Nick Petrie of Phase One Design is passionate about building codes. And that’s a good thing! With 27 different jurisdictions across the Lower Mainland with an estimated 350 different zones, having someone like Nick on your team is a smart move. Tune in for tips and market updates from Nick!
Listen to “Ep 69: Permit Pending” on Spreaker.
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Co-Host, Mike Freedman, AI Technology & Design
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Distributed by Black Press Media: Today in BC.
About the Speaker
NICK PETRIE, Building Designer Specializing in Zoning, Phase One Design. Government Relations and Passive / Net Zero projects Board of Directors of the BCABD
A seasoned professional with 15 years of extensive industry experience and expertise. Formerly an active member of the City of North Vancouver’s Advisory Design Panel for 4 years and a respected member of the Board of Directors for the BC Association Building Designers. Also a member of the HAVAN Government Relations and Technical Committees to stay abreast of industry trends as well as the HAVAN Membership committee to help new members find the resources they need. Significantly involved in shaping the Zoning, Bylaws and Building Bylaws of the City of Vancouver and supporting other Cities and the Province in general.
Solutions oriented individual, with success in identifying key objectives or requirements and directing projects to meet those objectives. Experienced at negotiating win-win scenarios for stakeholders at all levels due to an inherent understanding that concessions need to be made to attain the greater goals.
Focused on understanding stakeholder requirements to better compare that with an end user needs analysis to find optimal solutions. Communication, collaboration and cooperation are key to achieving maximum stakeholder buy in and end user adoption rates.
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Here's the Full Transcript of this Episode
MTCO Ep 69 Phase One Design + Nick Petrie Transcript
Mike
0:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to Measure Twice, Cut Once. My name is Mike, and you know Iggy Pop once said, give me strange or little danger and if you listen to this episode, you’re going to learn so much and you’re going to get so much knowledge, you will be dangerous.
- Jennifer Lee
0:19
I’m here and I’m Jennifer Lee and I’m here to keep Mike from ripping out some walls and making some bad references.
- Nick
0:26
That was a great reference, by the way. Here at Measure Twice, Cut Once, we are talking high performance building, designer trends, breaking down housing regulations, high performance building solutions, anything and everything to do with the homes we live in and the type of homes we’re building.
- Jennifer Lee
0:44
Today’s guest is Nick Petrie from Phase One Design. Nick is a building designer specializing in zoning, government relations, and passive and net zero projects.
- Mike
0:53
I’ve known Nick for a long time, and he’s one of the most knowledgeable people and most personable people to talk about of what could be a very dry subject. It’s going to be a phenomenal conversation because there’s so many new regulations, right? And it’s very important to get through this stuff because if you’re a homeowner, if you’re someone doing renovations, if you’re working in the industry, it’s a really big moving target. Nick has a ton of information to share with us because he’s got boots on the ground.
He sleeps and breathes this stuff every single day.
- Jennifer Lee
1:23
So, let’s get to it. Let’s join us for Measure Twice.
- Mike
1:26
Cut Once because we all know twice is just too much work.
Welcome Nick.
- Nick
1:30
Hi everyone.
I guess I’ll just give you a quick little background about myself. Yeah, I’m a building designer. I’ve worked in the field off and on for about 25 years. Really love high performance. Specifically, I focus on government relations, zoning, and related to that is the relation on high performance construction, which is net zero, passive house. I don’t really deal with the third category, which is zero emissions, but there’s many different blends and flavors all depending on what you’re trying to do.
- Jennifer Lee
2:03
So, I come from a building family, and I know back in the day my dad was like don’t get in construction. What made you want to head into construction?
- Nick
2:11
Well, a couple of different things. So, I guess grade four I started designing houses. Oddly enough that was a project at school and the next thing I knew I designed two mansions with like bowling alleys and theaters, and you name it. And I really loved it. Then a bit of a long story, I went in different directions. I designed a lot of different things for a while.
But my father was a carpenter and a builder, and he started his own firm. So, I went to work for him for about five years and then a few other builders along the way. I really enjoyed it. I did design for my father’s company and then fortunately I injured my back and had to get out. My father actually forced me out and I went into banking for 10 years and then I came back because I didn’t like banking as much as I like designing. And here I am.
- Jennifer Lee
3:11
What a cool story though. You always find the thing that you love and head back to it.
- Nick
3:14
Yeah.
