Squamish First Nation (SFN) plans for two multi-storey towers on eight acres of reserve land at the south end of Burrard Bridge are rai sing concerns because the band has thus far said little about the project.
"We don't have anything for an interview," the SFN spokeswoman Krisandra Jacobs told Business in Vancouver. "Our department of intergovernmental relations, natural resources and revenue [is] reviewing the project, so we don't have an update."
Some fear that construction on the project, which is expected to include one 35-storey and one 28-storey tower, is set to start next year and will affect area residents when hundreds of future residents use city services.
But former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan likes the concept of highrises north of the Molson Brewery site on Burrard Street – a project that he said Vancouver city council would not have approved had the towers required civic approval.
"Close to the downtown core is where you get the benefits of density," he told Business in Vancouver.
"The SFN could be doing a real service for the city by helping people to rethink densification."
He expects that the Squamish will negotiate a service agreement with the city similar to the one the Musqueam Indian Band (MIB) has for developments on its reserve land.
MIB compensates the city for connecting its projects to city services such as sewer and water.
Residents on Musqueam land also use city streets, parks, recreation centres and libraries. So Sullivan said compensation to the city for the non-property-tax-paying residents on Musqueam land is similar to what the city would charge a private developer and homeowners were the development on non-reserve land.
Not all service agreements are as equitable.
North Vancouver District councillor Alan Nixon is concerned that the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN) is not sufficiently compensating his district for the use of services from about 1,300 residents at the rapidly growing 450-home Raven Woods development near Deep Cove.
The TWN's condominiums are marketed on a long-term, pre-paid lease basis to buyers.
Nixon said service agreements for the development that were based largely on a flat fee have been renewed several times.
"We now have in the order of 1,300 non-members [non-natives] living on the TWN reserve," said Nixon. "Those 1,300 non-members definitely consume and avail themselves of services that the taxpayers of the District of North Vancouver pay for."
Nixon wants to move to a system where the TWN pays an equivalent amount for using city services as nearby North Vancouver residents.
He's also concerned about the impact of potential future Squamish Nation development on 528 acres of reserve land south of Park Royal.
Because the SFN is one of a number of Canadian native bands covered by the First Nations Land Management Act, it doesn't require civic approval for development on that land or its reserve land near the Burrard Bridge.
"Over time, the SFN are looking at several thousand residents in towers near Park Royal," Nixon said. "What is the impact of those several thousand residents on the North Shore transportation network, the hospital network?"
The SFN, meanwhile, has been careful about what it releases to the media.
Chief Gibby Jacob told media in 2010, when the SFN signed a memorandum of understanding and protocol agreement with the City of Vancouver, that the SFN's Burrard towers would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The band has not yet said how it's financing the project or what interest rate it's paying.
Financing can be a problem for a native band that wants to build multi-family projects on its land because prospective future residents are prohibited from buying fee simple title to homes on reserve land.
Financial institutions, pension funds or other lenders similarly have no recourse for projects on reserve land.
"They can't register liens," said Nixon, who sits on Metro Vancouver's new aboriginal relations committee and was a longtime member of Metro Vancouver's Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee before that organization voted to dissolve itself in April.
"They can't sue for performance if the loan is registered on Indian land."
The SFN has said that its intention is to rent all units in the Kitsilano towers and then sell the project to a real estate trust.
Architecture firm Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning is designing the Burrard Street towers, but the SFN has not authorized Kasian to release renderings of the project.
As for potential towers along the West Vancouver waterfront, the SFN last hinted at that possibility in the SFN's 2004 Capilano Master Plan, which sketched out a vague plan for residential highrises, commercial and retail buildings. •
