about towers all over the city and development all over the city. And developers are winning right now.”

In this case, those developers are the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations who have been stewards of this land for thousands of years.

Along with Canada Lands Company, a federal government agency, they co-own the 90-acre parcel of underdeveloped land.

The draft plans they have made public show homes for close to 20,000 residents in the community, which could also have its own stop on a possible future extension of the Broadway Subway to UBC.

“Transportation and density are the ways we can make more housing and more affordability in the region,” said economist Tom Davidoff, who teaches at UBC’s Sauder School of Business.

The Jericho Coalition says there are a number of reasons it opposes the plans in their current form.

The group has released its own artistic renderings which aim to show the impact the development could have on existing views.

They have also raised the issue the proposed towers could cast long shadows on Jericho Beach Park at certain times of the day in the winter months.

“Keep it down to a maximum of eight stories, an average of six stories, do lots of infill housing,” said Tieleman. “There’s 90 acres of land. There’s lots of room for affordable housing. It doesn’t have to be towers.”

Before Europeans set foot in what is now known as Vancouver, Jericho Beach Park was home to a year-round Indigenous Village.

The city points that out in some of the documents it has been sharing with residents about the future of the site.

Those documents also list reconciliation as the first item on a page titled ‘objectives.’

“Having locals lecture First Nations about how to develop their own site to make the residents happy is out of place,” Davidoff said.

CTV News reached out to each of the three First Nations involved in the project, and MST Partnership, but none of them have responded yet.

There have already been two years of public engagement on the future of the Jericho Lands.

The conceptual designs are still being refined and at some point city council will have to vote on whether to approve the plan with high-rise towers or ask the First Nations to come up with another concept.