Archive for January, 2004

History taking shape beneath Gastown

Wednesday, January 7th, 2004

Petcetera founder’s $22.5-million heritage theme park opens June 1

Yvonne Zacharias
Sun

Danny Guillaume, president and CEO of Historical Xperiences Inc., stands on scaffolding where a big lift will transport Storyeum customers into B.C. history. CREDIT: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun

What is not a museum, not live theatre and not strictly a tourist trap but a little bit of all three? It’s a Storyeum, under construction in Gastown as we speak and getting ready to open June 1.

It takes the dry stuff of textbooks and lectures, adds a dash of Disney, then invites the public to line up and fork over around $20 apiece (around $15 for kids) to be entertained a little and shown jazzed-up schoolhouse lessons out of school.

Located underground between Cordova and Water streets, the place will be the equivalent of six hockey rinks in size. You enter via an elevator that resembles a deep well. Once underground, tourgoers will be walked through the chapters in B.C. history, starting with a creation story focusing on the province’s natural resources and the arrival of people on mother Earth. Then onward through a temperate rain forest, a longhouse and so on.

It’s all done with more than 100 performers doing the storytelling and plenty of special effects. Such good ones, claims Graeme Drew, vice-president of marketing and communications for the outfit building it, Historical Xperiences, that at one point you will feel the wind in your hair like you are on a tall ship on the ocean.

The new kid on the Gastown block aims to tap the “soft historian” — not the nerdy guy who signs up for a PhD in medieval studies, but the type who wants to know a little more about the past without suffering too much to learn it. It also taps a powerful craving by baby boomers to travel and see neat things.

Unlike a regular museum where you roam at will, takers will be waltzed through a tightly choreographed 80-minute show. In tourism industry parlance, it’s called “pulsing” the groups. Drew says the project has the capacity to “pulse” through 199 people every 15 minutes. After all that pulsing, there will be a themed restaurant and gift shop for de-pulsing at the exit on Cordova Street.

It promises to be an adventure from entrepreneurial perspective, too; private investors came up with the $22.5 million needed to float the heritage-themed dream. About half of that is coming from some 700 people who have bought debentures in a trust with a guarantee of a 10-per-cent annual return. The higher the ticket sales, the greater the return, giving this army of small-fry investors a powerful incentive to go out and sell the place.

Some people hawk shoes and soap for a profit. In the same way, the small fry and some pretty big fish who put together Historical Xperiences are hoping to make big bucks selling history and tourism.

They come under the protective wing of the City of Vancouver, which will lease space to the principals as part of a $35-million city project involving the reconstruction of two parkades fronted by three levels of office space.

Naturally, Storyeum had to start with a brainy idea and the bucks to back it.

Enter Danny Guillaume, a Saskatchewan farm boy who became founder and a former owner of Petcetera, the big-box store for pets.

After getting out of the pet-supply business, he settled on the idea of selling history as entertainment and chose his hometown of Moose Jaw, Sask. as the testing ground for his new theory.

In the summer of 2000, Guillaume’s Tunnels of Moose Jaw opened, playing up the antics of gangsters like Al Capone who used the tunnels for their escapades. According to Drew, the attraction has been a rip-roaring success. In little old Moose Jaw, pop. 35,000, it sold more than 100,000 tickets in one year and remains popular.

It has turned a moribund downtown core in a decaying prairie city into a happening place. No one believed this was possible.

With Vancouver being 40 times the size of the prairie city, Drew estimates Storyeum can easily meet its target of 800,000 in the first year and one million by year three. He figures it can also revitalize the country’s poorest neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside.

Research shows tourists tend to hit four attractions when they visit a city. In Vancouver, in order of preference, those are Grouse Mountain (1.1 million visitors annually), the aquarium (one million) and the Capilano Suspension Bridge (850,000). Science World is currently the fourth. The partners hope Storyeum can make it into the top-four list.

Seattle was in the running for the project but Guillaume decided to settle on Vancouver where he now lives.

He was not around to be interviewed for this story. He had to dash off to Moose Jaw to bail out his beloved tunnels after they were doused by firefighters when a major fire struck the city early in the new year.

But Drew, who is a close friend to Guillaume, said his business partner wanted to make a difference when he sold Petcetera and to achieve some non-economic goals. Both partners are passionate about history, believing that much of it will be lost unless bold steps are taken to preserve it.

To come up with the script, Historical Xperiences has held coffee clubs with historians, got its hands on dozens of history books and got First Nations people seriously involved. It now has its third team of script writers working on the final touches.

