Rail bRidge to be Run by Remote?
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balancing excess and indulgence
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city wants plan foR hoaRdeRs
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fRiday
July 26 2013 www.burnabynewsleader.com
Violet finvers took her creative fire and set it to work transforming glass. See Page A23
Record year for Burnaby building?
MARIO BARTEl/NEWSlEADER
Julia smith feeds surplus produce she collects from the pricesmart grocery store to the pigs at her urban digs farm in south burnaby.
Urban farm digs local partnerships Animal feed, supplies, commercial kitchen all one-minute drive away Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
The couple walks into a new South Burnaby eatery and asks the manager if they serve free-range eggs. The manager says no. “If I bring them over would you cook them?” the woman asks. Thus was the start of one of the numerous partnerships established by Urban Digs Farm since taking
over an abandoned farm on Byrne Road last year. Farm manager Julia Smith said there are always mutual benefits to be had. Livia Lunch opened last December in the Riverway business complex across Byrne from Market Crossing shopping centre after co-owner Irina “Livia” Varga, an accountant, and her engineer husband lamented that there wasn’t any place nearby where they liked to grab an affordable, non-fast-food lunch. Urban Digs Farm now supplies
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them with free-range eggs and local produce and customers appreciate knowing they were grown just down the road, said the restaurant’s manager and cook, Robynn Maher. “People appreciate the fact they’re getting something … that has a provenance to it,” Maher said. And since the breakfast-andlunch restaurant closes at 2:30 p.m., Smith asked to rent their commercial kitchen after hours. That’s where she was on a recent afternoon with partner Ludo Ferrari, prepping pickled eggs for 4x1.25_book_drive_ad_final.pdf sale at the River District farmers
market in South Vancouver. Also there were husband-and-wife-team Michael and Lindsay Kaisaris, co-owners of Re-Up BBQ who were producing sausages for customers of Urban Digs’ community shared agriculture (CSA) boxes. Business is good for the farm, Smith said, so much so that she’ll have to delay plans to set up a farm stand. With the CSA boxes, farmers markets and orders from Vancouver restaurants such as Bishop’s, Wildebeest and Fable, most of her product is already spoken for. 1 12-03-05 1:20 PM please see TAkINg lOCAl, A3
BOOK YOUR BOTTLE DRIVE POP
The value of building permits issued in Burnaby so far this year is trending toward a possible record. To the end of June, the city issued permits valued at a total of $427.1 million. That’s far ahead of the same period last year, when permits valued at $238.5 million were issued, or in 2011, when the figure was $287.2 million. “It seems Burnaby may be heading for a record year for development,” said Coun. Pietro Calendino. “It’s at $427 million and we’re only halfway through the year.” The full-year record was set in 2008—before the effects of the global economic downturn took hold—when building permits valued at $792.5 million were issued. Calendino stressed the added development doesn’t just mean more highrises and condos, but also amenities such as community centres and parks which city hall receives through its density bonusing program with developers. Building permit values in Metro Vancouver hit $7 billion in 2007, according to Statistics Canada, before dropping off. In 2012, it had almost returned to that mark. twitter.com/WandaChow