Michael Geller, New Blood for NPA
Vancouver's reigning party stumbled, says developer who seeks one of its council slots.
Geller: 'Would have done differently' Southeast False Creek. Photo by Monte Paulsen.
"When I told people that I was thinking of running for Vancouver City Council, invariably their first question was, 'With which party?'" boasted Non-Partisan Association candidate Michael Geller. "I want to flaunt that. Because I like to think that while I'm running with the NPA, the values that I bring could fit with all of the parties, including COPE."
Geller, an architect and developer, is one of just two political newcomers on the NPA's slowly emerging council slate. The other is former banker David Lee, who is expected to join the race within days. Geller and Lee will be touted as new blood within Vancouver's oldest political party, and as proof-of-life for the city's fractured centre-right.
But in a wide-ranging interview with The Tyee, Geller painted himself less as a saviour of the NPA than as a lowercase non-partisan who doesn't agree with everything his party has done, and wants to help all sides figure out how to fix the city's affordable housing crisis.
"In hindsight, I think my children probably would have been happier if I'd run with Vision Vancouver. My wife even commented that I might have a better chance of winning if I was with Vision," he chuckled.
"But, just to show that I'm not a complete idiot, I am a candidate for city council under the NPA banner. I would ask you, if I were trying to get nominated under the Vision banner -- given all those other candidates -- do you think I'd get a slot?" Geller asked. "So maybe I wasn't so stupid."
'I wanted to put up buildings'
Michael Geller, now 60, is that rare individual who seems to have known what he wanted to do since he was a boy growing up along Bathurst Street in North Toronto.
"I wanted to put up buildings," he said. "When I was very little, I got something called Bayko. It was a children's toy, sort of like Lego, and you made little houses. I think it influenced my life."
He studied architecture at the University of Toronto, and went to work for housing innovator Irving Grossman. "I was doing stacked townhouses at 21 years of age," he said. "I've always had an interest in multi-family housing."
Geller joined the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1972, where he designed homes for seniors and people with disabilities. With the CMHC, he moved to Vancouver in 1974.
"My first assignment was to do a map of Granville Island." He went on to manage the development of social housing on the south shore of False Creek.
"It was a fabulous time," he said, "because that's when CHMC had money. We had co-op housing programs. Non-profit programs. There was more money, often, than there were projects to be funded."
Geller joined The Narod Group in 1981, and later started his own development firm. He has served as president of the Urban Development Institute, and has written extensively about architecture for The Vancouver Sun, among other activities.
Asked to name the developments of which he's most proud, he named the creation of three seniors-oriented housing projects on the west side (including one at Larch and 41st), the redevelopment of the Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour and UniverCity, Simon Fraser University's planned community on Burnaby Mountain.
'Pangs of regret' drive desire for change
Noticeably absent from Geller's list of accomplishments is the development in which he and his family reside.
Deering Island is a private refuge just south of the Southlands, on which Geller helped develop 32 waterfront homes.
"This isn't on the list because it didn't turn out as well as it should have," he said.
Geller had hoped to create a more New Urbanist style community, with a narrow, tree-lined lane winding among a mix of town homes and traditional white waterfront residences.
But he said the city nixed the narrow road, the parks board killed the cherry trees, and Deering Island devolved into yet another monotonous row of suburban mini-mansions. Geller is particularly critical of the role played by former city councillor George Puil.
It was a bitter defeat for a man reputed to be a tough negotiator, and one who drives his Toyota Prius home every evening.
"Often, as I arrive, I feel little pangs of regret for what this could have been," he said.
Those pangs are part of why he is running for council. For the past three decades, he's watched how council decisions have literally reshaped the city, and he thinks council can do better. Specifically:
"The first thing is the Downtown Eastside. I would like to be on council when the tide changes in terms of things starting to get better rather than continuing to get worse," he said.
"Affordable housing is the second thing," he said. "I live in a 3,600-square-foot home. I'm lucky, and I know it. But my two adult children are also living here at the moment. I know from their experience what you get for $800 a month -- and they can't really afford $800 a month."
Third, he's concerned about what he sees as the city's faltering social fabric.
"Having taken a year off and travelled around the world... I came back and discovered that Vancouver wasn't quite as happy a place as it seemed to me when I left," he said. "I saw so much more life in European cities."
Having stood before Vancouver City Council so many times himself, Geller believes he could facilitate better outcomes -- and maybe settle a few old scores.
"One irony is that George Puil is now a development consultant, and one day may well come before me on council," he chuckled. "I intend to show him the same sense of fairness that he always showed me."
'A new aura to the NPA'
Many of Geller's long-time friends were less surprised to learn that he is running for council than they were to discover he is running within the Non-Partisan Association.