Jon Stovell, president of the Gastown Business Improvement Society, said the project represents the largest investment in Gastown in many years.

“Of course, we’re very supportive,” said Stovell, adding he believes the project won’t just appeal to tourists but to school kids and locals as well.

He said Guillaume has a proven track record.

Of Storyeum, Drew said, “It’s a case of simple but powerful storytelling.”

© Copyright  2004 Vancouver Sun

Housing sales highest since ’89

Tuesday, January 6th, 2004

$12.5 billion worth of Greater Vancouver property sold

Wyng Chow
Sun

Housing sales highest since ’89

Residential property sales in Greater Vancouver sizzled in 2003, establishing a new record for the total number of units sold, while average prices also hit all-time highs.

Year-end Multiple Listing Service figures released Monday show 37,901 detached houses, townhomes and condominiums sold over the entire year in the region, up 11 per cent from 33,864 units in 2002.

The previous highest annual total was in 1989, when 36,415 homes totalling $7.043 billion changed hands.

The dollar volume of properties sold last year exceeded $12.5 billion, 22 per cent more than $10.25 billion the previous year.

“This [sales] activity was a continuation of a strong 2002 market, but was further fuelled by confidence in the economy, heightened interest in real estate as an investment, and excitement during a year in which we won the Olympic bid,” said Bill Binnie, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

“Month after month, we continued to see historically low interest rates combine with pent-up demand to fan an already healthy housing market.”

Purchasers fighting over desirable properties and locations engaged in bidding wars throughout 2003, as inventory continued dwindling. At year- end, there were 6,902 active listings in Greater Vancouver, down 15 per cent from 8,193 units the year before.

Many top realtors reported experiencing their best years ever.

One five-bedroom character house in Dunbar, at 3490 West King Edward, changed hands twice in 2003. In January, it sold for $548,000, then resold in November, following some renovation, for $709,000.

“This has been an absolutely incredible year both for the number of sales and price increases of at least 15 per cent across the board over last year,” said Vancouver realtor Faith Wilson, the listing agent for the Dunbar house.

“Competition has been intense, with … buyers having to put up with multiple offers all year.”

In 2002, Wilson, of Re/Max Real Estate Services, sold $8 million worth of homes. For 2003, she expects to more than double her dollar volume to $18 million.

Condos were by far the hottest ticket last year, as 14,843 units sold on the MLS, up 24 per cent from 11,967 units in 2002. Although the region’s year-end average condo price only reached $216,900 — up nine per cent from $197,700 — some condos in hot downtown locations resold at staggering profits for their vendors.

For example:

– At Concord Pacific’s waterfront Quaywest Resort condo tower at 1033 Marinaside Cres., a two-bedroom-and-den unit purchased in February 2002 for $291,500 sold in November 2003 for $485,000 — a 66-per-cent increase.

– At Concord’s West One building, near Homer and Pacific, a 1,057-square-foot 19th-floor condo originally purchased in March 2001 for about $330,000, was flipped in August 2002 for $394,200.

Last month, a new buyer paid $538,000 for the two-bedroom-and-den unit.

– At 1199 Marinaside Cres., near the Urban Fare supermarket, a 22nd-floor 1,062-square-foot unit, purchased in December 2000 for $326,250, sold in October 2003 for $443,000.

With condo sales at a fever pitch, developers now find it next to impossible to keep up with consumer demand.

Between May and June, it took developer Peter Wall only 11 weeks to sell out all 456 units at his Electric Avenue condo project in the 900-block Hornby, $104 million worth.

In August and September, it took him five weeks to sell all 423 units at the Hudson, at Granville and Dunsmuir, raking in $101 million.

Over the next several years, Wall plans to develop a total of 850 new condo units in three residential towers, called Yaletown Park, at Mainland and Homer. While marketing for the first 300 units won’t start until next month, Wall already has more than 200 people on a waiting list.

Driven by this seemingly insatiable consumer demand for condos amid a shrinking land bank, developers are now willing to pay in excess of $100 per buildable square foot for building sites — double the prices from only a couple of years ago.

Among detached houses, the average year-end price in Greater Vancouver was $449,300, up 14 per cent from $394,500 at the end of 2002.

On Vancouver‘s west side, the year-end detached price hit $787,100, compared to $698,500 the previous year, a 12.7-per-cent increase.

In West Vancouver, the year-end detached average was $908,900, up 17.4 per cent from $773,900.

