Vancouver city council has set aside its planners’ advice and approved, in principle, the Goh Ballet’s plan for a 25-storey student housing tower on Main Street.

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With an amendment from Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung, council struck a staff recommendation to send the project back for more work, and instead approved the rezoning application subject to conditions, including a requirement that the student-housing units be owned or leased by a public, post-secondary institution. The project will also require further review and work with city staff before any building can proceed.

City planners had recommended against approving the tower, warning the lot at Main Street and East 8th Avenue is too small to properly hold a building that size — a “conspicuously tall building out of scale with the low-scale Main Street Village context,” the staff report said.

The rezoning can’t take effect unless council also approves, at a future public hearing, the heritage designation of the century-old former Royal Bank of Canada building on the site.

The site on Main Street in Mount Pleasant has been for years the two-storey home of the Goh Ballet Academy. The academy has partnered with developer Westbank and is proposing a 25-storey building that would have 315 dormitory-like student housing units, each with a private bathroom and kitchenette. The proposal would also preserve the bank’s century-old heritage facade — but staff said it does on a lot too small to properly hold a tower. Staff recommended council shouldn’t approve the application this week, but instead refer it back to staff to “explore other alternatives to develop the site.”

Around 10 of the units, on the lower floors, would be set aside for Goh Ballet students, teachers and choreographers.

Coun. Lisa Dominato, who seconded the motion and has long pushed for student housing, said the century-old building no longer works for the academy — describing dancers putting out buckets to catch water dripping through the ceiling. The tower, she said, would give the school a modern home a block from the future Broadway subway line, well-placed for student housing.

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Coun. Pete Fry repeated some of the staff’s concerns about unit sizes, shadowing, parking and loading, but he voted in support after seeking more clarity from staff about the conditions attached to the approval.

The site sits in Main Street Village, an area the Broadway plan “generally does not consider rezoning applications” for, staff wrote, “in order to retain the low-rise shopping village character.” The Goh Ballet proposal asked council to make an exception.

Staff said the lot is too small for a tower. Its frontage of about 19 metres is less than half the 46 metres the Broadway plan requires, the site has no rear lane and the design leaves no room for the setbacks that let neighbouring properties redevelop. Without assembling adjacent lots, staff said they could support only a six-storey building.

The proposed density is on par with downtown. The plan includes no on-site parking, loading or student pickup and drop-off, on a stretch near Main and Kingsway that staff note already sees one of the highest numbers of car crashes in the city.

The city’s urban design panel had reached a similar conclusion, recommending the project be resubmitted. It called the 25-storey tower on the almost 19-metre lot “not supportable,” and said it would be “detrimental to livability, and student and pedestrian safety.”

The studios would average about 269 square feet, below the city’s minimum unit size — though Kirby-Yung said that minimum would still apply as a condition of approval.

Public feedback ran against the proposal. Of the responses submitted through the city’s online comment form, 39 opposed the project, 16 supported it and seven were mixed.

“Much of the general demand for market rental housing in Metro Vancouver is spurred by students and many Goh Ballet students require local accommodation while they study,” said Chan Hon Goh, general and artistic director of the academy. “The Vancouver housing market makes this very challenging for many and, as a result, students are forced to rent off-campus, adding pressure to the general rental market.”

With files from Joanne Lee-Young

oshtohryn@postmedia.com