- Mike
3:15
Well, the thing is you’re really good at it too. When we first met, we were talking about my house. Even then, we were talking about renovations. And I’m like, I’d like to do this. And you’re like, you didn’t even look at the code. You’re like, you can’t do this, but you could do this.
And it was like, how the heck do you know all this stuff? And then what you realize is you’re very passionate about it and you eat, sleep, and breathe like we talked about. So, you know, one of the things we love about the guests who come on this, we have designers who do, you know, focus on that. We have builders who are extremely focused on that.
And your focus is great because it makes the rest of us, so we can do this easily and understand this. You’re currently working with a phenomenal company called Phase One. Of course, Kathy is, she was one of our first guests, and it’s so great to see you guys working together. Great friend of mine.
- Jennifer Lee
3:55
A great friend of all of ours.
- Mike
3:56
All of ours, yeah.
Talk to us about what you’re doing with Phase One these days, because you sort of shifted your focus a little bit, right?
- Nick
4:05
Yeah , so Phase One is a building design firm specifically part nine of the building code, which I won’t get into but there’s different parts depending on different professionals and we focus on houses; primarily doing new builds, but we also do renovations and so forth. I focus on the government relations, building code and zoning side for British Columbia because phase one is in British Columbia and Alberta, and we also do projects in Ontario. Then that side of things, I specifically also bring in the lens with regard to high performance, passive house and net zero construction and we do a lot of people don’t really understand the permit process And a lot of people think when they have a home like you just said a little bit earlier I can build whatever I want and that’s unfortunately not the case We need to have experts like yourself telling us what is Realistic for us to build because I guarantee you that mansion you drew up when you were 10 years old probably would have never passed permit.
- Mike
5:16
Well, they want to prove a bowling alley now. That’s the problem.
- Nick
5:19
Fair enough. And you’re probably right. The mansion did have a few features that might have been questionable, but overall, it wasn’t horrible. Anyways, but that being said, with regard to permitting processes, yeah, there’s a couple of different layers that most people don’t even know about. So, one is there’s building code which tells you that’s everything related to life safety. It’s right down to nailing patterns even telling you what way to nail things together so that they’ll be safe, and they won’t tear apart. But the other side of it is all the zoning and bylaws related to that because every city unfortunately has a slightly different take on how they want their buildings to look, right? And zoning defines the size and shape of buildings, right? Reason I say unfortunately is, we have just in the lower mainland, 27 different jurisdictions and across that probably 350 different zones and each zone defines a different shape of building that they’re looking for. So, it can get very confusing.
Jennifer Lee
6:23
That’s why we need you, so you can tell us what we can and cannot do.
Mike:
That is true. You dash our dreams but also build it up.
But it’s a lot easier to have a conversation with him before we start a permit process than after and there has to be changes.
Nick:
Yeah, I’ve seen so many projects where people went in with a concept to the city and yeah they’d spent ten or twenty thousand dollars coming up with their concept and then all of their hopes for dash when we could have told them that for like $2,000 at the beginning, and then designed it in a way that would actually be approved. Or if we were going to ask for something that was a relaxation, which I’ll get into in a moment, we could have planned it out a little bit better because a lot of times if you come to the city with something that you want and isn’t possible by zoning, they’re less likely to accept your modified version unless you really dial it back.
- Jennifer Lee
7:17
And some municipalities have unique asks that you wouldn’t even know about. Like, I don’t think this one exists anymore, but when I was growing up in Westminster, I lived in Queen’s Park. And it had to your home when you built it, and my dad had to follow it, had to be Queen Anne style. Yeah, I believe that actually possibly still exists, actually. But some people don’t know and then again, they might want a modern looking home, and they might not be allowed to have a modern looking home in that area.
- Nick
7:43
No, yeah actually there’s a lot of regulations any house older than 40 years in New Westminster comes under character retention and potential heritage. That’s a whole other ballgame is working and restoring heritage homes as well which again require different permits.
- Jennifer Lee
7:56
Yeah, it’s like a future episode. Nick, I got a quick question for you. I mean, we talk about zoning, planning and building codes and obviously we all understand the importance of them, but I think there’s a lot of people who find it’s overload because there’s a lot more.
Can I ask, what do you say to people or how do you respond when people say, it’s too hard to do business here, there’s too much oversight. Is there too much oversight or we have right amount or how do we balance this?