"The simple answer is that the NPA approached me," Geller said. He credited Jost Bakker, a fellow architect and former chair of the party's nomination committee, for making the pitch.
"At that point, the party was split between Sam and Peter, genuinely split. Some directors were for Sam, some for Peter. And given my personal interests, it didn't really matter to me whether the next mayoral nominee would be Sam or Peter. I could see pros and cons to both. I didn't know either of them really well," Geller said.
He's since come to know NPA mayoral nominee Peter Ladner and his NPA running mates much better.
"I think Ladner is a remarkable guy. And I can't understand why he isn't more popular, because he has all the qualities I would love to have," he said. "Suzanne Anton and Kim Capri both strike me as reasonable, caring, thoughtful people. I am quite proud to be running with them."
Geller is advising his supporters to make up their own minds.
NPA from a Jewish perspective
"I would like to see the best people win," he said. "I don't know all the candidates yet. But I've already gone on record as saying I will be voting for some people who are not in my party if I think they are better. And I think everybody should do that. They should vote for the best people."
And he seems to enjoy confronting people -- including some within his own family -- who would have preferred he run within Vision.
"When a friend of mine who is associated with Vision heard that I might be running with the NPA, she asked, 'How can you run for the NPA? The party is not sympathetic to the Jews. The NPA once had a major fundraiser on the holiest night of the year. They had their annual general meeting on the first night of Passover,'" Geller recalled.
"I told her, 'Yes, that's true. But if I'm elected, they'll never do that again.'"
He believes that in the wake of the Sullivan era, Vancouver's oldest political party is changing.
"There's potentially a new aura to the NPA," he said. "We really are quite a diverse lot. I am not an old Vancouver, Anglo-Saxon protestant blue blood. I'm a Jewish guy from North Toronto."
He added, puckishly, "Besides, I'm still more left than one of the Vision mayoralty candidates."
NPA 'wrong' at Southeast False Creek
The Tyee asked how Geller, who spent the first decade of his career developing social housing, could support a party that cut social housing at Southeast False Creek, and back-peddled from the city's commitment to build social housing in conjunction with the 2010 Winter Games.
"I can see certain policy issues that I think were wrong. I think in Southeast False Creek, that's one that I would have done differently," Geller said.
He added that the NPA-led council acted on advice of staff, which, in hindsight, significantly underestimated how much money the city land would fetch.
"I actually did feel that the party needed some more fiscal strength, when I looked at the list of candidates. But I feel we've now got that with the upcoming announcement of David Lee," he said.
"Southeast False Creek isn't finished," he added. "More importantly, there are a lot of other potential projects where more socially sustainable decisions can be made."
Sullivan no 'born leader'
Likewise, Geller was blunt when asked why the NPA-led council appears to have abdicated the development of new social housing to Housing Minister Rich Coleman.
"I think a lot of people did criticize Sullivan because he was not a born leader. I think he's a very clever guy, but not a born leader," Geller said.
"I think that the NPA, on some of these issues, has not done as well as other parties might have done," he added.
But, he added, "Many of the things that the NPA has stood for over the years are policies that I would basically support."
And he said Vancouver continues to be admired for its achievements toward social and environmental sustainability.
"I think you might be a little too harsh," he said. "Have you seen what's happening in Edmonton and Calgary and Winnipeg?"
Things the city can do
Geller is hardly alone in naming housing affordability as among Vancouver's most pressing problems. NPA, Vision and COPE candidates all cite the issue. And at some point, most candidates cite the withdrawal of federal and provincial funds as primary causes of the problem. Mayor Sullivan went so far as to make the lack of funding from senior governments a central theme of his term in office.
As a social housing developer in the 1970s, Geller has forgotten more details about former federal funding programs than most of his competitors will ever know. But what distinguishes Geller from the rest of the pack is that he is literally brimming with ideas he believes would lead to the creation of more affordable housing, and nearly all of his proposals could be implemented with or without new funding.
Ten of Geller's ideas are outlined below.
"The biggest thing has to do with the spirit of cooperation... No developer, non-profit, or government can do these things alone," he said.
"I like collaboration. I particularly like strange bedfellows. And I take pride in working with people who you wouldn't normally expect me to work with."
Geller's To Do List
During his Tyee interview, Michael Geller tossed out 10 ideas he says would create more affordable housing in Vancouver. They are:
- Reduce parking requirements. Overturn the existing formula to make current minimum parking requirements the new maximums.
"How can you build a 450-square foot, one-bedroom suite, and then have to pay $55,000 for the underground parking space?"
- Allow secondary suites in apartments and townhouses.
