LEGAL CHALLENGE FILED AGAINST STREET-LEVEL CENTRE FOR ADDICTS

Opponents Of Mayor's Drug Strategy Say City Violated Zoning Bylaw

The Vancouver Community Alliance has launched a legal challenge to one of
the cornerstones of Mayor Philip Owen's plans to deal with the drug problem
of the Downtown Eastside area.

In a petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court, the Alliance asks for a ruling
that city staff violated the local zoning bylaw by approving a development
permit for the Roosevelt Hotel at 166 East Hastings that includes a
street-level contact centre for drug addicts.

Jonathan Baker, a former mayoralty candidate and erstwhile councillor who
is the Alliance's lawyer, said the group is anxious to maintain the
integrity of the area zoning bylaw; which calls for retail continuity on
that strip, in that immediate area and on that site.

"The bylaw requires ground-floor retail use and this project doesn't have
ground-floor retail use," Baker said. From a legal point of view, it's not
a particularly novel case."

Neither the city, nor the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, which is named
as a co-respondent in the petition, has officially responded to the court
action.

The envisioned health centre, along with a redesign of the Main and
Hastings corner, is part of the city's strategy to reduce the open drug
market in the area and provide better treatment services for addicts.

The Alliance has been a vocal critic of the plan championed by the mayor,
and during the last provincial election ran negative advertisements in
local newspapers attacking NDP MLA Jenny Kwan for supporting the centre.

Richard Lee, the spokesman for the Alliance, said the group has yet to hear
directly from Owen about the suit.

Although the Alliance is composed of many supporters of the ruling Civic
Non-partisan Association, it has emerged as the most vocal critic of Owen's
Downtown Eastside programs.

It was formed earlier this year by five groups - the Vancouver Chinatown
Property Owners Association, the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association,
the Chinese Benevolent Association, the Chinese Cultural Centre and the
Strathcona Area Merchants society.

They complain that city staff, the mayor and the health board are pandering
to drug users in the low-income neighbourhood to the detriment of other
residents and redevelopment.

The group has also been lobbying the federal government to withdraw its
support for the city's proposed range of health, policing and housing
initiatives aimed at addicts and the mentally ill.

"Health Minister Allan Rock is being told that the mayor is not building
consensus on these issues, which is what Ottawa wanted," Lee said.

He added that the group intends to continue pressing the city and the
health board to abandon their so-called "harm-reduction" strategy for the area.

Construction isn't under way at the hotel yet, Baker said, so the Alliance
is not pushing for an early court hearing on its petition.

"If they were beginning to build, there would me more of a sense of
urgency," he added.

He said such a legal petition over a zoning issue is uncommon simply
because it is expensive to go to court.

"A neighbour who's not happy with something across the street, usually just
goes to the board of variance and that's the end of it," Baker said. "If
it involves money, it's relatively infrequently that they'll bother to go
to court. The Vancouver Alliance wants to go to court over this."

Baker added that the court must basically decide whether the health centre
could be considered a "retail" use or whether there is discretionary power
within the bylaw to allow the health centre.

"What [the case] does not involve is anything relating to the merits -
whether it's good social policy or not."