Nick
8:32
That’s a good question. There are a few different points to that. So, in one sense certain jurisdictions have I think a good blend. A lot of it is safety oriented and so forth and I can completely appreciate where they’re coming from. However, there might be a few too many regulations in certain municipalities for certain, but I don’t think it’s over-regulated. The bigger concern is the safety of the people in the buildings, right? And just as a side note, like the amount of times that I’ve gotten calls or seen where somebody’s put in an unauthorized addition on their house or had they thought it was authorized but it wasn’t, and it wasn’t safe for the people living in it.
Jennifer Lee
9:34
I understand why those regulations exist if that makes sense. And why and this might be a big question but why do all the municipalities in the Lower Manhattan have different rules? Like, is it just because of the landscape, like some areas have more hills, or is it just because they’re all a little bit different?
- Nick
9:49
Well, it depends on the municipality, but a large portion of it came down to the communities or the city council and the planning departments for those communities decided that they were looking for a certain size and they wanted to limit, they didn’t want anything more than two stories tall or a story and a half. If you’re working in certain municipalities, say your main floor can be this big, but your upper floor can only be 80% of that or 50% of that because we want everything to tear back and get smaller because they don’t want to block anyone’s views and so forth, right?
- Nick
10:25
And it comes down to a lot of that in certain municipalities. There’s also certain planners or planning departments that wanted very specific looks. So, they decided this block had craftsmen as their most common look in this block. So, then they wrote the rules. So, it kind of incentivized doing craftsmen houses. So, you get more and more craftsmen houses or similar shaped houses right so it’s a weird thing that I just really could be something.
That’s pretty standard like lower mainland everything should be pretty similar Yeah, not no. There’s about 30 different styles major styles of houses out there. Certain and they’re all gorgeous in their own way if they’re done the right way just to be clear I’m not a I don’t have a preference to any one specific style, which I know sounds weird, but each one has their own unique features. But the problem is that certain municipalities, they want to see a consistent similar. And then there’s other municipalities that they actually have rules that you can’t repeat the same look. So, in five houses in a row, on either side, you can’t have the same look. And it’s really interesting. I need that in my neighborhood, please.
- Jennifer Lee
11:40
- Nick
11:45
Well, and you know some municipalities are resurrecting commonly used styles, like they’re resurrecting the Vancouver Special. Yeah, in technically it’s never gone away. The Vancouver Special just gets updated about every eight to ten years with a slightly different one. That’s why you’ve got like the 90s, what we call, well, there’s the McMansions, there’s the Vancouver Special, which the boxy one, then there’s the wide two-story with brick, like they’re, they just keep slightly changing them and somebody comes up with a new concept and then that one gets repeated as the current style for, you know, six to 10 years, and then we pick out a new one.
- Mike
12:16
And now the province has introduced 10 new ones and certainly going to give us a lot more variety. Now, we talked a little about municipality to municipality and, you know, some of these really regulations are in place for a reason some are not consistent and obviously with that created some bottlenecks some delays some carrying costs and some people don’t like the P word anymore however there’s also legislation in the province of BC to help address that and I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t have a conversation about A, what that legislation entails, and B, how you, with your unique perspective, think that might help us alleviate some of these challenges.
- Nick
13:01
Okay, so on that front, are we talking about the Bill 44, Bill 46? We are talking about, and 46. Okay, okay, fair enough. Absolutely. I should mention up front that I was one of the industry experts that was consulting on that. So, I’m under NDA and I cannot…
Jennifer-Lee:
Oh, so we can’t ask you all the secrets?
Nick:
No, no. Yeah, you can’t ask me about anything that’s not until the bill is public,
- Mike
13:33
You don’t have to give out the kernel secret recipe to serve us chicken, my friend.
- Nick
13:36
Okay, fair enough. So Bill 44 was a move by the province to try and simplify, or try and direct the municipalities to simplify their zoning and come up with a consistent format that would be easily replicable because right now, when I go to design a house in any municipality, there’s generally 300 to 500 pages of rules that we have to read because each municipality has a unique blend. How there’s like 10 different ways to calculate height in BC across the 174 municipalities in BC or 167 or roughly that number and but so there’s height then there’s what’s the definition of a basement, how the basements are calculated. And you start mixing and matching about 50 different key things, how setbacks are calculated and so on. You have to read through 300 to 500 pages every single time to see what has changed since the last time you looked at it and make sure that you’re up to date because they might have one slightly different interpretation of things. Anyway, so…
- Jennifer Lee
14:55
You have to be really good at reading.
- Nick
14:57
Yes, yes, and I have read so many of those.
