Neil Crystal, CEO Polygon Homes, met me at their head office on West Broadway overlooking False Creek and the north shore. The view from the ninth floor office was a classic Vancouver cityscape. One could see from the mouth of the harbour out past Kits eastward toward Science World at the head of False Creek.
I had emailed Polygon’s office near the start of spring break to inquire into how their firm mitigates potential adverse wildlife impacts during construction and in their design process. I had noted their firm was regarded as being ’environmentally friendly,’ so I expressed an interest in learning how that works itself out in practice. I was also interested in the interactions between their Wordsworth development and the local eagle nest across the street from it.
As spring break drew to a close I received an offer to meet with Neil at his Polygon office, April 3, 2023. I arrived a few minutes early - with enough time to take in the view from the waiting room.
Neil met me in the lobby. He invited me into the break room where he prepared a cup of coffee for me and himself. From there we went to his office, a large window glad space facing north. Waiting for us was Sarah Christianson, Development Manager for the Wordsworth development.
As this all transpired Neil said he had noted my background in commercial fishing. He explained his own interest in sport fishing.
“When I’m accustomed to hauling a couple hundred over the stern in a net I’ve found catching one at a time a bit slow,” I said.
“I was just fishing on the Squamish River,” Neil said. “I caught a jack steelhead.”
“Never really fished with a rod and reel,” I said.
“Do you still go fishing?
“The pandemic put a stop to things, but these days when I fish I do it with a gillnet or a halibut jig for home consumption,” I said.
We went back and forth talking about fishing history and practices. Then to the business at hand.
Conceptualizing design
I asked Neil and Sarah to start at the conceptual level: “When you begin a project, how do you think about the environmental and ecological processes?”
“It starts in many different ways, Neil said. We're active across the lower mainland. We built towers downtown Vancouver, and that's a very different situation than what we're doing at UBC. It's very different from what we're doing in Squamish. You hire your own environmental consultants and you kind of go down the checklist.”
“Streamside protection became a very big thing in the 90s, so we obviously would adhere to that. We would get involved in different initiatives that a municipality might suggest that we do. I know in Coquitlam years ago, we did it with a very big salmon enhancement program on Hoy Creek.”
“Most recently in the District of Squamish, we've taken an old golf course where they had manipulated the lands to become an artificial golf course. We have been working with the district of Squamish, DFO [department of fishers and oceans], and recently the land has been turned over to the land conservancy of British Columbia. We've given them 90 acres as part of the rezoning. We're doing rehabilitation of the low-lying wetlands so that it can be restored to what it would have been like before it was a golf course. This is in addition to putting in community parks in areas that are safe for the environment.”
“At Polygon we have a responsibility to add to the well-being of the community. While UBC wants and needs more housing, we share in the struggle you have documented. Our job is to strike a balance between meeting those housing needs while prioritizing our natural surroundings.”
“On one hand, communities want more housing. On the other hand, we try to save the environment as best as we can. On the other hand, we're building with products that aren't necessarily conducive to the environment, but we're [working with] building codes [that are] constantly evolving”.
“As development goes, we are becoming greener and greener, but it's a slow process. It takes a long time to adjust. And again, that's a challenge. But I think the provincial government stipulating these new changes. It is going to get us there probably faster than we would have got on our own, to be fair. Obviously we have to liaise with local government policies and then provincial government policies and then federal government policies, which would be DFO, et cetera, et cetera. There is a number of things we do. It is very different from region to region.”
On the eagle nest
“We bought the land with the idea it would be a site that we could actually physically build on. That was our process. And Sarah, as our development manager for the community, her job is to take it through the process and liaise with all the consultants and the different community groups that come out. We get a lot of people talking to us about a lot of different things.”
“It was UBC Properties Trust that worked with the consultants to come up with the coning of the nest and also the arrangement of a substitute nest. They're also the ones that have hired the consultant who's doing the site reconnaissance visits to scout for the eagles.”
