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Owners of five renovated homes open their doors during one-day event

Lena Sin
Province

One of the city’s least respected buildings, the Vancouver Special, is becoming an unlikely muse to homeowners and architects alike.

Four decades after it made its debut as an affordable home for working-class families, this uniquely Vancouver style is now enjoying a comeback — although this time around, it’s being embraced as much for its design potential as it is for its efficiency.

With growing interest in how to reinvent the Special, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation is holding a self-guided tour of five renovated Specials on Sept. 26.

The homes were constructed between 1965 and 1978 and range from DIY renovations to spectacular overhauls.

Among the homeowners who are opening their doors are Laura Quilici and Scott Massey, who bought their eastside Special two years ago and just recently finished an $80,000 renovation, which involved plenty of DIY.

The couple were inspired to buy their home after living across the street from architect Stephanie Robb, who had transformed her own Vancouver Special into a beautiful, modern home several years ago.

“I saw when Stephanie bought that house and I was kind of surprised,” recalls Quilici. “And just over the years I saw what it became and it really, really interested me.”

Taking their cue from Robb’s modernist take, the couple stripped the brick facade off the front exterior and replaced it with sleek, cedar siding. They also painted the top body of the house charcoal grey and added a glass canopy above the white, entrance doors.

Inside, the couple opened up the floor plan by knocking down a main wall and managed the renovations of two kitchens and one bathroom. But as much as the reno was about the Special of the future, the couple also approached the remake with an eye for preservation. The original, intricately carved front door is being turned into a bench while the pair of lions that once greeted visitors at the gate are now kitschy lawn ornaments, which Quilici is contemplating spray-painting a slick black or possibly chrome.

“We kept our lions. I feel they’re important to the history of the house,” says Quilici, who theorizes the ornaments common to Vancouver Specials may have symbolized “making it” in the West to the immigrant families who lived in these homes.

Vancouver Specials first appeared in the city around 1965 and appealed mostly to European immigrants, followed by Asian immigrants in the 1970s, as an affordable, modern house. The two-storey, rectangular houses with low-pitched roofs were built to maximize the building code of the time, making them large, efficient houses capable of housing extended family in the ground-level suite.

In the 1960s and ’70s, these houses could be built within weeks and today, there are an estimated 10,000 Vancouver Specials in the city.

While they are the most common house design in the city, Vancouver Specials have been maligned for their monotonous, boxy shape and low-cost construction.

But design-savvy buyers are starting to see them as an interesting challenge. And as Elana Zysblat, programming director at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, points out, it’s far more sustainable to renovate than to tear them down. “We can’t knock down 10,000 Vancouver Specials — and we shouldn’t,” she says. “There’s something for everyone in a Vancouver Special. Everyone who works with Vancouver Specials finds there’s room for their own interpretation.”

Among the most dramatic reinventions is Allan Askew’s westside Special, which is virtually unrecognizable as a Special, save for the rectangular rear of the house. Askew, a developer, partnered with iConstrux Architecture to remake his home. Driven by an environmental desire to preserve as much of the house as possible, the team managed to create a contemporary house without demolishing much of the existing building.

“Because there’s such a large stock of Vancouver Specials in Vancouver, I thought if we could find a way to pick up the mid-century modern DNA of the Special and apply some real architectural reimagining, there could be something really interesting that comes out of it,” said Askew.

The resulting house has a radically new front exterior that includes massive windows and a double, pitched “zigzag roof” to allow more light inside. The partnership between Askew and the architects was so successful that they have now evolved into a new company, Make Design + Build, which focuses on modern dwellings. “I’m thrilled,” says Askew of the renovation.”It’s everything I hoped it would be.”

The Facts

What: Vancouver Special Tour 2009

Where: Throughout Vancouver

Open: Sept. 26, from noon to 5 p.m.

Cost: $25 per ticket. Buy tickets online at www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org, or by phone at 604-264-9642. Tickets can be picked up at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation or on the day of the tour at the corner of East 22nd. Ave. and Edward Park.

More info: www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org

© Copyright (c) The Province

The Wesbrook is also the first highrise in growing south-campus neighbourhood

Michael Sasges
Sun

THE WESBROOK

Project location: 16th and Wesbrook Mall, University of B.C.

Project size: 65 apartments and townhouses, 17-storey tower

Residence size: 2 bed, 1,640 sq. ft.; 2 bed + den, 1,910 sq. ft; 3 bed + den, 1,910 sq. ft.; townhouses, 2,400 sq. ft.

Prices: apartments, $1.47 million – $1.84 million; townhouses, $2.22 million

Sales centre: 107 – 5838 Berton, UBC

Hours: noon – 5 p.m., Sat – Thur.

Telephone: 604-224-8878

Web: thewesbrook.com

Developer: ASPAC

Architect: MCM

Occupancy: immediately

– – –

I cannot say the Wesbrook is an economics textbook definition of luxury. (I do not understand income elasticity.) I can, however, tell you the homes are ready for occupancy, a luxury; they are spacious, a luxury; and they make the most of an exquisite site, a luxury.