- Jennifer Lee
14:59
And attention to detail.
- Mike
15:01
And retaining that information.
- Nick
15:03
But the thing is, and the most important part is to always come back and check because maybe you don’t quite remember because the district of North End is slightly different from the city of North End, which is slightly different from the district of West Vancouver. And what each one does or does not include and how they calculate it is crazy. And you try and explain that it’s usually around a thousand calculations that you have to do for the average house, let alone a tower or anything else, not that I work on towers. But specifically, the province was actually trying to create a system where height is calculated the same way across the board, the number of units, the number of stories, and simplify everything. And I think it was a good choice, right? If we could get everything down to a much more consistent, you can put in little, you know, I want these characteristics and so on, I get that, but the overall concepts are the same and everyone’s calculating things the same way.
- Nick
16:02
I think it’s a great idea. So, I’m in support of that. And then you were also asking about Bill 46, which is TOD. Well, yeah, TOD or TOA, depending which way you want to look at it. So that’s transit-oriented development for TOD or transit-oriented areas. And so, the idea behind that is TOA is related to transit corridors. So, whether it’s buses, SkyTrain, the Express, why can’t I think? My brain is blanking.
- Mike
16:38
West Coast Express.
- Nick
16:39
Thank you, the West Coast Express. I tend to blank every once in a while, so forgive me on that. Anyways, so all the different, or C-Bus even, right? And then you have different, so the TOD is the zones around those locations and what incentives you get for building different types of buildings. Mostly it’s related to doing towers, but specifically for buses, under certain scenarios, you can get up to six units on a property if it qualifies and so forth.
- Nick
17:13
And that’s another topic, I don’t know if we want to jump quite far in right now.
- Jennifer Lee
17:17
Well, we’ve been seeing it more and more especially like in Burnaby I’ve definitely seen more dense population of homes all types right around the Brentwood area which is a sky train area and we’re noticing it on Broadway now as the new Broadway Sky train line is going in more buildings are being put up. So, it’s a great thing to have more densification around transit areas. But again, I think it’s just setting everybody’s expectations of what they want. Like, do they want to be closer to transit or do they want a slightly bigger home?
- Nick
17:57
Yeah, well, and then, I mean, that was also a piece of it in other directions as well is trying to promote making larger homes as well because they’d included a guideline in there that and I don’t remember the exact wording so please don’t hold me to this but if you had if I remember correctly if it was three units or less you had to have at least one that was nine hundred and sixty eight square feet let’s call it a thousand square feet for easy numbers and had to be remember correctly at least two bedrooms and then if you had four you had to have at least two and so on. They were trying to say, let’s make larger units because a lot of whatever scale developers, we’ll just say developers in general, are trying to do smaller and smaller units so they can get more units onto a property.
- Jennifer Lee
18:41
But the thing is, a lot of people have families and they’re not going to be able to cram into one bedroom. So, it’s nice. I’m seeing that more and more, that a lot more places are requiring two to three bedrooms. You don’t even see some buildings advertising one bedrooms or studios.
- Nick
18:54
Yeah, no, this is true. And actually, I should correct what I said earlier because I’m trying to remember what the difference between the Vancouver one and the provincial one. Provincial one might have been 1,500 square feet and the Vancouver one was 968. But anyways, that’s the other thing about the differences between the municipalities and the province and so forth is what people were looking for.
- Mike
19:19
We’ve got a lot more to talk about, but we also have to take it just a couple moments We’ll thank our sponsors. So, hang tight we’ll be right back and we’re going to talk a little bit about actually implementing some of the stuff we just talked about
- Jennifer Lee
19:32
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- Mike
20:53
All right, we’re back with Nick from Phase One for phase two of our conversation.
- Jennifer Lee
20:58
You had to say that didn’t you?
- Mike
20:59
I know you were itching to.
- Nick
21:01
Well, you were reading, thanking our amazing sponsors.
- Jennifer-Lee
21:05
You were thinking about it.
- Mike
21:07
Yeah, I was up late. So, Nick, we talked about Bill 44, Bill 46, and naturally, anytime there’s change, we’re creatures of habit. We’ve been building and designing communities in our province for over 100 years the same way, and there’s a bit of pushback. And I think it’d be really easy for us to go down that rabbit hole of, you know, what’s not working and where there’s challenges.
