Hi, my name is Jes Hanzelkova I am an intern architect registered with the AIBC, a board member of Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Chinatown Today. I am also an artist with a studio in Chinatown and visit on a weekly basis. I am opposed to the development at 570 Columbia. I urge the Development Permit Board to reject the current proposal for 2 key reasons:

1. The first reason is that the prior-to conditions were not met by the project’s team by the date specified in the prior-to letter. This should trigger either a new development application or it should require that the new design comply with the revised Zoning and Development HA-1A Bylaws from March 2023.
   
   To make this point clearer. The prior-to letter noted on page 16, lines B1.1 and 1.2 that the conditions had to be met by January 15, 2024 and that any significant changes to the design would require a new development application. The new design was submitted on July 2025, way past the deadline.
   
   The new building also has significant design changes, including an increase in units from 111 to 133, and a complete change in typology to a courtyard scheme. There is also now a seniors social services centre placed at the far back next to the waste rooms. Both the courtyard and centre, require the negotiation of a covenant with the development team, and it has been stated that only 10-years is what they plan to allow, which is really disingenuous. 10-years is such a short amount of time and shows how not committed this particular developer is to the cultural and social wellbeing of this neighbourhood in the long-term. Beedie is just here to turn a profit. We need social housing now!

Further, in Appendix A to the prior-to letter that extends the date of compliance to April 30, 2026. On line B1.3 it notes that “approval is subject to any change in the Official Development Plan and the Zoning Development Bylaw”. This means that the new design should have to comply with the current 2023 HA-1A rules, which has a limit on the FSR of new buildings to 5.35. The current design shows the FSR at 7.04 which is way over the 5.35 that is allowable.

1. The second reason the board should reject the current proposal is that condo buildings caused displacement, especially in ethno-cultural community areas and particularly in Chinatown which has a history of being a working-class and low-income neighbourhood.
   
   Preventing displacement and stewarding intangible cultural heritage is something that the City of Vancouver committed to for this neighbourhood when they approved the Chinatown Cultural District Framework in 2024. Displacement in Chinatown due to condo buildings is well documented in research published by the City of Vancouver. In 2019 the Chinatown Neighbourhood Assets map was published online. In the map it is clear that the existing condo buildings on Pender, Main, and Union do not currently contribute to the tangible and intangible heritage of Chinatown. In the podiums of these buildings there is a documented lack of culturally-specific assets for the Chinese community, including minimal cultural, food-related, retail and service spaces.
   
   Please reject this proposal. It did not meet its prior-to deadlines and will cause displacement in this community. Thank you.

My name is Brittany Garuk. I am a resident of Vancouver. My work is what brings me here today because it is how I have any kind of connection to Chinatown. I work at a grassroots organization in the DTES and a prominent demographic we serve are low-income Chinese-speaking seniors living in Chinatown. I see their struggle and want to support them in getting the resources they need to live comfortable and happy lives. I’ve also been doing freelance design work out of an art studio in Chinatown for the last 2 years so I spend a lot of time in the neighbourhood regularly. I am here to ask this board to refuse Beedie’s proposal.

I appreciate that the Development Permit Board is focused on technicalities and procedures rather than making political decisions. It makes this matter simple and clear, that the board should refuse the application. Because just looking at the facts, their proposal violates the 2017 HA-1A district schedule 4.3.4 which I understand to be the standard the application is supposed to meet. An assessment of that violation, as being either significant or insignificant, is not relying solely on facts, because it requires a qualitative assessment of impact. The height violation of the building would negatively impact the Chinatown community, as it would result in the Memorial Square-a meaningful place of remembrance for the local community-to be overshadowed. The way that community members would interact with Memorial Square would be negatively impacted if this violation is minimized as merely being a “refinement” of the original application. The negative impact on the Chinatown community is significant.

I am also concerned about other aspects of the building design that disrespect the Chinatown Memorial Square and monument-and those who value and use this important cultural space.

There is not enough internal retail loading space, which will inevitably result in drivers unloading in areas that impede on the public’s use of the Memorial Square, disrespecting the memorial through this imposing and improper use.

I’m concerned that the building design is being praised as appropriate and strengthening for the community, when the community has been saying very clearly for the past 10 years that the building proposal is inappropriate and overshadows this important cultural site.

To say that the increase in proposed building height is minor, is not doing right by Chinatown residents, community members, and visitors. To minimize the violation is to make this a political issue. It is not serving this community to allow this proposal to be passed when it violates the rules AND the community doesn’t want it. A fair evaluation process of this application under the City of Vancouver’s 2017 standards as required by the BC Supreme Court, will end with a vote to refuse it on the basis that it is not the same as the 2017 proposal, the height exceeds the maximum limit set by the City itself, and the proposed building would be harmful to the Chinatown community.

I wholeheartedly, & passionately oppose Beedie’s proposal!

I am a 1.5 generation Han Chinese settler. I’ve experienced the hardships of immigrating to this culturally inaccessible city. I’ve worked, and volunteered in the DTES/Chinatown for the past 6 years where I shared community directly with low income seniors & continue to participate to this day. We painstakingly pushed programs that mitigated the violence that came with gentrification

My Chinese friends and I host intergenerational events with youth and seniors at the memorial square where I also perform lion Dance and Kungfu through Hon Hsing.

I want to remind the board that Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside is the poorest postal code in all of Canada, due to Indigenous genocide, failed policy, & police militarization- all exasperated by the rapid gentrification that Beedie is complicit in.

Gentrifiers like Beedie say that these projects will revitalize Chinatown.

It is evident that the 6 large buildings built in 2014 to 2016 had an opposite economic and social impact instead.

So why is this still a justification when we know it’s false.

And who has the right to say that Chinatown needs revitalizing?

Revitalization is erasure to our already existing vibrant culture.

In regards to the building, I want to highlight that 4 of the 6 retail units will rely on the public space or the memorial square for loading. Not only will this be offensive, but this will negatively impact the use of the memorial square

The only public space in Chinatown.

This public courtyard is misleading as it will be a PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACE (POPS). This so-called “public space” can be closed at strata management’s discretion.

For example, a noise complaint from residents if there is a mahjong social or cultural performance.

The memorial square being a rich person’s front yard to luxury housing is a comical representation of how Beedie sees Chinatown – an afterthought.

Residents are being displaced from their homes and now they are being displaced from public spaces. Where are they supposed to go?

Approving this proposal will directly affect the community and our livelihoods. We are a living and breathing culture.

(Didn’t say this paragraph, ran out of time)
You should not be speaking for us, let alone deciding the fate of not only the Chinese working-class community, but the low income seniors, and DTES community members, including Indigenous Elders as well.

We will continue to hold the city and Beedie accountable. The revitalization you seek is right outside this very room. It is our culture, it is the love for our communities, and the passion to take care of our ancestors– past present and future.

You cannot take that away from us and we will keep fighting. 唐人街加油！

Good afternoon chair and members

I’m Mona Stilwell. I’m a homeowner in Vancouver and I have a Vancouver-based business owner that makes postpartum food for moms who just gave birth. I have been a resident of Vancouver for 32 years and I oppose Beedie’s 570 Columbia development and ask the Board to reject it today.

I care about Chinatown because my identity as a Chinese Canadian was solely informed by this neighbourhood. My Mom taught Chinese dance at one of the benevolent societies and my Dad tried to open a cafe there. Memories of absolutely crowded sidewalks, the stacks of Asian produce, the packed dim sum restaurants, the sound of mahjong tiles spilling out onto the streets, and the constant bumping into friends was an indicator that Chinatown was a safe place for me and for my community.

Beedie’s project makes it unsafe for the existing community by encouraging gentrification and displacement through the ripple effect caused by bringing in luxury condos and wealthier people. This is erasure. This is not revitalization.

Beedie’s project should be rejected because the 2025 design shows a building that is taller and denser than the rules allow, resulting in overshadowing Memorial Square. The height violates the City’s own design and zoning policies for Chinatown. Are rules not for everyone?

Further, 4 out of 6 retail units must use the public space adjacent to the Chinatown Memorial Square for internal loading. This will negatively impact the use of this historical monument which is the only public space in Chinatown. Can you imagine Victory Square allowing a similar setup?

Beedie’s luxury condos are a clear example of how extractive capitalism puts profit over people. In this case, neglecting to understand the culture,  history and identity of Chinatown erases the authentic, lived reality of Chinatown residents who have lived here for decades and yet are being displaced by wealthy developers who clearly care about profits over people.

Please reject Beedie’s project. It will have significant negative impacts on Chinatown. Thank you.

Good afternoon,

My name is Gudrun Wai-Gunnarsson and I am a Chinese-Canadian resident of East Vancouver and a lifelong resident of the Lower Mainland. I am here today to recommend that the Development Permit Board rejects the permit for 570 Columbia Street.

There are several reasons that the application should be opposed

• First of all, the development would be directly beside the Chinatown Memorial Square, overshadowing it. 
  • The memorial commemorates the thousands of Chinese Canadians who died building the Trans-Canadian railway system as well as the hundreds of Chinese Canadians who gave their lives in WWII
  • A new development directly beside such an important landmark for Chinese Canadians should be built with the interests of Chinese Canadians in mind. 
  • As I am sure you are well aware, hundreds of Chinese Canadians living in our Chinatown have been in strong opposition to the development of market-rate condos at 570 Columbia Street for the past decade, as the proposed development does not serve the interests or needs of the already existing vibrant Chinatown community.
• Secondly, The so-called “public” element, the courtyard, would not really be for the community
  • The courtyard is completely inadequate as a space for the public. Anyone who spends time in Chinatown is aware that the location of the courtyard on the North side of the proposed development would be tucked away, dark and narrow. Further, the courtyard is not really “public” if it is closed after retail hours like a shopping mall.
• Lastly, this permit should be opposed from a technical standpoint: 
  • The most recent iteration of Beedie’s proposed development design would violate height limits, pushing to develop the building several feet taller than is allowed in the district. The greater height of the development would further overshadow the Memorial Square.
  • Several of the retail units also lack loading zones, meaning loading trucks would have to utilize the memorial square, potentially encroaching on and disrupting public use of the space and community events
  • I also believe Beedie’s permit expired in January 2024 as they did not meet the City’s prior-to conditions by that date.

For all these reasons, I once again ask the Development Permit Board to oppose the permit for 570 Columbia Street.

Thank you.

Chair, members and advisors.

My name is Bing Ho. Before retiring, I was a senior partner of one of the world’s largest law firms.  Perhaps more germane, I am proud to say that I was born and raised in poverty in an SRO on the edges of Chinatown in Edmonton, and survived.  I am also proud to say that my son works for a non-profit dedicated to improving community and affordable housing in Chinatown and the DTES.  He would never forgive me if I did not voice my objections to 105 Keefer.

I echo the arguments other objectors have so eloquently and passionately stated, but will confine my submission to what I —  as a lawyer who believes in justice — consider to be an even more fundamental issue:  the rule of law.  I speak to you as civil servants holding critically important roles in shaping the city, and in defending the integrity of the bylaws and approval process you have been charged to uphold. 

The golden rule that governs the conduct of regulatory agencies, such as the DPB, was first enunciated by one of the most respected judges in the British Commonwealth who declared:  “Justice must not only be done, but must manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” 

This ringing maxim has been reiterated many times by the highest courts of BC and by the Supreme Court of Canada.  The public must be given confidence that justice is not only being administered, but is being administered in an impartial and transparent way, in a manifestly and undoubtedly impartial and transparent way. 

I am afraid that the developer is asking you to act in a non-impartial and non-transparent way.  Instead of submitting an application that complies with the applicable rules and your deadlines, they knowingly—many would say, arrogantly—submitted one that is, on its face, out-of-time and non-compliant. In effect, the Applicant is now asking you to grant “relaxations” (to call a spade a spade, special favors) that will result in the developer getting more, much more time and many more benefits, than those they would get from the straight  application of the black and white rules and your requirements. 

I turn to the “prior-to” conditions you imposed as part of your conditional approval of July 24, 2023. In Paragraph B.1.1, you forewarned the developer that your approval would lapse if they do not comply with your conditions on or before January 15, 2024. 

On October 5, 2023, the Applicant submitted a revised proposal in response to your prior-to letter. Strangely, that response was not and, despite many requests, has still not been made public.  We have no way of determining whether your conditions were in fact met, or what the DPB’s response may have been.  Justice must be seen to be done in order to be done. 

In the absence of clear and transparent proof of compliance we, the public, can only conclude that the conditions were not met, and that your approval expired.  Breathing life into a dead approval behind closed doors is not an inconsequential, transparent or impartial act.  Just the opposite.  Approving the developer’s out-of-time application will give the public the unavoidable impression that the DPB does not have the spine to enforce its own rules.  

Next, I turn to Paragraph B.1.2 of your prior-to letter.  It stipulates that a new Development Application will be required for any “significant changes”, and that the new application must comply with current bylaws and zoning requirements — that the developer is desperately trying to avoid.   

The developer’s latest proposal asks for many significant changes —  that my written objection set out in detail  — including: an 8% FSR increase; a 20% unit increase; an 84% set back reduction leading to a massive 13,297 additional square feet of space; a 17% height increase that exceeds the 97’ height restriction; and a completely different concept that now includes an open atrium anchored by a “public” square that is public in name only.  

Attempts to pass off these obviously significant changes as “minor” are misleading and disingenuous attempts to hide the ball.  The antithesis of transparency. Instead of trying to surreptitiously slip these changes past you and the public, the developer should have submitted a brand new application; their changes should have been declared dead on arrival. 

While you have discretionary power to grant special allowances in appropriate circumstances, I respectfully submit that this is not the time or place for doing so.  This is the third iteration of a ten-year fight. You must not embroil yourselves in the political fray by jumping on the developer’s side of the scales of justice.  This protracted fight can only be resolved by political and legal processes. As impartial administrators, you are duty bound to maintain neutrality by rigorously upholding your own conditions and deadlines. 