“I know a lot of people are unhappy with what UBC Properties Trust has done with the coning of the eagles nest, but they [UBCPT] did get the provincial approvals that were required. The other thing is, it's not just UBC who has land, it's also the province in building the new school.”
“It's a future Elementary school,” Sarah said.
“So we're two builders doing different streams,” Neil said.
“Both the province, who has to build a school, and Polygon, who would like to build a tower, we're both in the same conflict with that nest. I think a lot of people attached Polygon to making the coning of the nest. Had it been the province when they were building, if they'd gone first, they would have been the ones responsible for it. I thought it wasn't necessarily a fair representation of what was happening.
UBC Properties Trust was doing this on behalf of both, really, on both pieces of land. I think that's kind of where we ended up. I'm not certain where we go from here. I think that UBC actually has done one of the nicer jobs in planning communities. There's trade offs, but in terms of the sort of the parks and the connectivity, and if I lived out there, which I don't, but if I did, there's beautiful walks that connect you with Pacific Spirit Park. Again, there's always a price. But on one hand, it was repurposing the land for housing while also preserving other lands.
“I think that, from our point of view, we're not experts when it comes to eagles or the environment. So we have to rely upon the experts.”
Elaborating on design principles and process
I asked how they considered the ecological footprint of each building, both the environmental cost of building it, and then, of course, the future environmental cost.
“I'll say a couple of things,” Neil said. “Then Sarah can add in. When we design a building we have a lot of consultants and everyone's got ideas. We think about, number one, what is it going to look like, who's going to live there? And so that shapes how big the homes might be. Are they smaller? One bedrooms? Are they two bedrooms? Are they three bedrooms for families? And at UBC, we've had a real eclectic mix of plans, but we have to then go through all of these hurdles with UBC planning and other sort of advocacy groups to sort of say, well, what are we doing here and what are the policies that are going to drive it? It's kind of an evolution.”
“We have to look really holistically,” Sarah said. “As Neil just mentioned there are so many things through the process; a lot of those things can conflict. It’s a real give and take on everything. We use all of our consultants. We have really integrated working sessions to try to make things as efficient as we can. Then we also have to contend with changing building codes and things like that and efficiencies of construction. There's a lot of factors that go into it. Some things we’ve done here (with the Wordsworth development) is the green roof sedum tray systems on the city homes which incorporates native planting.. Our landscape architects are really conscious of what's appropriate for the environment. REAP [Residential Environmental Assessment Programme] really does guide us on that. We always make sure we're hitting all of those marks, like water usage, energy efficiency, tying into the [district energy system]. And yes, those are all requirements, but it is kind of one of the great things about working at UBC.
“I would say,” Neil said, “it exceeds what we're doing in other places. This experience at UBC will pave the way for how we approach construction and communication in other communities we build. We are guided by a shared principle to do the right thing.”
“One quick, really technical question,” I asked. “Issues of bird strikes on windows in the tower. I know there's some guidelines there, but how are you dealing with that one?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “There is the bird friendly design guidelines. Then there’s a baseline requirement. We're trying to do more than that. All of our balcony guardrails are fritted, so that helps. Then our two story glazing around the lobby and amenity spaces. The first four stories are the high traffic areas. So there's a light frit on that too that's incorporating the bird friendly design aspects. We're taking the balcony frit all the way up and there's a decrease of glazing area.”
“I think both Sarah and I,” Neil said, “would like to feel that we're always trying to do the right thing to comply with community objectives. It is hard. But there is a sort of happy medium that you can find. You don't often please, everybody. But I think we do try our best and we are getting better at it, I think, over time. And that's with the influence of government sort of steering us in a direction. Sarah what would you say?”
“I would just echo what you said,” Sarah said. “Yes. Just kind of do our best out there.”
“Yes, it's hard,” Neil said. “I'd like to think that building homes is a noble cause. Building homes as affordably as we can is the challenge in today's world.”