Council votes to rezone Myron Manor, but tenants say the fight isn’t over

Michael Cook didn’t mince words when asked about Vancouver City Council’s vote on Wednesday. “To be honest, the decision is not that surprising.”

After a long and stressful few weeks for the tenants at Myron Manor — which included a council meeting and three public hearings with about 300 registered speakers — the ABC majority on the council decided to approve the controversial rezoning of 75 East 8th Avenue for the construction of a long-term-stay “tech hotel,” which would displace more than 40 residents like Cook. 

With several items on the agenda now pushed until after the October election, including the vote for the rezoning of the Mount Pleasant AI data centre, Cook expressed frustration that their small building of “immigrants and families” was approved for rezoning before council breaks for summer. 

The residents at 75 East 8th Avenue have been fighting to remain in their homes since they were first notified in November 2025 that their landlords, Nicola Wealth and Lotus Capital Corps, had applied to rezone the building. 

This area of Mount Pleasant technically falls under the Broadway Plan. However, because a hotel is slated to take the place of the three-storey, 1960s apartment, Myron Manor tenants would not be eligible for a key component of the Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy (TRPP), namely, the right of first refusal, or the right for existing tenants to be offered an opportunity to return to an apartment in the new building at the same rent as before. 

Several council members flagged this gap in protections for Myron Manor during the public hearing, with many expressing concern for the tenants who will be forced to relocate.

As Vancity Lookout has previously reported, the rezoning application states that the new development would provide “desperately needed extended-stay hotel rooms” to support the “booming high-tech and bio-tech firms” in the area and significantly contribute to “City Council’s objective to solve the hotel room supply crisis.”

In a written statement sent to Vancity Lookout in May, the city noted that Metro Vancouver “has seen a decline in hotel supply,” and will need an estimated 20,000 additional rooms by 2050 to meet demand.

Despite several concerns raised about the impact on tenants during Wednesday’s public hearing, council members narrowly approved the rezoning for the new development, with supporting votes coming exclusively from ABC council members. 

Green Party Coun. Pete Fry, in closing statements, noted that “Vancouver needs affordable homes… I don’t feel like the public interest test has been met here, so for that reason, I’m voting against this.” 

OneCity Coun. Lucy Maloney flagged that “the Broadway Plan projects that have displacement include a right of return for tenants [as well as] compensation... And that’s the difference between this plan and other projects." 

With regards to statements made by Nicola Wealth that tenants would be well-supported in the eviction process, Maloney added that “they say that they go above and beyond the minimum requirements [of the TRPP], but that wasn’t sufficiently detailed to reassure me.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by COPE Coun. Sean Orr, who moved to amend the motion to delay the vote on the property's rezoning until after staff had reviewed the TRPP. However, this amendment was voted down. 

“Staff has acknowledged that this is a gap to be addressed…If we have recognized that the policy is inadequate, then why are we rushing one of these projects that exposes this inadequacy without fixing it… there’s been a lot of rushing lately,” Orr said in council. 

Another issue that came up is the disparity in the city’s existing “below market” rental prices and what many tenants at Myron Manor are currently paying. The city’s current threshold for below-market housing is $1,364 for a studio, $1,488 for a one-bedroom, and over $2,100 per month for two-bedroom units.

According to speakers at the final public hearing, several tenants at Myron Manor currently pay as little as $1,000 for one-bedroom units, with a two-unit apartment in the building priced at $1,298 per month. 

Coun. Rebecca Bligh highlighted this disparity in her closing remarks before she voted against the rezoning, noting, “I just cannot imagine a family where two parents are working with two kids having to come up with an extra thousand dollars a month, that risks homelessness in my opinion.” 

While Bligh expressed her support for the “tremendous amount of philanthropic work” that Nicola Wealth does in the city and said she has “faith” that the company will “do right by these tenants,” she added that “those families will risk having to live in temporary, high-risk shelters … and we have not sufficiently dealt with the risk of displacement and homelessness yet.” 

Myron Manor is a somewhat complicated case, specifically around the site’s industrial zoning.

The apartment itself was built in 1961, while the land that it sits on was rezoned for “Industrial Regional Land Use Designation” in 1962. Because of the change in land designation, the apartment is technically considered to be a “legal nonconforming use.”

This point was repeatedly raised in council, in part, Vancouver Tenant Union member Sydney Ball said, to highlight that a new building could not be used for residential purposes in this area. However, she added that “the only reason the contradiction is coming up now is because there is a developer that would like to make as much money as they possibly could off of the land.”

Industrial areas are typically governed by the Metro Vancouver Board, not the City of Vancouver. However, according to Ball, a stipulation in the Metro 2050: Regional Growth Strategy would technically allow the City of Vancouver to redesignate Myron Manor for general use instead of industrial use, if it chose to do so. 

The city recently used that flexibility to approve a rezoning for the Columbia – a nearby, similarly zoned, and somewhat controversial mixed-use development. However, the city decided not to proceed with rezoning for general use in the case of Myron Manor.

Regardless, the city had to rezone the property to make way for the hotel. Riccardo Peggi, rezoning planner at the City of Vancouver, said in council that “this area does have similar characteristics to areas that do permit hotel subject use,” and added that the planned height and density of the hotel will be similar to that of other buildings in the Broadway Plan. 

For now, Cook told Vancity Lookout that the Myron Manor tenants have retained a lawyer and plan to take legal action against the city. “[Our lawyers] have already informed the city that we will be filing a judicial review because of the breaches of procedural fairness,” he said. 

Cook noted that there were several points the lawyers plan to challenge, including, but not limited to, “false statements” he claimed were made to the tenants by the city that, to change the building's designation to “general use,” Metro Vancouver board approval would be required. 

Vancity Lookout sent a request for comment to the City of Vancouver regarding its ability to rezone the site for general use and did not receive a response in time for publication. 

Speaking to Vancity Lookout ahead of the similar rezoning of the Columbia, Jonathan Cote, Metro Vancouver’s deputy general manager of regional planning and housing development, explained that the city is well aware of the flexibility clause that allows the city a limited ability to circumvent the regional government in rezoning industrial lands. Prior to using it for the Columbia development, the city told Vancity Lookout that it had used the clause six times since its introduction in 2011. 

“We have a lot of questions about the process procedure and what the motivations are behind the council approving projects like this, and why so many of them came up so fast before the election,” said Ball.  

Cook said he hopes that, following the election, tenants may see the decision on the hotel's zoning reversed, adding that they will “continue to use peaceful means to oppose the redevelopment.”

Nicola Wealth’s vice president of development, Josh Anderson, said in a written statement to Vancity Lookout that, “following Council’s approval of the rezoning application for 75 East 8th Avenue, we look forward to advancing a project that supports broader City objectives and delivers much-needed hotel space in the Mount Pleasant Industrial Area.”

Anderson added that “there is no immediate impact to tenants, and we do not anticipate any changes at the property for at least two years. We remain committed to going above and beyond the [TRPP] to help current tenants find suitable housing below market rents.”

However, Cook said he is suspicious of the given timeline. “When they say two years for an eviction… they’ve shown that expectations are meant to be subverted,” he added, “[They] told us it would be 18 months until there was a rezoning hearing eight months ago… I think they’re going to try to do it as fast as they can.”

When asked what the city council decision ultimately means for him and his family, Cook said, “It’s been a stressful fight… we're on the fence about whether I should take a break and we should give up, or whether I should keep fighting harder and get more involved in local politics,” he said. 

“But right now, I look at the list of councillors and the mayor who voted for this rezoning, and I want to try and make sure they don't get re-elected.”