The Wesbrook is not the first new-home project in the south-campus neighbourhood of the University of B.C. But it is the first highrise.

Put another way, the Wesbrook is the first new-home project in the south-campus neighbourhood to robustly acknowledge the mountain-and-water outlooks. All the apartments are view homes and all are corner homes.

On each of floors three through 14 are four homes; on floor 15, three; on floor 16, one; and on the top floor, one, with a roof-top patio.

In other words, 48 apartments have two exterior walls of glazing with which to admit natural light and breezes, and from which residents can take in the outlooks. One has three exterior walls, and two have four.

If the highrise isn’t a pencil of iron and concrete, a four-to-floor configuration makes for bigger apartments.

The smallest Wesbrook apartment is a 1,600-square-foot residence. The largest apartments in the most recent new-construction highrise residences profiled by Westcoast Homes are, in one, 950 square feet and, in the other, 885 square feet.

The bigger-home status of the Wesbrook apartments also says that they were built for a purchaser, local and foreign,

whose residential needs are different from purchasers who pioneered the insertion of residential neighbourhoods on campus.

“In the past, UBC was looked at, by buyers, as a transient spot, to park their children, to study …” says Lily Korstanje of Magnum Projects, organizer of the Wesbrook sales and marketing campaign.

“After four years, they might go the States to do their masters. It is not known as a place where ‘imported’ people would make their homes.

“So they would buy smaller units, one bedroom, two bedroom, 800 square feet. But as they got to know this area, they liked it: they want to work here; they want to stay here. They’re coming from campus, they’re looking for larger spaces, because they want to stay.”

The local prospect is a west-side Vancouver property-owner.

“Those people are used to 2,000 square feet, if not more. Where are they going to put their dining table and hutch? They’re looking for a larger space.”

They may not necessarily be looking for an environmentally friendly space, but they will reside in one.

The building was designed and built to standards developed for the local climate by the University of B.C.’s Residential Environmental Assessment Program.

Lastly, Wesbrook purchasers will buy a finished home. Building and grounds are not artist’s renderings. The homes are neither renderings nor floor plans. Their doors can be opened and closed; the floors can be walked; the appliances tested; the walls tapped; the views seen.

Some of them were sold before or during construction and are occupied. Most of them, however, are unsold and unoccupied.

“So, often you go into a project and what is represented is totally day and night. It happens,” says Korstanje, who, with brother George Wong, is a pioneer of the sale and purchase of a home before construction, a business model the international financial crisis shattered last September.

The first Wesbrook homes to be sold were from a sales centre in Coal Harbour, a location that reflects the Wesbrook developer’s history locally. ASPAC is the lead developer in the transformation, now mostly completed, of industrial Coal Harbour into a residential neighbourhood.

“A show home in the Guinness Tower wasn’t really the most relevant exposure,” Korstanje says.

“Eventually, it was decided it’s best to have people touch and feel the homes when they’re done. The product is so different.'”

That is why, of course, a Wesbrook address is a luxury address: It is different because four attractions of a new home — location, spaciousness, green content and ready occupancy — are all present. They rarely are. And rarity is a component of luxury.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Provincial and municipal government discord costs us all

Bob Ransford
Sun

One of the keys to making housing more affordable is transportation.

The cost of housing in communities with a robust range of transportation choices, especially with well-developed public transit systems, is generally lower.

You can concentrate more people in one area if they can move about efficiently without the need for roads and parking, which consume both land and the dollars to build them. Higher density means more efficient land use and a lower cost of housing on a per-home basis.

A second cost-saving comes from being able to avoid or decrease dependency on a car.

Owning and operating a car is an expensive undertaking.

Good transportation planning and good land-use planning go hand in hand. One can’t be achieved without the other.

We are seeing the results of a clear disconnect between land-use planning and transportation planning in Metro Vancouver in the form of our high costs of housing.

In my last column, I talked about the less-than-impressive track record of the provincial government in walking the walk when it comes to all of its talk about wanting to lower the cost of housing and bringing home ownership within reach of our children. The government’s failure to ensure that transportation planning and land-use planning are integrated in Metro Vancouver is another example of all talk and no action on the affordable housing front.

In fact, the Campbell Liberals widened the gap between land-use planning and transportation planning through deliberate neglect and reckless interference in both areas.

The current laws that govern municipalities and manage growth have proved inadequate in promoting smart growth.

Municipalities have no clear growth targets in areas where growth and density should be concentrated.

For example, the City of Vancouver is at least two years away from planning for the kind of redevelopment that might achieve density around the new Canada Line transit stations, which have now been open for a month. If and when higher density growth is planned around those stations, there is no mechanism to ensure that the political process doesn’t block development opportunities.

