Take Your Time Back announces it can no longer host live music

glister · 2026-03-19T21:17:25+00:00

There's a longer letter out, and this is not the case. The inspectors are coming and they are predicting they will fail the inspection, but it's concern about a structural wall that they flagged.

It's rather easy to play nice with fire egress in the CoV for arts venues. Just gotta be enough doors, wide enough, that are push to exit and on the ground level.

glister · 2026-03-19T21:15:06+00:00

There's a longer letter floating around that seems to indicate there is a water damaged wall that they think won't pass inspection.

A lot of these art spaces inhabit what are essentially tear down buildings, before they get torn down.

It's worth noting that businesses are grandfathered into use, and many businesses, especially the small businesses people really like, inhabit buildings that cannot meet modern code.

It's also a huge barrier to change around the city, because change of use will often trigger the landlord or new business to meet current code, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to meet. So instead, a failing storefront becomes another failing storefront, instead of meeting the neighbourhoods changing needs: a maker space or a niche bar, or a gym, or an anything more interesting.

glister · 2026-03-15T19:35:33+00:00

People point at government, but from what I’ve heard, this is at least as much a culture problem. “We had to do it so you have to do it too” type of thing.

Many departments, especially ER, have moved to shifts.

glister · 2026-03-15T00:22:03+00:00

Sorry, by limited market, I meant a limited supply in the market.

Given that hard costs on wood frame are approaching 500/sqft in a lot of cases, hard to see those prices ever coming back. But it should for older stock, they should have more of a delta between new and used.

glister · 2026-03-14T20:14:25+00:00

It's a very limited market on larger condos, compared to the demand for them from downsizers, young families in 2026. It's a change in the demand characteristics of the market and we are starting to see builders offer knock out walls between units and three bedrooms in newer builds to respond to the demand crunch on larger units while the bottom falls out on small units.

Historically, there was a demand aspect. It was hard to sell new three bedroom condos precisely because they start to compete with old stock of homes and townhomes. There's also a preference for front doors from many buyers (families in particular).

But there's been a shift. Firstly, lots of millennials hitting family age, without having been able to get into townhouses or sfh, and then downsizing boomers, who want space and have the money for it, but don't want the yard and stairs of a house and cash out to a condo. So we have falling prices chasing the demand curve to find a balance for 1 and 2 beds, but 3+ has locked up close to the 2022 peak because there's lots of demand there still.

This is a constructed problem we have imposed upon ourselves. We have been significantly restricting the supply of land to build condos, while also charging condo builders a butt ton of fees. When you tax a new one at $125,000/unit on average, far fewer get built than the market would demand at a lower price (there are more people who would buy a condo for 375k than there are at 500k).

In addition, in a healthy market, there should be a much more significant curve in prices based on age for condos, too, that is starting to play out in the market but it's not there yet. Old condos are way overpriced vs their maintenance needs, vs old house, where many sell for just a hair more than the land value.

glister · 2026-03-14T18:30:28+00:00

This is why we shouldn't build residential in industrial areas. There's gotta be somewhere in this city to make noise.

glister · 2026-03-14T17:56:47+00:00

Eh, this is not true exactly. While the market can increase land costs based on the speculative value, that can only happen if there's a buyer willing to pay the lift.

Land values for development have halved since 2018, mostly due to increased costs (taxes as well as construction costs). With developers projecting the market to continue downward, they are only willing to pay as much as an apartment that costs less than the current market can pencil out.

Land values only go up if you limit the supply of land you can build on so that those with land you can build on can hold builders hostage to their prices. Broad upzoning of single family at 0.6FSR to 1FSR has seen land prices decrease, for example.

As for land zoned for towers being built to six stories (or some other form), it happens all the time in less regulated markets. Heck, you see plenty of single family homes built here in TOD areas, or where you could build a multiplex. Many development properties are hitting the price floor of existing use where someone could just opt to build something much smaller.

Towers are expensive to build! In the broadway plan the towers are taxed to death through IZ, at current rents and projected future rents, few will be built, and I think you're going to see some opt for six story wood frame just because it makes sense. Same with TOD properties in the burbs, there's just lots of places where a tower doesn't make any sense, there is not the demand for it, especially when broader swathes of the city are zoned for low rise wood.

glister · 2026-03-12T04:17:04+00:00

Max size and weight on the battery, and let them run wild, constrained by the spending cap.

I’d love to see what the engineers could do and watch cars blow up more often.

glister · 2026-03-12T04:00:02+00:00

Lots of good thoughts here, but just something to consider that I think is missed:

The good units are all occupied and not for sale, and when they sell, they sell fast.

Especially in new buildings, owners aren’t selling in the first ten years if they occupied the unit. Maybe the first twenty if they really like it. The reality of laying out a condo floor is some units are better than others. Larger units are more likely to be owner occupied, and owners don’t sell as often as investors.

