John Mackie
Sun
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun Heritage house at1052 Seymour St., the lone survivor of its kind on the block, is perched on the edge of a deep excavation for another Yaletown tower.
VANCOUVER I One of the oddest sights in the city is an old house at 1052 Seymour St. that is perched on the edge of a giant crater on the site of a new highrise development.
The scene nicely sums up the perilous state of heritage buildings in the city. Heritage Vancouver president Don Luxton says Vancouver is in the midst of its biggest building boom since 1912. All over the city, heritage buildings are at risk from redevelopment schemes.
An 1889-1890 house at 909 Richards St. is slated to be demolished as part of a redevelopment at Richards and Smithe, and much of the 1903 Woodward’s building will likely be history if the proposed redevelopment of the site goes ahead. Even large swaths of historic Gastown and Chinatown are in danger as developers look for new “character” neighbourhoods to redevelop.
All three of these sites are included in Heritage Vancouver’s fifth annual list of the top 10 endangered heritage sites in the city.
This year’s list is wide-ranging, from institutional buildings such as Charles Dickens school, an old firehall at East 22nd and Nootka and the PNE Livestock Building, to modern structures such as the Evergreen Building and the Percy Underwood Office. The list is rounded out by the Burrard Bridge, which may be altered for bicycle lanes, and the Roselawn Funeral Home.
The basic problem for heritage buildings is that when there’s a boom, small old buildings on prime sites are ripe for redevelopment.
“The economic equation has changed,” explains Luxton. “Many of the buildings have been sitting there in kind of marginal situations for a long time, and all of a sudden the value of the land has risen. Whether that be commercial or residential, it’s just gone up. There’s greater return, interest rates are low, people can get money, assets are liquid, away you go.”
The heritage houses of Yaletown/Downtown South are a case in point. The neighbourhood was once filled with houses, and there are a surprising number left, including 10 in the square block bounded by Nelson, Richards, Helmcken and Seymour.
The three-storey house at 1052 Seymour St. dates to 1906. The only reason it has survived is because it is owned by the Fillipone family, which owns the legendary Penthouse strip club across the street. No developer has made the Fillipones a good enough offer for their land, so the house remains, teetering on the edge of the abyss.
“How long before that goes?” asks Luxton. “You think somebody’s going to buy that and preserve it, when you look at the value of the land it sits on? There’s just no way.”
The Seymour house isn’t on the heritage register.
Neither is 909 Richards, one of the oldest houses in the city. It was built in 1889 or 1890 for men’s clothier A.E. Lees, who used to operate a store at Cordova and Carrall in Gastown. Many people will recognize the site for a tiny commercial building in front that used to house The Best Little Hairhouse in Town.
When the house was built, Vancouver was only three years old and had a population of about 13,000. The house is so old, it was built a couple of years before the city’s water service reached it.
The house is slated to be demolished for a new development at 538 Smithe. The irony is that the new development is bigger than would normally be allowed because it uses 4,500 square feet of bonus density acquired from the city’s heritage density bonus program.
Essentially, developers purchase bonus density from owners of heritage sites elsewhere in the city, who are supposed to use the money to fix up their buildings. But Luxton is dismayed to report that some heritage building owners are circumventing the spirit of the bonus density program by retaining the facade of their old building, then building a new structure behind the facade.
Another significant building, at 1280 West Pender St., also may be demolished for a highrise project that uses bonus density from another heritage site.
The Percy Underwood Office is a small but elegant modern building in the International Style. Built in 1946, it occupies a triangle where Pender and Melville converge. In recent years it has been the Crime Lab restaurant. A redevelopment plan would see a 28-storey highrise built on the site.
“It’s a great building,” said Luxton. “They don’t need to tear it down. What are they going to put under it, parking?
“You should not be able to get a heritage density bonus from somewhere else [to tear down a heritage building]. Period.”
The Woodward’s Building has been a concern for heritage activists since the store closed in 1993. It finally looks like it will be redeveloped, but Luxton is not enthused with the plan.
“It’s essentially a facade project, and it’s not even retention of the facades, it’s retention of parts of the facades, with great gaping holes cut in them,” he said.
“And a 30-storey tower stuck in it. Our position is there is not a lot of respect being paid to what was clearly recognized as a historic landmark.”
Luxton is dismayed that the pace of redevelopment may erase parts of the city’s history before we realize what’s happened.
“I think in many ways we’re destroying a lot of the city that has some character,” he said.
“A lot of the new construction is very repetitive and very formulaic, and doesn’t measure up in many ways to the slow incremental development of the city that leaves traces of different historical periods, different types of buildings and some variety.
“We’re ending up with a very homogenous streetscape in many parts of the city, especially Downtown South. It’s all the same thing.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