"This could increase the stock of rental accommodation. At UniverCity, second and third bedrooms have their own door to the corridor, and provisions for small kitchens, so they can be rented out as mortgage helpers."
- Encourage back lane housing, mews and other 'infill units.'
"This won't work everywhere, but needs to be encouraged as an affordable solution. We also need to rethink what a laneway can look like."
- Fee-simple row houses.
"Why should young families and other homeowners who can least afford it be forced by a condo association into paying someone else to cut their tiny plot of grass?"
- Encourage alternative forms of family housing. Semi-detached homes, triplexes and four-plexes can be build alongside single-family houses.
"It would have been so easy on Deering Island to allow some of the lots to have had semi-detached units. But the zoning blocked it."
- Facilitate light-weight steel construction as an alternative to concrete for mid-rise buildings.
"An affordable alternative between wood-frame and concrete construction."
- Shrink the lot size. Allow corner lots to be redeveloped into two single-family lots.
"You can do a very nice detached housed on a 25-foot lot. For those neighbourhoods stubbornly determined to fight townhouses, at least let's get smaller single-family houses."
- Lease city land at graduated payment rates to organizations developing affordable housing.
"If you can reduce the land component by not paying for it up front, you can begin to help reduce the cost of developing new housing."
- Encourage creative partnerships between the private, non-profit and public sectors.
"There are a lot of churches and other organizations that have parking lots or other land on which they could build a project that might provide both housing and space for community amenities."
- Speed up the approval process. Zone for more flexible development.
"Buyers wind up paying the carrying costs of unused land. Who do you think reimburses a developer who pays interest on a site for two or more years before he can even begin construction?"
Related Tyee stories:
- Ladner Seizes NPA Crown
After 15 years on council, Mayor Sullivan turns out fewer than a thousand supporters. - Dhaliwal's Bid for Vision Slot Marks Political Shift
Indo-Canadian wants 'to bridge communities' in Vancouver. - It's Gregor Robertson's Vision
He leads fired up party into Vancouver civic race. Can he mend COPE rift?
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Frank
28-08-2008
The winds are a-changing?
A developer and a banker joining the NPA doesn't sound like change but the guy seems to be trying to distance himself from being called a right-winger.
davidex
28-08-2008
Clueless
Mygod... where to begin?
This is just what we need... another developer on council - a kinder, gentler developer, like a kinder, gentler cobra. I have to hand it to Michael Geller, at least we know where he stands on the issues:
A developer develops, so his answer is to just make the lots smaller and push more people into the tinier spaces. Free up land that is beside churches and other places that might just have it as buffer space, and develop, develop. Think of the opportunities! If it all screws up, well I guess we just have more Deering Islands and less heritage buildings, community spaces and artisan shops. I'm glad to hear that he's forced to live on Deering Island and must look at the outcome of a development gone wrong...oops - pesky thing, how realpolitik makes a mockery of a developer's plan.
He finds Susan Anton and Kim Capri reasonable and caring... 'nuff said. They, and all of the NPA team have been soooo effective and caring in dealing with the Downtown East Side problems, SouthEast False Creek and community facility cutbacks, who couldn't find them warm and fuzzy.
I don't get his comment about Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. Yes, I've seen what's happening in Edmonton (ex-pat that I am) and I see an inexpensive LRT system crisscrossing the city, along with a bus system that effectively transports people exactly where they need to go, middle-class, reasonably priced housing from the centre of town out to the 'burbs and excellent roadways for bikes. There's great opportunities for the Arts and artisans/craftspeople to flourish because performance and workshop space is affordable and available and boy can they plow streets in a snowstorm!! Sure, there's a downtrodden part of town, but nothing on a World-Class scale like the Downtown Eastside here. Is it perfect, no, but it's not the polarized mess that this city has turned into.
Michael Geller needs to take a step back and stop seeing the world through an ex-Toronto, Vancouver developer's eyes before I'd support his Council bid.
Sheeeesh.
PS: I do applaud his positions on Passover and the Anglo-Saxons and George Puil.
ARCCA Chair
28-08-2008
Michael Geller
I found your article on Michael Geller interesting for what it did not say. Michael Geller was the long-time agent for LARCO Developments Ltd., one of the first beneficiaries of the City's new "EcoDensity" policy.
I invite your readers to go to our website at arcca.info to see for themselves what Mr. Geller really means when he praises EcoDensity - i.e., massive 6-8 storey buildings with 550-650 condos, taking away the amenities from the seniors retirement community of Arbutus Village which was developed just over 30 years ago, and encroaching on nearby seniors condos, removing their views, sunlight and privacy.
