by Sharon Yandle, Marine Mews
Question: On a sunny spring day what could be better than a walk in False Creek South? The answer is: A Jane’s Walk in False Creek South
For the uninitiated (like I was) Jane’s Walks take place internationally in the first week of May to honour Jane Jacobs, she of the truly livable city ideas who helped inspire, among many other places, the development of False Creek South.
Led by longtime Creek resident Richard Vallee, the walk attracted a couple of dozen interested and increasingly enthusiastic people. Two were from the Creek itself and a few from adjacent neighbourhoods but most hailed from other parts of the Lower Mainland.
We started at the Laurel Bridge – also known for mysterious reasons as The Land Bridge – which spans the distance over West 6th Avenue from 7th at Laurel to the south end of Charleson Park on top of the berm. Richard took us through a very abbreviated history of our colourful community. Having lived here for 17 years myself I was surprised to find what I hadn’t known. Case in point: I didn’t know that False Creek itself – now I’m talking about the water – used to extend as far south as 6th Avenue.
What I do know, because I remember, is that before the amazing redevelopment in the 70’s the area was not one anyone would ever want to live in. When I was a kid on the east side a man I knew had lived amongst the sawmills and log booms in a squatter’s shack on False Creek. He’d won it in a poker game and lived in it for a few months until the rats drove him out – rats that killed the biggest, meanest tomcat he’d brought in from Hogan’s Alley.
When I moved out of my parents’ home at age 17 and looked for my first apartment (okay, basement suite), the one street I would never even look at was West 7th Avenue between Granville and Cambie. Anyplace on the east side was better than that. Falling down houses overlooked sawmills, noise, waste and smog. It smelled even worse than it looked. Standing with the Jane’s Walk group at 7th and Laurel I recalled both that time and the decade that followed – the 70’s – when the whole area north of 7th transmogrified. The old False Creek seemed like a bad dream.
Our Guide and RePlan activist:
Richard Vallee
Richard has lived in the “new” False Creek South for more than a quarter century and was keen to share what he knows with the rest of us. Among the highlights: From the wooden walkway known as Caesar’s Bridge we could look north to the Spruce Harbour Marina which presently houses (actually “boats”) a community-minded group of some 50 resident families. These sometime mariners live aboard watercrafts that most would consider very tiny living quarters indeed; these are boats, not float homes.
(There’s something about bridges in False Creek South that almost defies memory. Not till David McCann finally tracked down the oldest resident in his floating co-op did I learn that Caesar’s Bridge was named after an Italian worker by name of Cesare who helped construct that walkway. The story is that he talked so much and so often and so loudly that his workmates naturally named the worksite after him. But why is the Laurel Bridge called the Land Bridge? Anyone? There might be prizes.)
Just south of Caesar’s bridge and back on terra firma is the Spruce Harbour communal garden. The eastern half grows on land that was part of the co-op’s original lease, expanded a few years ago through negotiations with the City and the Parks Board. Some of the marina residents began what is now an impressive garden of fruits, flowers and veggies – a real asset to the neighbourhood. Living on a boat is no deterrent to green thumbers, something I learned from a sailor who grew a plant under a light bulb in a submarine. When you gotta grow, you gotta grow. (As far as I know there are no submarines in Spruce Harbour. Yet.)
Caesar’s Bridge was named after an Italian worker by name of Cesare who helped construct that walkway
It’s worth taking a walk on Caesar’s Bridge just to see the photos the co-op displays along one wall – images of what False Creek South used to look like in its industrial and polluting heyday. (See Bad Dream, above).
Having shown us one kind of housing in the Creek, Richard led us to three other types, each unique in its own way but inseparably connected to the others.
First was Marine Mews, also known as the University Co-op, built in the 70’s to provide housing primarily for UBC junior faculty. Now a strata leasehold, its 50 townhouses are individually owned on land leased from the City on a 60 year term. There are a dozen or so other leasehold stratas on City land in the Creek. In fact, False Creek South constitutes the largest City-owned land parcel in Vancouver.
Our next stop was the all-rental townhouse development, the Vancoeverden, an “RGI” complex (rent geared to income), managed by the New Chelsea Housing Society. Homes here are specifically dedicated to different family configurations: some for families with children, some for older adults, some for singles.
Last on Richard’s list was the False Creek Co-op – or at least, the western part. This co-op, one of several in the Creek, is located on two sites east and west of Charleson Park. Both enclaves consist of townhouses of 2 or more bedrooms; the eastern one also contains a few one- bedroom apartments.
Meandering around these various enclaves it was striking how seamlessly these different forms of housing create a neighbourhood. Whether rental, co-op or market, townhouse or apartment, much of the housing in False Creek South encloses interior courtyards. The first plantings some 35 years ago have grown to maturity and the whole community is lush with evergreen and deciduous trees, flowering shrubs, perennials, bulbs, annuals, vines, groundcovers. In addition to the common areas, individual residents have established impressive gardens in and around their patios, decks and balconies. All of the homes are right on or very near the seawall, overlooking False Creek itself.
In a way, False Creek South began as an intentional community. Before the 70’s City zoning divided Vancouver into either residential or commercial or industrial. Various aspects of people’s lives were very segregated: you live here, you work there, you shop elsewhere. If you were well off you lived in a particular area. If you were poor you lived somewhere else. If you were in-between you lived in the in-between parts. Incomes didn’t mix. As Richard explained, what informed False Creek was a vision of a new urban neighbourhood where people were not seen as just residents, or consumers or workers but…well… as human beings with all that entails. With a variety of housing types and a wide range of incomes, the new community embodied both greater density and easy access to and from work and home and play. Long before anyone thought anything about “the greenest city”, False Creek was walk-able, bike friendly, transit oriented, integrated.
As our two-hour Jane’s Walk came to an end participants were visibly delighted with the tour and the history and perspectives Richard conveyed. I overheard one of our walkers comment that every community should be like this. I don’t know if Richard was close enough to hear but I’m pretty sure he would agree. The thing about False Creek South, he said, is that this is an experiment that worked.
Still does.