B.C. developer asks court to shut down Yaletown supervised injection site

One of Vancouver’s largest building developers is asking the courts to force the city of Vancouver to move a Yaletown supervised injection site.

A petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court by Bruno Wall, the owner of Wall Financial Corp. and president of a rental tower called 1111 Seymour Residences that shares the block with the overdose prevention site, includes hundreds of pages describing through photos and written accounts the effects the site has had on the neighbourhood since it opened more than two years ago.

The photos show people entering the building through the underground parkade and camped out or passed out amid belongings and litter in front of the building. The graphic colour photographs show people injecting themselves in the open, of someone urinating on the sidewalk and of human waste near the doors of a building.

After the supervised injection site opened in March 2021, “there was an immediate surge in issues at Seymour Residences, including incidents of people loitering or passing out along the block and in the entryway, of people attempting to gain access to the courtyard and the parkade (by following tenants trying to exit or enter their home) and of attempted and successful break-ins and theft,” said Wall in his affidavit filed with the petition.