Luke Skywalker
28-08-2008
Geller...
My wife even commented that I might have a better chance of winning if I was with Vision," he chuckled.
Many of Geller's long-time friends were less surprised to learn that he is running for council than they were to discover he is running within the Non-Partisan Association.
I've already gone on record as saying I will be voting for some people who are not in my party if I think they are better.
"Besides, I'm still more left than one of the Vision mayoralty candidates [Al De Genova]."
Yeah, Geller straddles the political centre and has already endorsed Vision Vancouver's Heather Deal.
He certainly would fit into either the NPA or Vision Vancouver as a candidate.
As a social housing developer in the 1970s
"My first assignment was to do a map of Granville Island." He went on to manage the development of social housing on the south shore of False Creek.
"It was a fabulous time," he said, "because that's when CHMC had money. We had co-op housing programs. Non-profit programs. There was more money, often, than there were projects to be funded."
That's certainly alot of experience that could be brought forward on council in terms of the social housing and housing affordability problems plaguing Vancouver.
With another million more people in the region over the next few decades, and minimal land left to populate, it's all about creating sustainable density nodes and growing upwards, not outwards.
"I like collaboration. I particularly like strange bedfellows. And I take pride in working with people who you wouldn't normally expect me to work with."
And that's how things usually get done in the real world.
Right now I see at least 5 incumbents retaining their council seats:
Anton - NPA
Capri - NPA
Louie - VV
Stevenson - VV
Cadman - COPE
Of the remaining ~5 seats, I see Geller (NPA) and Andrea Reimer (VV) snagging two of 'em.
Grumpy
28-08-2008
Geller - Shmeller .........
......... what we have is just another property pimp running for the NPA. Densification and unlivability go hand in hand. But property pimps care nothing for that, nope nada. Developers great god is profit, by up-zoning residential property, tearing down houses and building leaky cramped condos.
Vancouver was once a city of envy, now it has become an over built disgrace, a place to avoid. The downtown core is dismal and RAV/Canada Line will become filled with density 'refugee's fleeing a drugged out city, with little or no future. The East-side is Vancouver's future, rejoice for this is the NPA legacy.
And Mr. Geller, just another developer who knows better - not!
ARCCA Chair
28-08-2008
Budd Campbell
Perhaps I should have been more specific.
The property in question is the only major commercial property in the areas of Arbutus Ridge and Shaughnessy, servicing an area of approximately 4 square miles. All of the surrounding area is residential, including approximately 2000 other households within 550 metres of this property (apartments, condos, townhouses, senior's residences, assisted living facility, extended care facility, etc.).
The Arbutus bus line which serves the property is inadequate for the existing population - the bus drivers themselves call it "the never-never line" since its renowned for its unreliability.
Redeveloping this amenity and commercial property into a massive condo complex will mean that all the residents in the area and the surrounding areas will have to drive to other areas to work, shop, do their community activities, etc., since there will be nothing for them in their own community, the area is surrounded by steep hills and the transit is inadequate. So much for walkable communities (especially for the elderly who've lived in this area all their lives).
Furthermore, this commercial shopping centre was one of the few in Vancouver built to be accessible by seniors and others with varying disabilities. So now all these people will have to travel elsewhere to do their shopping (probably Oakridge until its gone, and then Richmond), since there's no other place suitably accessible on the west side of Vancouver. This will put quite a burden on the public health system, since the provincial government will have to pay for and provide assistance for all these people in order for them to do their daily activities. So much for an inclusive society. Let's just ship out all the old people and the disabled and make them someone else's problem.
If you take the time to look at our website at ARCCA.INFO you'll perhaps understand that this development is just Density but without any "Eco" - which is obviously what EcoDensity was really all about. Despite the spin from our politicians, it was not about laneway houses, walkable communities, increased amenities, sustainability or affordable housing. The condos on this property will likely go for a minimum of $500,000 for a bachelor or small one bedroom (without parking).
EcoDensity was about giving City Council the ability to benefit developers by imposing whatever development they want where ever they want, without taking into account the negative consequences of their decisions. This is hardly a recipe for sustainability or for livable communities - especially when it means tearing down brick and steel 30 year old buildings in order to replace them with more potentially leaky condos to benefit a few at the expense of the entire community.
If you want to believe the EcoDensity spin that's your prerogative, but our experience has taught us otherwise.
Luke Skywalker
28-08-2008
ACCRA...
Arbutus Ridge Shopping Centre lies on a 7-acre site. I'm quite familiar with it.
It currently comprises 110,819 square feet of commercial floor space.
The proposal includes expansion upto 130,000 sq. ft. of commercial/ office space.