What I’d love is if you could highlight any of the municipalities that you’re familiar with who are doing it right. Let’s talk about who’s doing a great job, because I think there’s some teaching in there that we can take, and there’s some learning in there that we can take and I think we should talk about the good, not just the challenges.
- Jennifer Lee
21:42
Yeah, let’s not play the shame game.
- 4
21:44
That’s completely fair.
- Nick
21:45
Well, so I’ll start with Vancouver really quickly just because they’re the ones that everybody’s familiar with. And they get in the hot seat a lot for permits.
- Jennifer Lee
21:56
Well, yeah, permitting times, that’s a different matter.
- Nick
21:59
But the great things are that they put in multiplex rules before the province even released their own. Theirs is a four to six stratifiable or saleable units in almost every scenario. And then if you want, you can also do dedicated rental in perpetuity, like as long as that building exists, it has to be for rental. And in which case you can have up to eight units. The FSR, generally, you’re allowed up to a 1.0 FSR. So, what that means, or I guess I should explain, floor space ratio.
- Jennifer Lee
22:38
I was just going to ask you that. I was like, I don’t know what that is. It’s the amount of livable square footage that you have.
- Nick
22:59
Generally most, every zone has a different calculation and so forth, but if you look at it from a different point of view, you take your lot dimensions, or the square footage, so if you have a 33-foot wide lot by 122 feet, it’s a standard lot in Vancouver, it’s 4,026 square feet. I’ve done this, I don’t know how many hundreds of times. You take that and multiply it by whatever your FSR ratio is. For a multiplex, you can get a 1.0, which is easy numbers here.
- Nick
23:20
So that just means 4,026 square feet, right?
- Jennifer Lee
23:23
And there’s exactly- You made that seem very easy. I was like trying to calculate the math in my head.
- Mike
23:27
I told you he was smart.
- Nick
23:28
Well, yeah, I’ve done this a million times. And so, for example, if it was a single-family home, you’re only going to get 2,400, and I won’t bother calculating a little bit extra, but roughly 2,400 square feet. But if you want to do four units, let’s say, they’ll give you, you get up to 1.0 FSR if you’re willing to make a contribution of a couple of different ways. Once again, I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty, but the point being that you have 4,000 square feet, which gives you about 1,000 square feet per unit, right? You can put it in, it’s not a bad system.
- Nick
24:03
Bigger the lot is, the more you can do, right? If that makes sense. They put in a lot of options; they made it a lot easier to do things. I’m very happy about that. Permitting times are a different matter, but they are speeding that up. They are making changes; I’ve heard so much. Oh yeah, no, they’ve definitely improved. So, one of the things was that you used to have to do a full development permit and a full building permit. I’m going to explain those. Some cities will require a development permit which has to do with the outside of the building, what it’s going to look like in the neighborhood and so forth. And then you’ve got your actual building permit which is all the building code and making sure it’s safe for someone to live in, two separate permits.
- Jennifer Lee
24:42
It’s not going to topple on you.
- Nick
24:43
No, exactly, right. Vancouver generally has a history of usually eight to ten months for a development permit and then usually-
- Jennifer-Lee
24:52
Or longer.
- Nick
24:52
Yeah, or longer if there’s complications. And then 4 to 6 months, 4 to 5 months, whatever for a building permit. Now for multiplexes, fortunately, they decided to shrink that, and they did a streamlined development permit which was only about 4 months, 4 to 5, right, which is very fast comparatively, right, and that was great. But now they’re about to do another change. It’ll be coming up hopefully in the first quarter of 2025. And what it’ll be is they’ll do a combined building and development permit, which they used to only use for limited scenarios where you go through, and they just check to make sure that the form and character of the building looks right. And then you go straight into building for the building code side. And it’ll cut it down from, because it used to be in the 8 to 10 months for multiplex and it should cut it down to about 5 or 6.
- Mike
25:41
Is that going to cut down any expenses with the process?
- Nick
25:46
In certain ways, yes. So, there will be less permit fees because you’re not paying the two separate fees, the combined fee is actually less than the two fees, my understanding than the two fees were separately. But the other thing is you’re carrying costs, right? Because if you’re a homeowner or a developer, you’ve got to purchase that land, you’ve got to pay whatever monthly on it. And I mean, I’ve seen cases where it’s $10,000 or $20,000 a month between the insurance, the mortgage payments, and everything else you have to pay.
- Mike
26:16
Well, and you have to live someplace. Well, that’s why we’re waiting for that as well.