Of the 10 most expensive homes sold in Greater Vancouver on the MLS in 2003 — ranging in price from $3.35 million to $6.1 million — six were located in West Vancouver and four in Vancouver’s west side or Coal Harbour.

In the six Fraser Valley communities, a total of 18,351 homes sold last year, up 13.9 per cent from 16,106 sales in 2002.

On a percentage increase basis in year-over-year sales, the hottest housing markets in 2003 were found in Vancouver’s west side, up 25.4 per cent; Squamish, up 21.6 per cent; Surrey, up 16.43 per cent; Langley, up 14.8 per cent; and New Westminster, up 14 per cent.

Despite rising property prices, it is cheaper now to own a home in most areas of Canada — including Vancouver — than it was 14 years ago, according to a recent Re/Max report.

The survey found that in 20 of the country’s 28 major residential real estate markets tracked back to 1989, the 2003 monthly mortgage payment, or carrying cost, has declined by up to 38.5 per cent.

In Greater Vancouver, where the average MLS price of a home at the end of October was $326,000 — the highest in Canada — the monthly payment was $1,783, compared to $1,996 in 1989, a drop of 10.7 per cent.

The monthly housing cost is based on a property purchase price of $326,173, with a 10-per-cent downpayment of $32,600, and a five-year fixed mortgage at 5.25 per cent, amortized over 25 years.

Under this scenario, the total annual family income required to service such a home in Greater Vancouver is $66,863.

By comparison, in 1989, when the average residential price was $209,671, the interest rate for a five-year term was 12 per cent, meaning that the family income required to become a home owner was $74,850 per annum –nearly $8,000 more than in 2003.

Re/Max said lower costs, alternate housing forms and creative financing all contributed to helping Canadians enter the housing market en masse this year.

[email protected]

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PROPERTY-VALUE CHANGES

Some indicators of property-value changes in Greater Vancouver:

– A mid-1940s house on a 33-foot lot in East Vancouver sold for $250,000 in July 2002, and for $268,000 one year later.

– A 10-year-old west-side Vancouver home sold for $700,000 in August 2002, and again for $731,000 in June 2003.

– Nine-year-old one-bedroom concrete condo unit in East Vancouver sold for $82,000 in 2002, for $90,000 a year later.

– Single-family home in Dundarave, West Vancouver, sold for $695,000 in August 2002, resold for $788,500 in June 2003.

– In Port Coquitlam, a single-family home built in the 1960s sold for $255,000 in 2002, and $290,000 a year later.

– 1990s South Burnaby home valued at $590,000 in summer 2002 was worth $630,000 a year later.

– Three-bedroom townhouse in New Westminster was valued at $215,000 in 2002, and $262,000 in 2003.

– 30-year-old single-family home in Richmond‘s Steveston area sold for $385,000 in 2002, and for $412,000 a year later.

Source: B.C. Assessment Authority

CHECK YOUR NEIGHBOUR’S ASSESSMENT

Yes, you can use the Internet to check your neighbour’s assessed property value, or your cousin’s, or a celebrity of your choice.

All you need is the address of the property, and for the B.C. Assessment Authority’s “assessments by address online” service to be working.

It wasn’t working Monday, but authority officials said it should be operating again this morning. The authority encourages members of the public to check other people’s property assessments, because it helps them understand how the assessment system operates.

When it’s working, the service can be reached from the authority’s main Web site at http://bcassessment.gov.bc.ca/index.html.

FAST-RISING VALUE CAN MEAN LOWER TAX RATE

A large increase in property value does not mean your property taxes will rise proportionally.

In fact, fast-rising property values often mean lower tax rates.

That’s because municipal governments typically approve operating budgets a few percentage points larger than the previous year’s budget.

If property values rise more than that, a municipality can actually reduce its local property tax rate while still collecting more money from property owners.

Using the same tax rate on inflated property values would lead to absurd results, explained David Highfield, the B.C. Assessment Authority’s area assessor for Vancouver and the North Shore.

“Just because assessment has doubled, you don’t want twice as many fire halls,” Highfield explained.

© Copyright 2004 Vancouver Sun

 

Property values leap by 10-30% in Vancouver

Tuesday, January 6th, 2004

William Boei
Sun

Property values in Greater Vancouver increased by leaps and bounds last year as interest rates remained low and Vancouver was tabbed to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Almost every type of building — especially residential — rose in value, B.C. Assessment Authority numbers show.