And from ARKS community vision approved by council in 2005:
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvcs/planning/cityplan/Visions/arks/pdf/neighcentres.pdf
Same thing is contemplated for the Oakridge Mall and the Semihamoo Mall in White Rock/South Surrey, among others, with even greater density.
ARCCA Chair
28-08-2008
Luke Skywalker
I suggest you read the ARKS Arbutus Centre Subcommitee report posted in the Issues Section of our website, ARCCA.info, which clearly indicates how this proposed development is inconsistent with the ARKS Vision. This report was produced with the consensus of a group of more than 20 residents from throughout the Vision area.
Of course, EcoDensity overrode most of the ARKS Vision, except for one of the Vision Directions (19.1) which supported a new neighbourhood centre WITHOUT HOUSING. But of course, the planning department said that this meant they could impose whatever kind of density and form of housing they wanted, since it wasn't specified in this Vision Direction.
69% of those who attended the "public consultation" said that the proposal contained "significantly too much residential"; another 15% said there was "slightly too much residential". So with less than 16% support of the community, this proposal was adopted. Who said we don't live in Beijing.
I guess 7 acres of property (out of 4 square miles) s just too much space to devote to the needs of the thousands of seniors and disabled persons who actually live in the area. As Peter Ladner said, they don't need a public community centre because they have the Arbutus Club ($40,000 to join). And they don't need more commercial space than they had in 1974 - even though the number of housing units in the area has doubled and already gone up 40% in the last ten years, without any new commercial shops or amenities. And they can wait for the Streetcar to run on the old interurban line (1 km uphill) if they want more public transit.
No, housing and cars - that's all this development would bring - more traffic, congestion and greenhouse gases into an already underserviced and congested area. And, of course, a huge profit for Mr. Geller's now former client.
dorothy
28-08-2008
Density indeed...
"If there needs to be some method of preventing undue shadowing of neighboring properties, remember that eight stories is really just tree top height for mature trees."
You CAN'T be serious! Trees are not massively dense, they do let some light through, and during the darkest time of the year, they go skeletal and practically all the light is allowed through. Replace a tree with a concrete block of the same height and four or five times as wide, and life in your yard will, er, change, like, to a shadowy swamp instead of a place of light and life.
Unmitigated greed is king to some; at least show those of us who are not his subjects the respect of ditching the silly euphemisms and outright lies.
Budd Campbell
28-08-2008
USE YOUR HEAD
dorothy
You CAN'T be serious! Trees are not massively dense, ...
Unmitigated greed is king to some;...
Unmitigated greed got us into this. People with single family homes wanted their prices to rise as far and as fast as possible, to maximize their non-taxable capital gain in their principal residence. So they have opposed density increases at every opportunity in order to restrict residential supply and jack up prices.
An eight storey building is about the same height as a mature tree. So the streetscape will still have a residential feel to it if there are landscape setbacks, and people in those apartments will be looking out directly at some kind of greenery.
A agree a solid, block wide building would shadow homes nearby, and that does have to be dealt with. However, I would be absolutely opposed to remedies that involve inefficient, smaller floorplates as recommended by men like Price who want apartment towers limited to less than 10,000 sf per floor.
Budd Campbell
28-08-2008
ARCCA CHAIR - THANKS
Thanks for explaining the situation. I have to say I am surprised anyone would recommend removing that shopping centre altogether. I assumed from the first post that there would be structures built over top.
dorothy
01-09-2008
The outer limits of Realistic?
“There is no mechanism whereby people can be stopped from coming to live in Vancouver.”
Sure there is. First, zoning bylaws; then the market forces will kick in; then people may ‘come’, but where will they be, if the prices are prohibitive? Many will – and have been known to – leave again. A lot of potential ‘comers’ are already here, a lot of young people still huddling in the basements of their family home, because their own turf is beyond their reach. They are effectively prevented from ‘coming’, are they not?
“As long as density in the city of Vancouver is restricted people will either; live in suburban residential 'sprawl' that will be continue to be built, or, they will live in the central city in increasingly crowded spaces.”
What kind of wishy-washy thinking is this? How about some real leadership, some pragmatically directed social engineering? Who the deuce is in charge here? Somehow, you manage to come across as a parent whose children are out of control, and who is throwing in the towel!
We are constantly inundated by problems the politicians throw at our doorstep, which should have been their province, and when we bring that to their attention, we get this kind of whining. These people should either do their job or get out. In my professional capacity, I should just try to pass my picayune logistics problems on to my clients. They have problems already, that’s why they come to me. Why should the rules be any different for the movers and shakers? Enough, I say. Yes people can be made to do what they need to do. Why else are we paying taxes?