In Vancouver today, rezoning doesn’t necessarily mean building. Increasingly, it means something else: securing entitlements — legal permissions that inflate a property’s value regardless of whether anything is actually constructed. Nowhere is this clearer than at 1780 East Broadway, the high-profile Safeway redevelopment at Commercial-Broadway Station.
At first glance, the proposal is a win: three towers, a thousand new rental homes, and a redeveloped grocery store at a major transit hub.
But this site isn’t just another parcel of land slated for redevelopment. For decades, the Safeway at 1780 East Broadway served as a vital community hub—both functionally and symbolically. In 2015, it was at the centre of one of Vancouver’s most ambitious participatory planning efforts: the Grandview-Woodland Citizens’ Assembly. This citizen-led body was formed in response to community backlash against early proposals for high-rise towers at the site. After months of deliberation, the Assembly endorsed a modest development plan: mid-rise buildings, a public plaza, and a pedestrian-oriented retail precinct.
City Council’s 2016 Grandview-Woodland Plan adopted many of these recommendations, suggesting building heights between 12 and 24 storeys and designating the site as a “community heart.” Yet what was approved in 2025—three towers reaching up to 44 storeys—is a dramatic departure from that original vision. What began as a landmark experiment in community-based planning has become a case study in how public engagement can be overridden by speculative ambition.
But listen to the developer’s own words. During a November 2024 investor call, Crombie REIT CEO Mark Holly stated plainly:
“It is a JV [joint venture] with Westbank…We are optimistic that sometime in the first half of 2025 we will have that fully entitled… Once we get to that point we are going to review our options. Which will include a monetization of that asset.”
This isn’t a side note—it’s the business model. It reveals a broader truth behind this and many similar rezonings under the Broadway Plan: these aren’t necessarily about delivering homes. They’re about manufacturing tradable rights—a kind of paper gold—that can be held, leveraged, or flipped for profit.
The rezoning journey for this site has taken years. Since 2019, the proposal has grown in height and shifted in focus—from a mix of strata and rental units with a floor space ratio (FSR) of 5.53, to a 100% rental plan with more than 1,000 units. The approved rezoning includes an FSR of 8.3 and a building height of 479 feet, described as 44 storeys—though with amenity levels, the number could climb to 47.
Yet only 10% of the units will be rented at “average citywide rents”—a benchmark that doesn’t even meet basic affordability standards. The project lacks the 20% below-market housing component typically required under city policy.
To permit this level of development, the City approved an FSR increase of 2.6 over the Grandview-Woodland Plan’s original guideline (8.3 vs. 5.7), translating to approximately 274,800 additional buildable square feet—worth an estimated $40 million at $150 per buildable square foot. This windfall was granted with no guaranteed community benefit. On paper, the project aligns with housing goals. In reality, it’s more about maximizing marketable entitlement than delivering urgently needed housing.
Entitlements have real monetary value. When Council approves a rezoning, land value rises—not because of any actual development, but due to the possibility of it. That speculative potential alone can justify massive gains for landowners.
In fact, real estate investment trusts openly acknowledge this logic. Crombie REIT, in its 2024 Annual Report, notes that it calculates fair value for redevelopment properties in part based on “progress through entitlement.” Similarly, CAPREIT’s 2023 Annual Report describes how its development team works on “identification and entitlement” of underutilized land—entitlements that can then be sold off as shovel-ready assets. For them, entitlement isn’t a step toward housing—it’s a milestone of profit.
At 1780 East Broadway, all signs point to the site being sold before construction begins. And why not? With rezoning secured and no obligation to build promptly, the entitlement becomes the commodity.
As housing researchers Cameron Murray and Joshua Gordon argue, rezoning isn’t just a regulatory change—it’s a transfer of public property rights. Cities, by upzoning land, grant landowners access to more public space in the sky: in effect, they privatize public airspace.
“Land,” they remind us, is a bundle of socially constructed rights and permissions around height or density that belong, until rezoned, to the public. Without robust value-capture mechanisms, governments give away public assets for free, deepening inequality and failing to ensure more housing.
In this light, entitlements are not just financial instruments. They’re public gifts, repackaged as private property.
Architect and scholar Matthew Soules offers more insight into this process. In his work on the financialization of architecture, he describes how buildings have evolved into investment vehicles—optimized for capital rather than community. Building types like “ultra-thin towers” reflect financial logic more than urban design.
The Broadway towers follow this pattern. They are tall, narrow, and configured to maximize entitlement and exchange value—not human scale or livability. As Soules argues, such architecture distances itself from everyday urban life, turning buildings into abstract financial tools. What’s being constructed isn’t just housing—it’s vertical capital.
