By Jessica Barrett | 08/18/2010

Ervin Jay points to his 10th-floor West End apartment, which for the past six weeks has been accessible only by stairs, due to the building’s broken elevator. Credit: Doug Shanks

On paper, Marc Fiebig and Ervin Jay’s West End penthouse apartment is a steal. The 1,200-square-foot, 10th-floor rental unit on Pendrell Street boasts two bedrooms, dark hardwood floors, and an expansive wraparound patio where the roommates and their cats enjoy sweeping neighbourhood vistas. The rent is relatively cheap at $1,400 a month.

But they have, in other ways, paid a steep price to remain in the home where Fiebig has lived for seven years and Jay for four. The Hyperion, the 50-year-old building that houses their unit, is constantly suffering from the results of decades of neglect, they say, causing minor inconveniences at the best of times and holding them hostage at the worst.

This summer has definitely been the worst.

Since July 4, Fiebig and Jay report, the building’s elevator — which has been subject to breakdowns for years — has functioned for only approximately three days, an assertion confirmed by other tenants. Without it, Fiebig, who has survived multiple heart attacks and has early onset Parkinson’s disease, has been essentially housebound.

“Going down the steps is a real treasure for me,” says Fiebig, with a healthy dose of sarcasm. The 63-year-old says his poor depth perception combined with heart and lung problems make coming and going from the building a Herculean task — one he chooses to tackle only once a week or so. “I try to make all my doctor’s appointments all on one day, try to do all my shopping on one day… It’s a long day,” he says. “I just can’t do the steps.”

Fiebig’s is not an uncommon story in the West End, where a combination of aging rental stock and low vacancy rates has caused a housing crisis that’s hitting seniors particularly hard, says Gail Harmer, spokesperson for the newly formed Seniors Housing Advocacy Group (SHAG). Once a large part of the West End’s demographic mix, Harmer says the population of seniors in the area has been steadily shrinking in the last decade. Census data from 2006 shows seniors accounted for 11 per cent of the West End’s overall population, down from 13 per cent in 2001. “I’m suggesting to people now that because of what’s happened with the pressures on the aging stock… that we’re probably down around nine per cent at the moment,” she says…

Read the full article at westender.com.

City planners haven’t made a good enough case, experts say, as residents line up to fight new apartments

Frances Bula
Special to Globe and Mail Update
Published on Monday, Aug. 16, 2010

Ian Gillespie didn’t go out looking to become the lightning rod for a public brawl over the right way to create rental housing in Canada’s most expensive city.

It all happened by accident.

But along the way, Mr. Gillespie’s effort to build apartments to rent, instead of sell, and the City of Vancouver’s ambitious effort to promote rental-housing construction through incentives to developers have become an object lesson for every city in Canada about what not to do.

That lesson: If you’re going to give extra density to developers to build rental, don’t just tell the public it’s a good thing. Explain why cities need to have a healthy stock of purpose-built rentals.

Vancouver didn’t do that. As a result, both Mr. Gillespie and city councillors have been vilified by angry residents of the city’s West End who claim he and other developers are getting windfall profits, that there is no rental-housing shortage and therefore no need for incentives to solve it.

That kind of backlash is common to single-family neighbourhoods, as they rebel against the introduction of renters whom they view as nothing but trouble: transient, lower-income, not homeowners. But 80 per cent of the 40,000 residents of the West End are renters themselves…

Read the full article at theglobeandmail.com.

Added by Sid Tan | From W2: Community Media Arts
On September12, 2002, housing activists and squatters opened the vacant 99 year old Woodward’s department store building for free housing. The courts issued an injunction on September 16 followed the next day with an enforcement order. Arrests followed and the protest continued outside…

Find more videos like this on W2: Community Media Arts Vancouver BC

Read the full commentary at creativetechnology.org.

Revised Marine Gateway gets approval, casino design predicted to bring new look, 60 W Cordova okayed

Frances Bula | July 30th, 2010

Slow to post on this Wednesday urban design panel meeting — so many other things to do!

But for those following these issues closely…

the 60 West Cordova project — Ian Gillespie’s no parking, no frills, no speculators building planned for the empty lot just east of Woodward’s — got a hearty okay, with some commenting that other downtown projects should also be approved without parking.

Read the full article at francesbula.com.

No parking and no maintenance among the perks lost to make housing for couple working minimum wage

Francis Bula | Vancouver | The Globe and Mail | Monday July 27, 2010

No parking. No fancy finishes. No costly marketing program. No speculators. No one who isn’t willing to do some building maintenance.

That’s the condo experiment that one Vancouver developer is trying in an effort to build housing in the city priced low enough that a couple working minimum-wage jobs could afford it.

“Our objective was to continue the legacy we started at Woodward’s and, at the same time, we didn’t want to just bring a bunch of BMWs into the neighbourhood,” said developer Ian Gillespie. He submitted his application last week for the unusual project at 60 West Cordova…

The 108-unit project is a collaboration involving Vancity credit union, Habitat for Humanity and a Downtown Eastside housing group. Habitat will get four condos suitable for families in the building and will choose who gets them. Another eight units, to be managed by the PHS housing society, will go to local community workers.