The current law governing growth management in metropolitan regions in B.C. has proved toothless. Enforcing the broad allocation of land use through community and regional plans on a consensus basis has failed. The Liberal government hasn’t shown any appetite to change those laws.

Urban transportation planning has fared even worse under the Campbell Liberals.

They have washed their hands of playing a coordinating role in major public transit improvement projects. TransLink is on its own to both plan and fund transportation infrastructure in Metro Vancouver.

The Liberals created the Council of Mayors; its members are scared sleepless of the political ramifications of using their severely limited taxing power to raise adequate taxpayer dollars to fund the continued development and operation of an integrated urban transportation network in Metro Vancouver. As the local mayors bob and weave, avoiding the hard decisions, an unaccountable board made up of provincial appointees scrambles to keep the existing public transit system alive.

The premier wasn’t afraid to grab headlines with an announcement a couple of years ago of an ambitious plan to expand public rapid transit when he was being roundly criticized for building expensive auto-dependent transportation infrastructure such as a new Port Mann Bridge, while at the same time portraying himself as the patron saint of sustainability.

That announcement, lacking most of the funding it required, now seems long forgotten while the premier and his colleagues continue to refuse to delegate a broader taxing authority to those on whom they have downloaded the responsibility for the expensive but necessary improvements to the public transit network.

Regional transportation commissioner Martin Crilley referred to this lack of provincial-regional coordination in his recent public report when he labelled the gulf that exists between provincial and regional transportation planning and financing “a hazard.”

Meanwhile, the same provincial government that is one minute washing its hands of the problem and the next meddling in the issue up to its neck, continues to dictate the kind of technology that is deployed in building the transit network, pushing up the cost per kilometre of building much-needed rapid transit expansion projects.

Compare the cost of SkyTrain versus at-grade trams systems. The estimated costs of extending the Millennium SkyTrain line with a subway along Broadway toward the University of B.C. is about $233 million per kilometre. The costs for new at-grade tram technology chosen by cities such as Portland and Washington, D.C., is around $16 million per kilometre.

The Campbell Liberals chose the more costly SkyTrain technology for the development of the on-again, off-again planned Evergreen rapid transit line to serve Metro Vancouver’s northeast sector. Going with this technology is a condition of securing the yet-to-be-committed provincial contribution to fund the project.

Commissioner Crilley pointed in his recent report to his concern about the lack of freedom on the part of TransLink to select “its own optimum rapid transit configuration.”

It makes you wonder whether the provincial government even thinks about connecting the dots between the cost of housing and the disconnect between land use and transportation planning.

– – –

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with CounterPoint Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

The goal is to encourage more donors to step up

Jamie Golombek
Sun

Canada should kill the capital gains tax on donations of appreciated real estate and private company shares to charity, says a study released this week by the C.D. Howe Institute.

In the report entitled Unlocking More Wealth: How to Improve Federal Tax Policy for Canadian Charities, author Malcolm Burrows outlines the need for the policy change and the benefits that would result.

Since 1996, the federal government has introduced more than 20 tax incentives to encourage and regulate charitable gifts. Perhaps the biggest change was the government’s 1997 decision to halve the capital gains inclusion rate on the donation of publicly listed securities, mutual funds and segregated funds to a registered charity.

Nine years later, the 2006 budget completely exempted the gains on such a donation from tax.

Mr. B u r r ows s u g ge s t s the next steps on the government’s charity agenda should be to introduce a similar rule for the donation of real estate and private company shares, “potentially broadening the donation base and making charities less vulnerable to market swings. These credits could be introduced in a manner consistent with existing laws, to reduce the chance of tax system abuse.” One of the oft-cited impediments to the donation of both real estate and private company shares is concerns about their appropriate valuations.

The report addresses this issue in various ways, depending on what is being donated and its intended use by the charity. For example, Mr.

Burrows recommends that if the proceeds received on the sale of real estate are donated within 30 days of the real estate sale, not only would the owner be entitled to a tax receipt equal to the fair market value proceeds, but the capital gains tax would be waived.

This proposal solves several concerns at once. Most importantly, the valuation of the real estate by the charity is no longer an issue. In addition, the charity doesn’t have to enter the property management business or worry about an existing mortgage or selling the donated property.

From the donor’s perspective, he or she could choose to donate only a portion of the real estate proceeds, receive a partial receipt and partial capital gains exemption, and use the remaining proceeds to pay off any outstanding mortgage on the property.

What if the charity wants to hold the real estate for use in its own charitable activities? Mr. Burrows proposes that in that case, the recipient charity would have to agree to hold it for at least 10 years and a qualified thirdparty appraiser would need to value the property being donated for the purpose of the donation receipt.

For gifts of private company shares, the report recommends that due to valuation and liquidity concerns, a receipt should be issued only if the shares were sold by the charity within five years.

Upon sale, the purchase price would be validated by an independent appraisal.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun