City officials reviewed a severe downturn in recent development activity, noting a steep decline in commercial valuations and residential building permits that has exacerbated the local housing production deficit. To adapt to market realities and future comprehensive plan goals, the board discussed an "Active Ground Floor Study" aimed at diversifying downtown zoning to allow non-traditional uses—such as small-scale manufacturing, R&D, and childcare—in mixed-use buildings rather than over-prescribing retail. Furthermore, they analyzed how rising construction costs and stagnant rent growth are currently hindering new development and diminishing the effectiveness of affordable housing incentives like the Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) program.
Building_development
City Center Redevelopment Authority · Mar 19, 2026 · 34:41–34:52 · Watch on CVTV ↗
Keywords: zoning comprehensive plan building permits affordable housing infrastructure density
What was said
33:41 into future development? And how can this increase jobs, amenities, and help kind of tell the story and build a multi-use area downtown? From the matrix perspective, what the city can do with it and sort of near-term actions is conducting outreach to regional businesses, identify opportunities for bringing businesses to downtown, identifying any infrastructure improvement needs, coordinating with prospective developers, using their own land, identifying public investments. And lastly, I think, and probably most importantly is identifying partnership opportunities. A lot of these sort of big moves happen under partnerships with CDFIs, CDCs, healthcare providers, childcare providers, and even looking internal to our own city needs. Next slide. So we're here to kind of present some very initial findings. I guess we've already kind of gone through the industries and that's sort of what we're seeking some feedback on. But the clear answer regionally, nationally about ground floors, there's no clear answer.
34:40 There's no silver bullet. If we change this zoning or we go manufacturing, like there you go, we've solved it all. It requires multiple approaches. You need to look at your local strengths, which is why we're really zooming into industry cluster analysis locally. What does Vancouver bring to the table in terms of regional strengths? There is a need to strengthen and focus our existing nodes. So how can our growth in downtown support our existing businesses and restaurants? Allowing ground floor residential. So that's something that first 40 feet and our architects are working on kind of a best practices for ground floor residential outside of those key commercial nodes. And then also considering this flexibility on ground floor uses, especially as they align with our industry matrix. Next slide. So I'll talk next steps and then turn it over to Jim Chun to sort of tee up some questions. But our next steps sort of here seeking feedback
35:39 on refining those targets, space needs, how they fit into downtown. We're incorporating a lot of the architect feedback on how these uses align with existing overlays. Is there an ability, we're also giving the city
Evidence (1 match)
direct keyword 34:41–34:52 zoning, comprehensive plan, building permits, affordable housing, infrastructure, density
. I guess we've already kind of gone through the industries and that's sort of what we're seeking some feedback on. But the clear answer regionally, nationally about ground floors, there's no clear answer. There's no silver bullet. If we change this zoning or we go manufacturing, like there you go, we've solved it all. It requires multiple approaches. You need to look at your local strengths, which is why we're really zooming into industry cluster analysis locally. What does Vancouver bring to t