The remaining 96 condos will go to buyers who will have to prove that they plan to live in the units and who agree to do some maintenance themselves instead of just paying standard condo-maintenance fees. According to the material submitted to the city, nearly three-quarters of the condos will sell for less than $300,000, and more than half will be affordable to people making between $29,000 and $36,000 a year. That’s the income of an individual earning $15-$19 an hour, or a couple in which each partner makes the $8-an-hour minimum wage.

Architect Gregory Henriquez said the idea of requiring owners to also occupy the condos as a way to keep prices down is something he adopted from his early days of living in the West End. Then, before the legislation that created individual condo ownership was brought in, the only way for someone to own an apartment was to own the whole building co-operatively with a group…

Read the full article at theglobeandmail.com.

Brian Hutchinson | June 25, 2010 – 11:00 am

Photo: Brian Hutchinson/National Post

There’s a fanciful, well-used staircase inside the Woodward’s atrium that snakes around a bubbling water feature and continues up about 30 feet, to a second floor filled with government offices and more, and higher still, to empty space. It tops out abruptly without connecting to anything. The staircase was designed by the development’s architect, Gregory Henriquez. He likens it to an umbilical cord, and says it’s a metaphor for the Woodward’s re-birth. I just call it fun.

Photo: Bob Matheson/bobmathesonphotography.com

Read more at nationalpost.com.

Brian Hutchinson June 23, 2010 – 7:00 am

From the folio “Demolition: September 30, 2006,” by Shawn Lapointe, in the book “Body Heat.”

Something that makes Woodward’s so complex and fascinating is the crazily diverse cast of characters responsible for it. Their stories are well told and illustrated in a meaty, good looking book for release this fall. Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment is published by a small house in Vancouver called Blueimprint and is edited by Robert Enright. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It’s very good. The interviews and memoirs inside are enlightening and frank, and while some things aren’t said, a great deal is. Here’s a snip from a Jim Green anecdote, about one Governor General’s Downtown Eastside visit during the redevelopment negotiations phase:

“…there was some commotion as we turned onto Hastings. We realized Adrienne Clarkson wasn’t prepared to walk across the street. So we had to circle around Cordova and come back on the south side of Hastings right in front of Pigeon Park Savings, so that she could get off the bus and walk directly into the reception, catered by Bishop’s Restaurant, which was all shrouded off so nobody could see in. And she talks about how we have to embrace our new immigrants. I left the minute the dinner was finished.”

…The many voices and brilliant pictures from artists and designers don’t align to form one monolithic view, which is part of the book’s value. Here’s from an account called The Healing Place, by Liz Evans. She’s co-founder of the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit that operates 125 units of single occupancy, non-market housing inside Woodward’s:

“When they were marketing the condos for the Woodward’s project, our advice was just don’t lie. Put the homeless people on the advertising posters, put on the guy with the guitar and the bottle in his hand. It’s stupid to pretend otherwise. Try and attract people who want to be in a diverse, urban community, people who get how amazing this community is…if we start filling 600 new condos with people who are going to call the cops every time they see a homeless person, then we’ve failed. We’ve created a total nightmare for the community.”

The marketing people behind the Woodward’s project did put a guy holding a guitar on their advertising posters. These are usefully represented in Body Heat. The man isn’t clutching a bottle. He looks like a friendly, bearded busker. A marketing lie? Well, he’s not the whole truth, of course. The marketing people sold out the pricey market condos in a single day.

Who are these people who bought in? How many of them live here? How far really does the Woodward’s ballyhooed inclusivity stretch? Here’s where I’ve come in, I hope. I’m living at Woodward’s for one more week, the fourth. Not nearly done yet. There’s more big-picture Woodward’s impact stuff to come, and more upstairs/downstairs inside looks. To fully grasp the story, you’ll have to wait, and get the book.

Read more at nationalpost.com.

The Woodward’s Project

Westbank Projects Corporation / Peterson Investment Group
Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Ltd
Jonathan Yardley Architects Inc
Henriquez Partners Architects

Woodward’s Department Store (c.1910) Photo: City of Vancouver Archives

Woodward’s Department Store just prior to redevelopment (2002) Photo: Anthony Maw [www.anthonymaw.com]

Woodward’s Redevelopment (2010) Photo: Anthony Maw [www.anthonymaw.com]

The Woodward’s Project is a large, innovative mixed-use development intended to help revitalize Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. The iconic focus of the project is the rehabilitation of the Woodward’s department store built between 1903 and 1908. The rehabilitation project involved:

• (restoration of the elevations facing West Hastings and Abbott Streets to their appearance in 1908
• rehabilitation of the storefronts and canopy
• rehabilitation of the interior wood-frame structure to accommodate offices for non-profit organizations
• reconstruction of the sign and tower, and
• a comprehensive program of interpretation.