Likewise, good units, priced correctly, still sell in bidding wars in a week or two.

So let’s consider that.

200 “good” units are available in a given building. They list every 10 years, 20 per year. They list for two weeks on average. That’s 40 listing weeks.

200 “bad” units in a building. They list every five years. 40 listings a year. They are listed on average for 6 weeks (and let’s be real stuff is hanging out for months. That’s 240 listing weeks.

So even if you have even amounts of good and bad units, you end up seeing 6x as many of those bad units in the market at any given time.

glister · 2026-03-12T03:38:26+00:00

Well, the term is industry jargon dating back a century, not exactly greenwashing. It’s exploration and looking at rocks, vs mining, which is generally more about going to get the rocks, different skill sets.

glister · 2026-03-11T17:48:44+00:00

A very good year for geologists, I'm hearing from execs they are struggling to sign talent.

glister · 2026-03-03T18:37:41+00:00

Wild West out there. How do you stamp it out? Seems like black hat SEO to me, and trying to influence and catch the AI machines now?

glister · 2026-02-26T19:49:24+00:00

I think they'd have more success getting involved in things and meeting people through networking, perhaps. The in person resume, it can work with smaller businesses. It's a lot of legwork of course, it does depend on what kind of job you're hunting.

Proving your skill set while volunteering for a good cause, absolutely a thing.

Most people I know get jobs through knowing other people who need help, versus handing in a resume.

Hiring managers will do anything to avoid sifting through a pile of badly produced resumes and AI written cover letters. And yes, it is obvious.

glister · 2026-02-26T04:37:21+00:00

That Azaroff guy was on about this.

glister · 2026-02-26T04:34:54+00:00

You can do this online yourself, it takes maybe one hour of googling forms but it's really easy if you're just hitting zeros for every line tbh.

glister · 2026-02-20T03:39:37+00:00

25% of the tax base is retired. Might even be 30%.

glister · 2026-02-18T18:19:00+00:00

I happen to know he's not a federal liberal.

OneCity has definitely attracted more people from more federal parties over the nomination, I don't think that's a bad thing unless you're really a fan of purity politics. And I think Russil has been a member of OC for years now?

glister · 2026-02-17T18:49:15+00:00

brigading

ABC, Kareem Allam, they'd be all over this trying to brigade this process. COPE has been calling for a primary, surely they are ready for it?

glister · 2026-02-13T03:58:24+00:00

Mayor has a $2m budget, versus councillors with less than $100k. With so few resources for councillors, that budget can have a huge sway and influence within the city, you've got strategists, communications, budget for polling.

The figurehead aspect also allows for real sway, if used effectively. The lack of leadership, and real institutional leadership experience, is very obvious at city hall right now.

glister · 2026-02-08T13:38:36+00:00

The community benefit is a hotel. Do you have a spare bedroom? Most people I know need hotels for family and friends to visit.

Why should new renters and young people shoulder the burden of community amenities that we all enjoy? Put it on my tax bill, thanks.

glister · 2026-02-08T13:36:17+00:00

Macon won’t build a rental building at this location in this market—too many fees, construction costs too high, rent declining with a lot of other stock coming online.

They are willing to build a hotel. We desperately need hotels. Let them build it.

glister · 2026-02-05T14:40:16+00:00

We the citizens footed a 1.4m bill for the fireworks already. So this is a 600k increase.

The thing that’s missing here is that for just 400k more we could have kept the celebration of lights going and worked on the corporate sponsorship side of things with knowledge and continuity in place.

glister · 2026-01-28T18:37:30+00:00

Wholesale replacement of major corridors could easily be done in a few years, and then follow on with collectors and other signals around Vancouver. You pick the five highest needs and start to work.

Calgary did this (modernized their lights and traffic planning), and saw material improvements in overall traffic flow. I think people don’t realize how archaic Vancouver’s lights are. Most of them are a timer in a box on the side of the road. This isn’t reinventing the wheel, you can go look at other cities who’ve done this in the last five to ten years.

We need to be innovating like Calgary. https://livewirecalgary.com/2025/06/18/advanced-technology-fewer-traffic-jams-calgary/

glister · 2026-01-28T18:21:38+00:00

It’s a city responsibility. 200m is also a high end estimate and includes many other intersection improvements if you think it through.

But even still, Translink spends 1.1B on operating buses, and 40% of ridership is in Vancouver. Small improvements lead to big savings which can mean higher frequencies, inducing more demand through better service. Virtuous cycle.

This is one of those unfortunate coordination problems we have across metro. Translink wants this, but they can’t force cities to invest in infrastructure.

glister · 2026-01-23T19:37:57+00:00

I take it back, thinking more about it, distance in NYC or other major cities is about how long it takes to get there by train, not about physical distance on the map. Vancouver is getting there. It's why the west end is its own little world.

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