This isn’t merely speculative—it actively undermines the public good. Even when entitlements include obligations—such as affordability targets—the City has often watered them down in response to developer pushback. The CURV tower on Nelson Street, for instance, had its below-market commitments quietly reduced after approval.
The message: push hard enough, and you’ll get what you want.
This pattern also appears in city-initiated rezonings. At 520–590 West 29th Avenue, for example, staff declined to demand below-market housing, citing a 2018 rezoning that had already inflated land value, without securing community benefits. Entitlement inflation, in other words, cuts both ways.
Meanwhile, assessments based on “highest and best use” can drive up surrounding property taxes—not based on actual development, but on the hypothetical potential introduced by rezoning.
And now, developers are lobbying for protection from the tax consequences of their own entitlements. A June 2025 motion brought forward by Councillor Rebecca Bligh proposed a tax abatement scheme that would freeze property taxes at pre-rezoning levels for rental developments. Although the motion ultimately failed, it illustrates an ongoing push by some political actors to further protect entitlements and shield developers from the fiscal consequences of upzoning.
The rationale?
That rezoning-driven tax increases could deter construction. In effect, Council is being asked to create windfalls, then protect developers from the costs those windfalls create. It’s a burden shift that leaves the public footing the bill while reinforcing the notion that entitlement should be consequence-free.
From the BC Assessment perspective, the Safeway site will now likely be valued based on its approved future build-out—not its current grocery store use—raising assessments and, potentially, costs for nearby businesses and renters.
The 2025 rezoning wasn’t unanimously approved. Councillor Sean Orr voted against it, citing a lack of affordability. Councillor Pete Fry abstained—a procedural move that still counts as support but signaled discomfort. Public input was also significant: 619 written submissions opposed the project versus 459 in support, with over 140 people signing up to speak at Council.
Social media messaging from ABC Vancouver presented the project as a major win: “1,044 new rentals,” “on a transit hub,” and “with a childcare centre + plaza.” But critics were quick to challenge this framing. As Sean Orr put it, “double the height, no below-market rentals… not a plaza.” The cheapest projected units remain well above the neighbourhood’s median income, and no 20% below-market requirement was enforced.
At heart, this was never a vote on whether to build housing, but whether to continue letting speculation masquerade as public interest. Beneath the language of housing, the vote sanctioned something else entirely: the use of public power to manufacture private windfalls.
Nevertheless, the rezoning passed—demonstrating how entitlements are increasingly pushed forward in the name of supply, even when delivery remains uncertain.
Worse, once a rezoning is approved, the entitlement becomes legally entrenched. Reversing it—even in the public interest—would likely trigger costly legal action. Future councils are effectively bound by today’s speculative decisions. Entitlements become not just financial assets but political handcuffs.
Vancouver has previously used time limits to encourage developers to proceed. Some rezonings have included a two-year deadline for enactment or lapse of approval. This creates a time-sensitive boundary: if the developer fails to meet it, the approval expires. Enactment often requires substantial payments—such as Development Cost Charges (DCCs), Community Amenity Contributions (CACs), and bonding for in-kind amenities—demonstrating a serious intent to build.
However, developers have increasingly pushed to defer these obligations until after enactment or even after construction begins, replacing traditional financial guarantees with weaker alternatives. This trend dilutes the city’s leverage and further weakens incentives to actually build.
Once a rezoning is enacted, undoing it requires a full re-zoning—often a legal and political impossibility. Despite calls to mandate delivery timelines under the Broadway Plan, no such policies have been introduced to date.
Many now see the 1780 East Broadway approval as precedent-setting. With its record 44-storey height and just 10% of units priced at “average citywide rents,” it invites other developers to pursue similarly unbalanced projects. It risks normalizing a model of entitlement-first, delivery-later development.
As one city observer put it: Council believed it approved housing; in reality, it approved a financial instrument.
If Vancouver is serious about addressing its housing crisis, it must stop mistaking speculative entitlements for real solutions. Rezoning should be a path to building, not a shortcut to profit. Until City Hall closes the loopholes that allow speculation to masquerade as supply, the public will continue to lose.
Because in today’s market, you don’t need to build homes to make money—you just need to be entitled.
And entitlement, both in planning and in psychology, is a learned behaviour. Reward it, and it grows. Indulge it, and it metastasizes. Soon, you’re not regulating development—you’re appeasing it.
Vancouver has cultivated a development culture that expects approvals without obligations, density without delivery, and public decisions that function like private allowances. When challenged, the response isn’t accountability—it’s a tantrum, often backed by lawyers.
This isn’t just poor governance. It’s negligent parenting.
If the city doesn’t start enforcing limits, the tantrums will only grow louder—and public trust will continue to erode.
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Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
