Grandview-Woodland

Grandview-Woodland is defined by Commercial Drive, Vancouver's officially designated Little Italy and one of the city's most eclectic commercial strips. Stretching from Burrard Inlet south to the Broadway corridor, the neighbourhood has a population of roughly 28,000 — a figure that actually declined over much of the 2000s and 2010s before stabilizing. Italian families settled the northern end of The Drive in the 1940s and 1950s, and successive waves of Portuguese, Asian, Central American, and Vietnamese immigrants followed. Today the neighbourhood is about 62 percent English-speaking, with Chinese (14 percent), French (2.3 percent), Spanish (2.3 percent), and Italian (2.3 percent) the next-largest language groups. About 63 percent of households rent, and the median household income of roughly $67,000 is about 20 percent below the provincial average. The housing stock is predominantly low-rise — walk-up rentals, pre-war Craftsman bungalows, and newer townhouses — giving the neighbourhood a lower-scale character than much of inner-city Vancouver.

Grandview-Woodland is one of Vancouver's most reliably left-leaning neighbourhoods. Provincially, it falls within Vancouver-Hastings, held continuously by the NDP (and before that, the CCF) since 1933, with a single exception. Federally, it is part of Vancouver East, held by NDP MP Jenny Kwan with 56.4 percent of the vote. Municipally, the neighbourhood is COPE's historic heartland — COPE's strongest polling stations have traditionally been at Britannia Community Services Centre. In 2022, Grandview-Woodland was one of only four neighbourhoods where Kennedy Stewart defeated Ken Sim, alongside Mount Pleasant, Strathcona, and Fairview. Stewart won 55.3 percent of the total neighbourhood vote to Sim's 24.1 percent. At the Britannia advance poll, Stewart led Sim by more than two to one.

Municipal Issues

Densification was the dominant local land-use issue. The Grandview-Woodland Community Plan, adopted in 2016 after an unprecedented Citizens' Assembly process, anticipated 10,000 new residents over 30 years and promised a mix of secured rental, non-market, and more affordable ownership housing. In 2018, council approved mass rezoning of 438 properties. But by 2022, the proposed redevelopment of the Broadway Safeway site at Commercial and Broadway — with towers of 24 to 29 storeys on 9-storey plinths, reaching up to 38 storeys — had alarmed residents, who formed a group called "No Safeway Megatowers." The public hearing was postponed until after the election. Heritage Vancouver noted that Commercial Drive had no specific heritage protection and could be threatened by the same kind of arterial densification seen elsewhere in the city. The neighbourhood had absorbed three times as many homes per capita as the Vancouver average since 2018.

Grandview-Woodland's western boundary abuts the Downtown Eastside, making the opioid crisis and street disorder viscerally local concerns. The East Hastings encampment, which sprang up in July 2022 and at its peak numbered 180 structures, sat just blocks from the neighbourhood's residential streets. The Vancouver Police Department reported a nine-percent increase in DTES assaults from August onward, with the encampment zone accounting for 28 percent of all assaults. Despite this proximity, Grandview-Woodland voters overwhelmingly backed Stewart's approach of housing placements over the policing-first platform that ABC Vancouver proposed — a stance at odds with the city-wide majority.

Hastings Park, which borders the neighbourhood's northeastern edge, was the subject of long-term transformation plans, with horse racing at Hastings Racecourse widely expected to wind down. A new amphitheatre with an estimated budget of roughly $65 million was approved in 2021. The future of the PNE fairgrounds and the prospect of daylighting a stream from the park's lake toward Burrard Inlet offered the possibility of significant public amenity improvements for a neighbourhood that had long complained about the impact of fair traffic and noise.