- Nick
26:19
And that’s the other side of it, yeah. That’s where we’re struggling. Who’s going to rent to three kids and three dogs and a family, right? So yeah, and that’s a legitimate concern as far as exploiting this. Other question I wanted to ask, we’ve had other guests on who talk about net zero or passive construction, does that building methodology impact any of the decisions as far as how we develop a piece of property? In Vancouver yes, everywhere else, well almost everywhere else not so much. So, Vancouver it’s a great idea to do it. They actually incentivize you to do net zero or passive as you can get 19% extra square footage. So that 1.0 FSR that I was talking about becomes a 1.19 FSR. It’s a little more complicated than that. Is it easier to get a permit then if you’re doing that type of homes? It’s about the same, but there are a lot of relaxations that you can get in the design. So, you can get a taller house, you can get a longer house.
- Nick
27:20
They’ll relax a lot of things to help make it easier to do a passive or net-zero project, which is great, right? I mostly do those in Vancouver now. I’d say about three-quarters of the projects that we do in Vancouver are either net-zero or passive just because everyone’s saying, hold it, I can get an extra, you know, two feet of, or not, yeah, it’s two feet of height two feet of length
- Nick
27:40
And on the average property that means you can get five extra bedrooms three extra bathrooms in the hallways in between And everybody takes a look at that and goes well, that’s worth it so and yeah There you go you get more goodies, and you’re being energy efficient at the same time well You’re also being healthier for your family. That’s the whole point that they’re looking at sorry I’m no that’s good. I’m going to get into this just because it’s a big deal I can’t remember the exact amount that I was told but Like the it was in the billions of dollars that would be saved in medical care Hey if people were living in passive and net zero homes because the fact that you don’t develop respiratory issues because there’s almost no mold Because there’s an almost no drafts have the problem that air sucks in water and spores, right?
- Nick
28:24
And then you end up with say with health problems.
- 11
28:27
But anyways.
- Nick
28:28
And that’s something Vancouver is trying to lead and with the Vancouver Building By-law, we’ve obviously got the step code.
- Jennifer Lee
28:35
Do you want to just, we’ve talked many times about this on the podcast, but just a little, little, short version of that and how it affects the permitting process and anything like that.
- Nick
28:43
Okay, well, everywhere, so Step Code, really quickly, was introduced to try and get us to the national requirement for building code to get to net zero. We all have to be there by the year 2032 at the absolute latest, but 2030 is the target, so we’re only got six years, or five.
- Nick
29:07
But anyways, point being, Step Code was introduced by BC as a quick way to help train people up to how to get there. Each one was like twice as much as the last requirement. It starts out very low and then slowly works its way up. We’re currently at step code three, which is considered a 20% improvement over old construction technique for five from about five years ago. Almost all municipalities require that. There are a few that have gone up to step four or step five because the differences are pretty minor for step four. And it is a little bit more major for step five, but a lot of builders are getting used to it.
- Jennifer Lee
29:48
So does that that’s great, okay It’s just important to take all these things that we’ve learned for the last few years and talk about them to especially when it does come to building code and permits and somebody that is doing it extremely. Well, it’s going to little gold star. Let’s talk about Burnaby.
- Nick
30:11
Burnaby has basically fully adopted everything that the province had suggested in Bill 44. It was actually amazing. I went line by line and it was almost everything that had been suggested. Are they at step code 5? No, step code 3. So, step code 3 is what the province says you should be at right now. So, Burnaby is still at step code 3. But I mean with regard to all the zoning changes. So, Burnaby increased the height of the buildings could be, I think, by 12 feet. I think it was a 4-meter increase that they allowed, which is huge because it used to be you could only get a two-story house in Burnaby and now you can actually get a three-story house because you have enough height. But they got rid of FSR that I was talking about earlier. They no longer calculate it at all. They just go by how much site coverage you have on your lot. And the amount of site coverage you have on your lot depends on how many units you have in your house. Single-family, duplex and triplex get one size, quadplexes get another size, and it just keeps going up the amount of units that you have, right? And it’s so much more flexible. It is a really amazing city to design in now because everything is very, very straightforward.
- Mike
31:22
How come it’s so flexible? Is it because they’re trying to lure people out of Vancouver? Is it that they’ve just recognized that the faster they get it done, the more they can solve problems? Like, why is Burnaby so forward-thinking? And what could other municipalities learn as a result of that?
- Jennifer Lee
31:40
Why is Burnaby so cool?
