December 20, 2006

HOUSING

ALAN GOUGH

The City of Vancouver’s planning department supports turning the housing project at 4887 Cambie Street into a demonstration row housing project. This rendering shows the three units, which will share interior walls. The main house of each unit will be approximately 2,400 squre feet on three levels.

Cowie proposes row houses return to city

JEAN SORENSEN

Correspondent

VANCOUVER

Planner Art Cowie, former Vancouver counselor, MLA, and park board member, wants to reintroduce row houses into Vancouver’s accommodation mix. Row houses, which share a common wall, were seen in the city in the turn-of-the-century but most have long disappeared. Although, a few have endured such as those in the 700 block of Hawks Ave, which have been vitalized and won city accolades.

Row houses, such as the early version in Vancouver and other cities such as London, Washington, Sydney, Halifax and Toronto, were once the dwellings of the blue-collared worker. Today, those older structures have been transformed into modern upscale housing and in many larger cities are prime real estate because of their central locations.

Cowie has received support from the city’s planning department to turn his 80-foot lot, located at 4887 Cambie, into a demonstration row house project. The project still needs to go through a public hearing and then receive final council approval in February 2007. The three units, expected to sell for over $1 million each, will share interior walls and provide all the conveniences of owning a fee simple strata without dealing with a strata council.

Cowie’s proposal will see units offering a garden, garage (with living unit) and a three-storey home on site. “These will be quality units,” he says, adding he chose the site because of its Cambie street location, which is on the new Canada Line and ideal for densification.

“I used to live in row houses when in Sydney, Australia, “ he says of his first exposure to row housing – a turn-of-the century structure, which measured 14 and a half feet in width and over-looked the harbour. The builder went down the block and carved up the row houses in sizes ranging from 12.5 feet through to 16 feet. The range of sizes allowed for a range of incomes to own their own home.

Cowie gutted his 14.5-foot wide unit and remodeled it. “It was a beautiful house to live in,” he says. The outside was turn-of-the century Georgian in design. When he sold it in 1964, it brought him about $12,000 Canadian. “Today, it would sell for over $1 million,” he says. When he next traveled to England, he lived in a 200-year old row house. “We actually lived in the basement,” he says, of his wife and small child as they resided in Kensington, before moving to Vancouver.

Locally, Cowie says he has always been a political and professional advocate for high-density living. “I have always been known as Townhouse Cowie,” he says, for his stance of wanting to provide urban villages, which provide the ability to live and walk to services. “Today, most of us don’t live in the city,” he says, but the cost of commuting and new living alternatives is drawing people back to the city. The high-rise densification that has revamped the city’s downtown core is not acceptable in neighbourhoods through the city, says Cowie, which is why the city needs more solutions such as row housing. It is especially attractive to neighbourhoods and along rapid transit lines. The homes will not be larger than others in the area will, so, unlike multi-storey apartment buildings, they will not detract from neighbour’s view.

The lot that Cowie will subdivide into three fee simple lots measures 80 by 125. There will be two homes that measure 22 feet in size and one in the middle that is 24 feet in width. The main house, for each unit, will be approximately 2,400 square feet, featuring the living areas below and two bedrooms upstairs with a third on the third level that can also double as an in-home office. Each home will have a detached, two-car garage, with a one-bedroom suite approximately 630 square feet located above it. The suite will be ideal for rental to a student or a young single working person.

The common wall that these units share will extend into the garden beyond and onto the adjoined garages. The front yard (or setback from the sidewalk) is 14 feet in length while the garden space between the home and garage – not a lot of green space, acknowledges Cowie, but enough for the city garden. In addition, he has designed rooftop gardens into the development as well as solar panels to supplement heating costs. “It will be a contemporary West Coast design,” he says of the building’s architecture and introduce some products such as Prodema, a composite resin and wood product made in Spain, that is highly durable and used mainly in commercial structures. The exterior will feature zinc siding, for that contemporary look.

Cowie says he has support for the product from neighbours and is confident the project will be well received at the public meeting held in 2007. For more details, see Cowie’s web site www.remembernow.com with information under Hot Spots. “I hope to build more of these in Vancouver,” he says of the row house projects.

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