For justice to be done and seen to be done, you must strictly and transparently enforce your prior-to conditions, as written, and without fear or favour.  In these highly-charged circumstances, this is the only way you can be seen as doing justice, impartially and transparently.   

Sadly but realistically, doing what you must do will subject you to all kinds of criticisms from powerful business and political forces. It will take a lot of courage for you to hold the line, but hold it you must.  Please know that the Chinatown and DTES communities and Lady Justice will all be standing with you, and cheering you on. 

Reject the application.  Let justice roll!  

Thank you for your attention.  

Good evening and thank you for having me. My name is Russell Chiong and I am speaking in opposition today. I’m a lifelong Vancouverite and member of the Chinatown community. In my spare time, I am also a director of the Chin Wing Chun Tong Society, a Chinatown clan association, as well as of Chinatown Today Society, a nonprofit based in Chinatown with the mission of sharing our community’s stories – past, present, and future.I’ve been coming to Chinatown ever since I was a kid, visiting family and friends, eating, shopping, volunteering and working here where I’ve found cultural community, where young Chinese-Canadians like myself are able to see ourselves in the history of place. Chinatown is precious to me, as it should be for all of us, and as such, for the reasons I’ll outline today, I am speaking in opposition to Beedie’s new proposal for 105 Keefer.

As with past iterations, Beedie’s proposal will exacerbate gentrification and displacement, fail to serve Chinatown’s needs, and threatens the integrity and longevity of our neighbourhood and cultural community. These 133 luxury condos towering over the Chinatown Memorial Square, will do irreversible damage to the sense of place and community vibrancy in Chinatown. I might add that the number of units is nearly the same as what Beedie was looking to build, including seniors’ housing, when it failed to get rezoning on the site in 2017, and the increase marks a clear failure to respond to the calls for increased livability in the 2023 DPB decision.

We’ve learned the hard way from the developments like 188 Keefer, Blue Sky next door on Main and on the 700 block of Main Street, to name a few, that these kinds of large-scale condo developments, far from bringing “body heat” that can help revitalize the community, have a chilling effect on the streetscape and worsen gentrification pressures on the community that they promised to help. We’ve seen the same things play out in Chinatowns across the continent. More specific to the courtyard typology, we can see that inaccessible (restricted) courtyards in these new condo developments not only don’t provide the benefits they promise, but instead have detrimental effects on the community and streetscape.

Beedie’s 105 Keefer development would absolutely dwarf the Chinatown Memorial Monument and Chinatown Memorial Square, one of the few free, accessible, public spaces in the neighbourhood. The effect is compounded by the new design that employs even more uniform rooflines, greater height and a higher FSR, as well as the relaxations in setbacks contrary to the City’s own design guidelines. Beedie already got what it wanted in 2023 with conditional approval, but has come back with an even taller building with additional bulk failing to  respond to requirements for increased setbacks and livability, and improved massing to name a few. These major changes and the failure to meet the conditions by the deadline should necessitate a new application altogether. Beyond exceeding the allowable height, the new proposal reduces setbacks and even intrudes into the public realm, adds more units with bedrooms lacking external windows, and has an even more uniform roofline, with a Columbia Street façade that exemplifies the anti-community nature of the development.

Earlier today, staff noted the changes to the Horizontal Angle of Daylight requirements when describing Beedie’s requests for regulatory exemptions. Beedie is looking to apply the new requirements for this element of the development, despite having fought for, and applying the 2017 regime in others. To allow Beedie to have it both ways here would set a poor precedent for fairness in City proceedings, would be unfair to taxpayers and other property owners or even developers who do abide by the law, would fail to respect previous decisions, and would be contrary to the rule of law, which requires equal, impartial, and transparent application of the law.

[Note that the paragraphs below were not delivered due to time constraints]

Further, despite the addition of the equivalent of nearly half a storey, no new view impact assessments of this larger building on the square or the public Sun Yat Sen park were released.

In opposing this project, we are saying that developers like Beedie can’t just continue to throw excrement at the wall and hope it sticks, that they can’t continue to act as if they are above the law and repeatedly seek exemption after exemption, even after winning. We are saying no to a development that fails to serve the needs of the community, one that doesn’t even respect

the lenient requirements set by the City in a decision that they won. We are refusing to close the door on seeing anything better on the site, anything better for our community. I urge the Development Permit Board to reject Beedie’s application, as to allow it in spite of the major nature of the changes and Beedie’s failure to meet the conditions set out in 2023, would be to ignore the DPB’s own guidelines, conditions, deadlines, and decisions, showing other developers that they too, like Beedie, can simply flout the law. I urge this rejection for the sake of the continued weight of DPB decisions, for our sakes, and most importantly, for the sake of future generations who will surely regret if we let Chinatown go today.