- Nick
31:43
I don’t know that I’m qualified to say why Burnaby is so cool. I don’t know every reason that they chose, but it looked to me from an opinion point of view that they realized that it was just complicating things. Now you have so much more flexibility in what you can build. So, they’re going to see a lot of old houses that, because there’s a lot of old houses in Burnaby, right?
- Nick
32:08
And now they can actually be renovated or replaced, because that’s one of the differences between Burnaby and Vancouver. Vancouver, you want to build a multiplex. It has to be brand new. In Burnaby, you can actually renovate a building to be a multiplex. At least that’s everything that I’ve seen.
- Nick
32:27
I couldn’t find any clauses anywhere that said you couldn’t renovate. And so instead, that allows you to have multigenerational living in a very cost-effective manner. Jennifer Lee
32:49
So on that note, just to explain, so you’ve got a pretty good-sized house and you want to make a big addition because you want your kids to each have their own wing, you can do up to three wings, so one for you and one for up to three kids very easily in Burnaby now and it makes it perfect for multi-generational living. And something else that Burnaby is doing that not all municipalities are doing is Vancouver does them, a few others do them. I know where Mike lives they don’t do them yet. Okay, but it’s laneways. They just brought laneways in, right?
- Nick
33:09
Yeah, they yeah, they completely opened it up for laneways. You can do almost anything now. They you do have to have some kind of lane access. That’s the only requirement on the laneways. However, my understanding is that if you do the multiplex options, there are ways to get around the laneway if you build it in as part of a multiplex application.
- Jennifer Lee
33:26
But then that goes into multi-generational living.
- Nick
33:28
Well, it doesn’t have to, but yes, it can, right? You can also rent them out if you need income helpers or otherwise. They just literally opened it up so you could do pretty much any option you ever wanted to, right? Which the amount of families I talked to in Burnaby, it’s incredible. So, it was something else I was going to mention. I want to ask you while we’re on that topic, okay?
- Mike
33:49
So, it’s really hard to compare the cost of doing construction in, say, Surrey and Vancouver. That’s right. So, we can’t do apples to apples. However, in your opinion, with this flexibility, would you say relative to other similar municipalities not named Vancouver, it has now gotten less expensive to do a project in Burnaby relative to other municipalities that are similar?
- Nick
34:17
I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s gotten less expensive. And the reason I’m going to say that is just because the fact that building code is still building code. They’re still supposed to be building to the same code.
- Jennifer Lee
34:30
Supplies are expensive.
- Nick
34:32
Supplies are expensive and everything related to that.
Mike
34:36
On the other hand… putting more stuff on the same piece of land and that’s the expense.
- Nick
34:39
Well, and that was what I was about to get at is that the amount of things that you can fit on the land, I can get at least 50% more if not 100% more on a lot in Burnaby than I used to be able to. So, you don’t have the land lift cost for two properties now, you can get twice as much on the same property. So that’s amazing by itself. But the other thing is because you have faster permitting, because Burnaby only requires a single building permit, four to five months, no development permit requirement there. So, there’s four to five months saved on carrying costs. Everything goes through faster because it’s easier to design. The design goes through faster, which is less expensive. Everything about it is simplified and streamlined.
- Nick
35:20
It makes it a lot better. Yeah, Burnaby feels like the perfect storm because they have this program, they have good investment in transit infrastructure, and there’s a lot of other things that they’re doing really, really well that almost feels like a test case for a lot of other municipalities, right? Because we are all governed under this umbrella legislation,
- Mike
35:40
but what we allow beyond that is what we allow beyond that on a municipality-by-municipality basis.
- Nick
35:45
And I suspect it’ll be something along those lines where you see a lot of developers and builders start flocking to Burnaby and Burnaby starts getting nicely developed and not too fast because nobody can build an incredibly fast, right? It takes time. There’s only so many good builders out there that can do the work. But the point being that it will build up, and I think all the other municipalities will start to see how much easier and faster and more streamlined it is, and maybe they’ll decide to follow suit.
- Jennifer Lee
36:15
Well, Burnaby is getting to the point that it’s like a European city because there’s little areas. Obviously, it’s so big, so they’re not all joined up together, but there’s little pockets. Growing up in New Westminster and then going to Burnaby, they didn’t have any of that stuff but like the Metrotown area and the Brentwood area, I was like wow this is something you’d see like in New York or wherever where it’s like cool coffee shops right people are able to walk in it, there’s a lot of families and like it’s really interesting.
