Vancouver City Hall — Attraction in Vancouver

In my search for properties, I often referred to different cities about zoning and other planning information. Among all cities the staff at Vancouver City Hall were the least helpful with unfriendly attitudes. Entering the City Hall near Vancity entrance is as if an alien tries to enter a security barricade without permission. The only thing to hear sometimes through the semi open glass doors from several staff united in their narratives at the entrance is "Go to www.vancouver.ca! or if they were little more kind, they would provide an email to contact. Then a long wait for email responses, often after the fact. I admire City of Coquitlam information desk which provides great customer service with welcoming attitudes even by phone to diverse customers. Other cities are also more helpful than that of Vancouver. It would be great if City of Vancouver follows the same customer service as Coquitlam City Hall, no matter how important they are.

Adding another incident: When calling 311 the staff are often attituded, hostile authoritative and unfriendly. I hope it is not the case with others and my perception is wrong. For example, I called 311 and reported that the exit route from 29 Ave Skytrain Station along Vanness Ave has not a garbage can. As a result, in the pedestrian way connecting the station to Earles Ave, there are numerous litters such as used masks, old tickets, drinking cans, napkins..... etc. that some passengers drop when getting out of train. I asked her (311) to report my suggestion to the City management to consider placing garbage can(s) there. She did not welcome my suggestion and the only thing that she was concerned to know was my name and telephone number, putting me in a guilty position. I am wondering why my name and contact number should be important to 311 when suggesting something to safeguard public health and cleaning. Nevertheless, nothing has changed since my call...

DO NOT PARK IN FRONT OF 'Willow Court 766 West 7th Avenue'. EVEN IF YOU SEE THERE'S ENOUGH SPACE OUT THERE.

No sign, no notification and no alert at all, and they charged about $300 because the vehicle was parked a bit more than 1.5m from the building enterance. Yes, it's the law and we have to follow it. However, reason why I'm complaining about this isn't just because I have to pay that amount. As long as there was NONE visible sign of 'no parking allowed', of course we couldn't even notice that was against parking bylaw. And there was a parking agent standing nearby when I was getting out of our vehicle, she seemed like wating for us to walk away so she can charge and tow our vehicle. I could assume reason why she didn't even notify/mention us about parking bylaw is because she can do more tickets.

If we could already know through any of signs or notifications then we definitely would avoid that parking space. Seriously, when you are pretty much new to Vancouver and then park over there, normally you wouldn't even able to recognize if that's no parking space or not.

Even there is 2m between the edge of entrance, you get towed. Trust me. When I checked out that area again just in case, I saw a truck towing another vehicle who just parked at that street. Unless they do something to do with that parking area setting up sign or something else, many people who don't really know about this will need to go Busters Towing and pay for them and City Hall.

Just warning you, DO NOT PARK IN FRONT OF 'Willow Court 766 West...

Ok, this isn't specifically targeting City Hall, but the WHOLE area of Vancouver and surrounding.

The slogan for the area should be, "IN PARKING WE CHARGE!" Don't laugh, as a tourist, I was shocked, I literally pay about 50% in parking fees as to the amount it costs to see a tourist attraction, or to park on the street. EVERYWHERE you have to pay for parking, thank goodness my hotel and the grocery store don't charge for parking bays!

What's even funnier, or really sad, is when you go to the city's website vancouver.ca, one of the first sections thereon is paying a parking ticket..... problem....?

So for those visiting, just be aware that you'll need to budget parking costs into your trip planning, that you weren't aware of. The only way around this is to use uber/lyft/taxis.

There are also lots of no parking areas, so where you can park for free, if you do get a spot, count it as winning the lottery as they are always taken! Note that there are a lot of areas where overnight parking is not allowed.

Otherwise it's a clean city and lots to learn while out here and enjoy. But just wanted to share the above, for those planning a vacation out to Vancouver and surrounding, that were not aware of this added cost to the budget.

Enjoy and happy...