The numbers mean people who already own property are laughing, but those who are still on the sidelines will find it more difficult to buy a home.

The authority mailed its annual assessments to property owners last week.

The City of Vancouver saw its total assessed property value rise by 9.4 per cent, to $93.7 billion last year from $85.6 billion in 2002.

It was the biggest jump in more than a decade, area assessor David Highfield said.

The city’s total assessment had been bumping up against an $80-billion ceiling for years, finally broke through to $85 billion in 2002 and kept going into the $90-billion-plus range, “a really significant value shift,” Highfield said.

Total property value includes the effects of zoning changes and of new properties being added to the tax rolls, but mainly reflects changes in property values.

Most residential properties in Vancouver, including strata housing, increased by 10 to 30 per cent. “We haven’t seen that in more than a decade,” Highfield said.

The hottest of the hot spots was Coal Harbour, where many condominium and townhouse properties were resold for 30, 40 and even 50 per cent more than they had been bought for only a year earlier.

Highfield called the Coal Harbour increase “very remarkable.” He cited a six-year-old two-bedroom concrete apartment that sold for $368,000 in May of 2002, and resold for $505,000 exactly a year later, a rise of 37 per cent.

Mid- to lower-priced properties in the city showed more upward movement last year, Highfield noted, while there was relatively less movement in the high-priced properties — $1 million or more — that had been leading the real estate market in recent years.

However, high-end properties with desirable views, waterfront and other popular locations “just kept right on moving,” Highfield said.

Some categories of commercial property did not fare as well. Hotel stock went down in value as vacancy rates went up, largely because of factors such as 9/11, SARS and mad cow disease that reduced the number of people travelling.

Property values in Vancouver‘s Chinatown area were largely unchanged, reflecting the influence of the neighbouring Downtown Eastside, and the fact that much of its business has migrated to Richmond‘s shopping malls.

North and West Vancouver, Whistler and the Sunshine Coast showed similar gains to Vancouver‘s, the assessment authority said.

As in Vancouver, “the top end of the market, although still active and still moving, hasn’t moved as much as the bottom and the middle of the market,” Highfield said.

West Vancouver‘s assessment roll swelled by 9.1 per cent, from $12.1 billion to $12.3 billion.

Squamish and Pemberton were the hot spots in the region, and overtook Whistler to lead the market last year.

“It isn’t that Whistler has cooled off,” Highfield said. “It’s just that their market movement is more in line with everybody else’s now.”

Properties in Squamish and Pemberton that suffered flood damage last fall are getting reduced assessments, “but we don’t expect the market trend to be interrupted very much by the floods,” he said.

In Burnaby, total assessed property value rose by 8.2 per cent to $27.1 billion from $25 billion. New West properties were up 8.4 per cent, to $5.8 billion from $5.4 billion.

Richmond values were up 9.3 per cent, said area assessor Mark Katz, to $24.4 billion from $22.3 billion.

In the Tri Cities area — Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, plus the villages of Anmore and Belcarra — assessed property value rose by 13 per cent, to $22.8 billion from $20.2 billion, area assessor Kash Kang said.

Figures for Surrey were not available Monday because of a computer glitch.

© Copyright  2004 Vancouver Sun

 

Lower Mainland housing sales reach record high

Tuesday, January 6th, 2004

Elaine O’Connor
Province

Kim LaBreche was one of 56,000 residents who bought homes in Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley last year, fuelling record sales. But finding a home in a hot market was far from easy.

“It was so stressful. I wasn’t able to find anything I wanted,” said LaBreche, who eventually gave up her desire to live in White Rock and settled on a three-bedroom rancher on a large lot in Cloverdale, snatching it off the market just after it was listed.

To do so, LaBreche, like many of the region’s homebuyers, faced stiff competition and paid almost $90,000 more than she wanted to.

Greater Vancouver housing sales reached historic levels with 37,816 homes sold in 2003, the highest annual sales since 1989.

“We had a record-breaking year,” said Bill Binnie, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. “Interest rates and consumer confidence were very important factors.”

The benchmark price of a detached home in the region was $449,190, up 15 per cent from 2002, while the price of a townhouse was up 16 per cent to $284,080 and condo prices rose 14 per cent to $213,140.

Typical homes in West Vancouver topped $845,000 in December 2003, up 43 per cent from last year. Homes in the West End at $733,000 were up 18 per cent, and North Vancouver homes ran to $489,000, up 11 per cent.