- Nick
36:41
Yeah it’s a very different vibe and I’ve actually been and they’re now building up the Lougheed Centre area, Brentwood just well I shouldn’t say finished it Brentwood’s going to keep going yeah it’s in Metrotown now is now starting its revitalization so yeah you’re going to see a lot of very cool municipality or not municipality but neighborhoods popping up right well I like the impact on communities don’t get me wrong high-rises have their place and they’re certainly convenient but they’re not necessarily the most conducive to a feeling of community you don’t go and talk to the person four units above or four floors above you unless you bump into each other in the elevator.
- 7
37:17
Whereas if we identify these…
- Jennifer Lee
37:18
You could meet them in the bottom for a drink now because there’s actual restaurants and things before your high-rise would just be anywhere.
- Mike
37:24
Because neighborhoods like mine, a high-rise isn’t going to be conducive. However, we still have the same problems of that neighborhood, which is we have more people who need to live there than we have places. So being able to take that one family older home and bring it up to an energy efficiency standard, and having four families there enhances any community. And it’s going to take a few years for the data to percolate down to a level that we’re going to see, but I think this is a test case for success.
- Nick
37:49
Adding to that, if I can, so adding on from the point of view, whether it’s four families you’ve added in, or it’s one family that you do the multi-generational option where the kids get to stay there, if you see more and more of that in a neighborhood,
- Nick
38:04
those kids grew up in that neighborhood, most likely, right? And they’ll know other people in that neighborhood and that continues to build that tapestry of that community in that neighborhood, right? Because people had known each other for generations at that point.
- Nick
38:19
If you see more and more of that, you’ll see rebuilding. If people move out and spread out and they don’t know any of their neighbors, that community fabric just starts to fall apart, right? So, sorry.
Mike
38:32
No, I think it’s great. It was a great imagery, tapestry, and like, I like it. Yeah. Well, Nick, this is one of those episodes where I’m kind of sad right now. Okay. Not because of what we talked about. How can you say that to every guest we have? No, no, because this is one of those ones where I kind of feel like we probably could have gone on for several more hours and really had a deep dive. Unfortunately, we are out of time this episode, but I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we talk to you. Hopefully. We talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about how the building codes are changing and the impact that’s having. We talked about the permitting process, specifically how they fall under Bill 44 and 46. And the most important thing, I think, and the most interesting thing was talking about who’s doing it right and how they’re creating communities versus just creating buildings. So, we want to say a huge thank you. And you want to come back sometime?
- Nick
39:27
I would love to. I really enjoyed this.
- Mike
39:29
Okay, perfect. It’s done deal.
- Jennifer Lee
39:31
Perfect. You have to come back because I know that you’ve got a lot more tips than you, but we’re going to allow you to give one more before we go. One more tip for prospective homeowners out there.
- Nick
39:41
For prospective homeowners, whether you want to renovate or build, take a look at the bones of the house and see whether you actually like it. If it’s a good size and it fits, anything can be fixed and made to look gorgeous. It just takes a bit of work. But you have to decide if it doesn’t have good bones, then you know demolish it, build a new house and because the new building standards are amazing. But if it doesn’t, renovate it up to the current standard because it’s not that hard to do it and you’ll find that your family has a healthier lifestyle.
Mike
40:21
Great tip. Absolutely. And as always, you know, always enjoy talking. You always learn a lot from you. Before we go, I just have to do a quick bit of housekeeping and that is of course the amazing people who watch and listen to this episode. Of course, they got a bunch of great information from Nick, but I bet they’d like a barbecue. What do you think, Jennifer? Do they think they deserve a barbeque?
- Jennifer Lee
40:37
I think they would love a barbeque, Mike. I think they would love you to come and cook the barbecue food for them.
Mike:
Well, first, let’s get them the barbeque and we’re going to give you a real easy way to do so. You’ve already watched and listened to this episode, thank you very much. Now, like and share this episode so your family and friends can find it. And if you do that, you have a chance to win a beautiful Napoleon Prestige P500 stainless steel natural gas barbecue valued at $1,600, compliments of our amazing podcast partners at FortisBC.
Details are available at www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce .
- Jennifer Lee
41:14
And for notes and links and everything mentioned on today’s episode, including resources shared by Nick, go to www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce. Thank you to Trail Appliances, FortisBC, BC Housing, Rami Films, J-Pod Creations, and AI Technology and Design. It takes a team to build a home, and it does to build this podcast.