…It was intended that the landmark “W” sign and tower would be re-used atop the new concrete core. However, detailed investigation revealed that both were so deteriorated that they would require virtual replacement. It was therefore decided to reconstruct a new W sign and tower in the same form, but fabricated of new materials and illuminated with current technology. Both closely resemble the originals but are readily distinguishable as new work from close up. The original W sign is displayed in the plaza as an historical artifact.

The interpretive program includes both permanent and temporary installations that ensure that every person who uses the site understands something of its rich heritage. The interpretive program involved the re-use of original building components, including three sidewalk mosaic panels that read ‘Woodward’s Ltd’, two sets of large metal letters that spell ‘Woodward’s in the floor of the parking concourse and the lobby of the market residential tower…

This major heritage rehabilitation project will house the TD Bank on the ground floor, offices for the City of Vancouver and non profits on the other levels, with a new addition on the roof for a daycare facility.

The Woodward’s Project: Award winning parking, easy on the eyes. Who’d have thought?

Brian Hutchinson June 16, 2010 – 6:30 am

Photo: Christopher Grabowski

Can a parkade possibly be interesting? Photogenic? Award worthy? Surprisingly, yes. When local architect Gregory Henriquez, managing partner of Henriquez Partners, designed the massive, 830-stall Gastown Parkades for the City of Vancouver, he saw beyond the mundane. Before landing the commission early in the last decade, Mr. Henriquez recognized that the $32 million parking structure could be something more than just functional, and part of something bigger.

The Gastown Parkades were completed in 2004. They straddle the alleyway separating Water Street in Gastown and Cordova Street, hence the plural “parkades,” I suppose. A year later they captured an award of excellence from something called the International Parking Institute. When you think about it, why shouldn’t good parkades be recognized?

Across Cordova was the old Woodward’s department store, sitting empty. It was to come down and the area revitalized with a mixed housing and retail development. City planners always had in mind that one day, the two projects would meet. And so they have. The Gastown Parkades and the Henriquez-designed Woodward’s district are now linked by a glass-encased bridge. Many of the residents in the Woodward’s development’s two tall condominium towers are assigned stalls inside the parkades.

Like any inner-city parkade, these ones have issues with vagrants. A couple of secondary stairwells are used for unseemly things. Some of them smell awful, and you can guess why. But I’ve used the place to park on occasion and haven’t had a problem at all. The main access points and elevators are fine. The security seems reasonable, despite the secondary stairwells stuff, and the men who patrol the structure are pleasant. Once I learned to navigate from street level to my favourite spot on Level Four, next to the pedestrian bridge that connects the parkades to the Woodward’s development, I began to look around. Features I’d overlooked suddenly popped out: the drainage and filtration system for moving Vancouver’s copious rainfall; the use of three kinds of stone on street facades that subtly reflect the district’s heritage; the ivy that covers the Water Street facade; the use of colours, textures and other detail.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is how well the Gastown Parkades integrate with Gastown and Woodward’s. The building is playing an important role in the Downtown Eastside’s slow renewal. It’s prescient. And easy on the eyes.

Photo: Brian Hutchinson

Read more from The Woodward’s Project at nationalpost.com.

Gregory Henriquez: Vancouver’s Ethical Architect

David Jordan | Image: Adam Blasberg | Published: June 09, 2010

Gregory Henriquez, the architect behind Vancouver’s landmark Woodward’s project, on creating designs that go beyond just looking good.

…Most of us would like to think that we leave the world just a little better off for our having passed through it, but architects, unlike most of us, actually have the power to shape our physical environment. Some aspire, Howard Roark-like, to erect spectacular monuments to their own ego. Others seek a subtler influence. Henriquez, who oversaw the design of the massive Woodward’s project, has drawn up plans for dozens of Vancouver landmarks, including community centres, arts facilities, schools and residential projects. To be sure, each is a striking testament to esthetic beauty, but in every project Henriquez has also worked with local residents to ensure his buildings contribute to the good of the community and to society at large.

…Henriquez will work with the local community, developers and city hall to build social benefits into the design process. For example, when he was commissioned to build a multi-tower condo project on West Eighth Avenue, he met with local residents and found that a family-oriented co-op across the street was now housing a number of elderly singles and couples whose kids had moved out. Henriquez worked out an arrangement that will see the new development include several non-market seniors units, freeing up space for families in the co-op.?

“The most important task of the architect is to listen carefully to a given community,” Henriquez explains, “and yet our responsibility is to try to ensure that what happens is in the best interest of society as a whole.” In this case, the local residents “articulated a need, we approached our client and the city to see if this was possible, and through a series of ups and downs it did finally occur . . . a happy ending.”?

While his designs are strikingly modern – with arresting touches such as the louvred “porthole” windows of the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre or the elegant lines of the Coal Harbour Community Centre that almost disappear against the shoreline – it’s also clear that elegance and élan are only half of the equation. Where the architecture of Gregory Henriquez is concerned, social justice finds equal footing with the poetry of his buildings.

Read the full article at bcbusinessonline.ca.