STOP 2030 BARCLAY STREET!
An Appeal To Vancouver City Council

by Dr. Wendy Sarkissian
(click images to enlarge)

Edtor’s Note: At the last of three public hearing sessions on the Marcon Developments request for rezoning of 2030 Barclay to allow for the demolition of Rosellen suites and the construction of a 25-story hotel, West Ender and retired community planner Dr. Wendy Sarkissian made the following presentation to Vancouver City Council.

My name is Dr. Wendy Sarkissian. I am a senior planner, ethicist, and Life Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia, with forty professionalawards in community planning.

I have lived in this neighbourhood since 2000, at 1999 Nelson Street, around the corner from this hotel. Until last week, due to an inoperative elevator in my building, I lived in Rosellen Suites, the tiny, four-storey hotel now on the site, from midJune 2025. For nine months, I watched Barclay Street and the laneway behind it—early morning, late at night, weekdays, weekends, in all weathers.

I have been taken by ambulance from that tiny hotel in the middle of the night.

I am trained to assess environments, and I have observed this one very closely. What I want you to hear is this: even with a tiny four-storey hotel, the system is already strained. You are being asked to replace that with a huge, 250-room hotel on the same small footprint, and to pretend the street and laneway can somehow absorb it.

They cannot. Here are five reasons why:

1. THE LANEWAY REALITY

Behind this site is not a generous service road. It is a narrow, confined laneway already carrying far more than it can comfortably bear. Along this end of one tiny laneway, there already are multiple underground parking garages—at least three separate access points serving neighbouring buildings—all feeding cars in and out of the same tight space.

**An early artist’s rendition of the planned hotel for 2030 barclay.**

Residents back out into the lane. Deliveries come in. Recycling bins, trucks, garbage bins, bicycle racks, take up space. People walk, wheel, and cycle through because the sidewalks on Barclay are so narrow.

The result is that, even with the current tiny hotel, the laneway already feels precarious: drivers inch past each other, squeeze between bins, trying not to hit pedestrians. There is no spare capacity in that laneway. It is physically tiny and functionally full.

Now add what this proposal implies: hotel guests’ cars, taxis, Uber and Lyft, service vehicles, linen trucks, food deliveries, recycling, and garbage removal. And more. Think about the construction process. Oh. My. God!

Everyone will be trying to access a much larger hotel operation. You will be pouring a freeway-level program into a back alley that can barely cope with what it has now.

2. THE SCALE OF HOTEL TRAFFIC HAS BEEN GROSSLY UNDERESTIMATED.

Barclay Street is a narrow, tree-lined residential street with narrow sidewalks, a calm connector to Stanley Park, not a hotel driveway. A hotel of 250 rooms typically generates six to eight vehicle trips per room per day. That is roughly 1,500 to 2,000 vehicle movements every day, with well over 100 in the peak hour.

One or two mid-block driveways on a street like Barclay, feeding into that narrow laneway system, cannot safely absorb that volume. Today, you have a tiny, four-storey boutique hotel, and the network is already creaking. Tomorrow, you are being asked to approve a giant, high-turnover machine in its place.

3. THE RIDE-HAIL REALITY

Uber and Lyft drivers already refuse to pick up passengers on Barclay St. because it is too narrow and too congested. They tell passengers to meet them in the tiny laneway behind the building. I have done this myself. I have stood in that lane in the dark and the rain waiting for a car to edge its way in.

**A weekly presence in front of the denman street shoppers drugs gathered thousands of protest signatures.**

So, the future is not just traffic on Barclay; it is traffic -- plus ridehail -- plus service vehicles -- in the laneway, all manoeuvring around existing garage entrances, bins, bicycles, trucks, and people on foot.

You have seen the photos of the laneway at the last meeting: this is already a tiny, tight, cluttered space. There is nowhere for all this extra movement to go except into conflict—horns, frustration, nearmisses, and, eventually, crashes and injured pedestrians.

4. THE IMPACTS ON VULNERABLE USERS

For nine months at the tiny hotel at Rosellen Suites, and five years living one block away, I have watched children, youth, seniors, and tourists walking and cycling down Barclay to Stanley Park. There is a Mobi bike station a few metres away at Chilco. Tourists wobble off on rented bikes. Older people push walkers. Parents herd small children toward the park.

Hotel check-in and check-out peaks will overlap directly with school and childcare peaks at King George Secondary and Pooh Corner. At exactly the times when children and youth are using the street and laneway, you will be adding taxis, Uber, Lyft, private cars, delivery vans, and service vehicles.

Life will become dangerous—and frankly, hellish—for pedestrians and cyclists. We will witness constant turning, stopping, doubleparking, blocked sightlines, and vehicles edging across crosswalks trying to squeeze through.

The people who will pay the price are not the hotel owners; they are the residents and the most vulnerable users of the street.

5. THE WIDER NETWORK EFFECTS

Denman and Nelson are already congested. Drivers know this; they already cut through side streets when they can. When we add up to 2,000 hotel-related trips per day, plus ridehails and service traffic, that will push impatient drivers deeper into the neighbourhood. We’ll have them ratrunning through neighbouring streets and lanes, blocking intersections, and creating new choke points.

You will not just be breaking Barclay Street and the laneway; you will be stressing the entire local network.

PLEASE REJECT THIS REZONING

This is not a small adjustment. It is a fundamental mismatch between a tiny four-storey hotel on a small site and a massive, high-traffic hotel program that belongs, if anywhere, on a major arterial with capacity, not on a local residential street and its fragile laneway.

I therefore urge Council to reject this rezoning.

The laneway is too narrow and already overloaded. The street is too narrow and already congested. The negative impacts are too serious, and the benefits are too few.

You are being asked to trade the scale of a modest hotel for the impacts of a very, very large one, without providing the infrastructure that such a building would require.

This is my considered, professional judgment, based on nine months of 24-hour observation on this exact site and a lifetime of planning work. I beg you to listen to the fine-grained experience of someone trained to notice when things will go wrong.

If you approve this project, things will go wrong. Local people will suffer. The laneway will become an unmanageable tangle of guests, deliveries, neighbours’ cars, and service vehicles. The neighbours will live with daily noise, danger, and frustration. The hotel will be a source of endless complaints to Council.

I qualified as a registered planner in 1975. I have seen this pattern before, in other cities and other projects.

Wise, prudent governments do not take risks like this: risks that you force vulnerable community members to bear. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Zoning is a critical part of community planning. There are good reasons why this project does not comply with the existing zoning. It just cannot be made to work. And you still have the power to prevent this disaster from happening.

Please use your power wisely.

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About The Author: Canadian-born Dr. Wendy Sarkissian has lived in the West End since 2017. Formerly a community planner and planning academic in Australia, she is now a full-time author, ethicist, and activist. Her books include: Creative Community Planning; Kitchen Table Sustainability; and Housing as if People Mattered. She recently published a climate memoir, Creeksong: One Woman Sings the Climate Blues.

You can find out more about her books at www.creeksongbook.com or get in touch with Wendy by email at wendy@sarkissian.com.au. Enter her name in the search bar in the top-right of this page to find her previous contributions to The West End Journal.

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