Riley Brandt

'We don’t want any developer to feel they can come in and push a building through without respecting the rules,' says the Cliff Bungalow-Mission Community Association's Natasha Pashak

An inner-city community association is steamed after a developer hired the area’s former alderman to lobby city hall for a sleek luxury condo tower in Mission’s cathedral district.

Liv Urban Developments Ltd. plans to build a 17-storey, one-unit-per-floor tower near the Elbow River at 18th Ave. and First St. S.E. — “a sliver of a building,” says Liv Urban CEO Dan Bowman. To get the building site rezoned to more than double the allowable building height for the site — a move approved by city council earlier this month — Bowman hired former alderman Madeleine King as a consultant.

Natasha Pashak of the Cliff Bungalow-Mission Community Association says the community has been kept in the dark about the developer’s plans. She argues that the planned building is too tall and too close to St. Mary’s Cathedral, which is about 300 metres west of the building site. (St. Mary’s High School sits between the two sites.)

Pashak also decries King’s involvement in the process. “It’s dirty to me,” she says. “They’ve been lobbying for two years. They’ve been meeting with aldermen for two years about it.” King first learned of the project when she was an alderman and she currently sits on the city’s planning commission, along with the project’s architect, Jeremy Sturgess.

Both of them recused themselves from the planning commission’s May vote on the Liv Urban project, but Pashak is still unimpressed that a former alderman is lobbying for a project the community association doesn’t want. The original maximum zoning height for the site was 23 metres for commercial projects; it’s now been changed to 52 metres for residential.

To accommodate the project, city council also amended the Mission area redevelopment plan (ARP) — a community development blueprint that council approved in 2006. “We have to be included in the discussion with the city about changing our ARP,” says Pashak. “We don’t want any developer to feel they can come in and push a building through without respecting the rules.”

In the last civic election, King narrowly lost to Ald. John Mar. The dispute over the tower once again pitted King against Mar, but this time King was the victor. Mar sided with the community association but couldn’t convince the rest of council to delay the decision to rezone and amend the ARP. “I think that if I’d have been able to work with the community and the developer a little bit longer, we might have been able to come to an agreement,” says Mar.

Mar says he “inherited” the Liv Urban issue from King when he took over Ward 8. “That’s what you call irony, isn’t it. That was not lost on me.” He adds that he can understand why the community association is unhappy with King’s involvement. “Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that. She’s a private citizen… and is utilizing her previous experience in a way that’s time-honoured.”

King says the community association's criticisms of her involvement are “upsetting and disappointing,” adding that her knowledge of this “one-of-a-kind” project is beneficial to the city. “It actually helps for better decision making,” she says.

The project site sits on the northeast corner of the cathedral district, an area of Mission marked by pathways, the riverbank, as well as architecturally and historically significant buildings. The condo site also borders the Beltline, and overlooks a busy downtown street that turns into southbound Macleod Trail. “Out of all of Mission, I can’t see one property where it makes more sense to have a 17-storey building,” says Bowman.

He also says the city has put him through “amazing” hoops in approving plans for the 2,500-square-foot condos. He first presented the plan to King in 2006 and has yet to get building and development approvals. He also points out that he’s scaled the building down from the original plan of 23 storeys.

Plans for the building integrate the condo with a nearby park notorious for criminal activity and blend in with nearby pathways. Bowman believes the project will improve the area. “While I appreciate the Mission community’s interest to keep a great community — to keep value there and to preserve its historical significance — I’m not sure that they’re always looking at the true merits of the proposals put before them,” he says.

Father Greg Coupal, rector of St. Mary’s Cathedral, says the Liv Urban project hasn’t been on his radar. He only learned of it in June. “My gut reaction is that’s an awfully tall building for that space,” says Coupal. “On the plus side, it might give us some parishioners.”

Bowman says it will be “a couple years” before construction begins.