High-end homes fuelled the market, Binnie said, as Vancouver realtors saw more million-dollar home sales than ever before.

Fraser Valley realtors also had their best showing in more than a decade. The 18,351 housing sales represented the highest yearly total since 1992. Sales reached $4.7 billion, up 23 per cent from last year.

“It kind of blew most of us away,” said Reg Davies, Fraser Valley Real Estate Board president.

In 2003 the average cost of a detached single-family Valley home was $301,121, up $30,000 from the year before. Buying a townhouse cost $5,700 more on average in 2003, and average apartment costs skyrocketed $10,000 in a year.

In 2004, Davies predicts sales will slow slightly but remain solid until 2006-07.

© Copyright  2004 The Province

 

New law strengthens privacy

Sunday, January 4th, 2004

Jim Jamieson
Province

Georgette Parsons is the chief information and privacy officer for Mountain Equipment Co-op. CREDIT: Gerry Kahrmann, The Province

As British Columbians greeted the new year, they also entered a new era of tighter privacy protection.

It’s a mixed blessing for B.C. businesses and non-profit organizations, though. They now must abide by elevated standards for how they deal with personal information they have collected from customers and members.

Most agree that increased security standards will boost consumer confidence in online commerce, in particular, but will be a challenge to smaller firms.

Bradley Freedman, a partner at Vancouver law firm Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and an expert in intellectual property and technology law, says the B.C. legislation’s enforcement mechanisms have more teeth than its federal counterpart. B.C. Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis can conduct his own investigations, hold hearings, subpoena documents and witnesses, can make binding findings and can enforce orders with sanctions, he said.

Bill 38, the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) forces organizations to disclose what they know about their customers’ personal data. It also requires that businesses ask permission when collecting personal information.

The act applies to organizations and individuals who collect personal information, except data collected for non-commercial uses.

For some organizations, it will be an easy transition into more stringent guidelines around privacy protection. For others, there will be some strain — and expense.

“We feel we are in a good position to be in compliance,” said Tim Southam of Vancouver-based Mountain Equipment Co-op, which has about two million members. The names, addresses and phone numbers of those members reside in MEC’s huge database.

As well, the co-op runs a thriving online business that has grown to about five per cent of the company’s $167-million annual

revenue.

“It’s not so much developing a new program as refining our existing procedures around protecting personal information,” said Southam. “We do not sell, rent or lend our membership list to anyone . . . But this involves revisions to existing forms, taking steps that personal information is safeguarded.”

PIPA takes the place of the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which has been phasing in for several years.

As of Jan. 1, any province that did not enacted its own privacy legislation must abide by the federal act. B.C. and Alberta were the only provinces to opt for their own acts, while Quebec already had its own legislation.

Organizations that operate inter-provincially are subject to the federal legislation.

Freedman said that at its core the legislation ensures there is consent to use of personal

information.

“That’s information about an identifiable individual — for example, name, telephone number, social insurance number, bank account number,” said Freedman.

“If it’s aggregated [group], information, it’s no longer personal information and not subject to these laws. Contact information at a place of business, a business e-mail address, for example, is not considered personal information.”

The legislation — which is complaint-based — will impact many areas of business.

Employers won’t be able to outsource payroll services without the consent of employees; publishers won’t be able to sell subscribers lists; direct marketers can’t contact a consumer to hawk a product other than which has been previously purchased, unless there is consent. Retailers even have a new obligation to obscure credit card numbers on sales receipts.

B.C. Minister of Management Services Sandy Santori said the goal of the provincial legislation was to have a less complex alternative to the federal act and law that is administered in B.C.

“We felt having it under the auspices of our commissioner would be beneficial,” he said.

Complying with the legislation will clearly be more onerous on small businesses.

“We have had someone who’s on staff here who’s been working on our privacy complaince program virtually full time for two or three months now,” said Southam. “Having those kinds of resources in a small company is unlikely.”

Bill Cotter, a Vancouver-based private investigator and security consultant, said the added cost of getting up to speed with the act will eventually be borne by the consumer.

“People will say: ‘I’ve given you this information — what have you done with it?’ he said. “This is going to take time and cost money. These costs always get passed along to the consumer.”

Other obligations include maintaining the security of the information, which can range from providing a locked room to encrypting hard drives, and being liable for outsourced data.

As well, there is no grandathering of the obligations.

If an organization has a large database used for marketing, and that information was collected before (without consent), it can’t use that information unless there is consent.

© Copyright  2004 The Province