Every couple of years, it seems there’s a new high tide of businesses that flow into Chinatown from elsewhere or nowhere.

The Fortune Sound Club, Blim. Bombast and Peking Lounge. Bob Rennie’s real estate business and art gallery. Bao Bei and the Keefer.

This time, it’s been clusters of small businesses run by 20-something entrepreneurs, as I document in my Globe story from the weekend.

As always, these changes get a mixed review. Although my story doesn’t have anyone saying it directly, it’s clear, even from the enthusiasts among the Chinatown businesses who welcome the new operations, that there is anxiety about the loss of the old Chinatown and its traditional businesses.

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This just out from the city, along with a link here to the story Rod and I did for today’s Globe, which hinted this was coming.

Motion, report coming forward to protect Waldorf

 

Vancouver – Mayor Robertson has directed the City Manager to bring forward a report to the next Council meeting on protecting the Waldorf Hotel, and will be introducing a motion asking staff to meet with Waldorf Productions to discuss options for continuing an arts and culture venue in Vancouver, including options for continuing on site.

 

“The Waldorf is both a significant cultural amenity and a major neighbourhood asset, one that resonates with people of all ages throughout Vancouver,” said Mayor Robertson. “To lose such a historic building would be a big blow, which is why we need to do what we can to protect it – we need to be building up Vancouver’s arts and culture. I want to ensure the Waldorf Hotel is protected and that we don’t lose a valuable live performance venue.”

 

The Mayor has asked the City Manager to prepare a report for this Tuesday’s council meeting that would protect the Waldorf Hotel and its heritage values, including plans to prevent any demolition of the building. The staff report will include:

 

·             Steps to prevent any Demolition Permit from being issued, in the event the owners were to seek one;

·             Preparing a Statement of Significance for the Waldorf Hotel, based on its cultural heritage, followed by a report back to Council on retention options.

 

The Mayor’s motion will also ask City staff to meet with Waldorf Productions to discuss their business plan and identify possibilities for continuing an arts and culture venue in Vancouver, including partnerships with other organizations. The motion will also ask staff to consult with the current and new landowners to see if any accommodations can be made to keep Waldorf Productions on site.

 

“It’s disappointing that Waldorf Productions is intending to stop operations – we need more cultural venues in Vancouver,” added the Mayor. “City Hall has done a big push in the past few years on increasing artist space, whether it was saving the York Theatre, offering city-owned buildings for lease to arts groups, or delivering over 20,000 square feet of new studio space in 2012. I’m hopeful we can find a new solution.”

There are still lots of twists and turns in this story of the current operators of the Waldorf Hotel announcing they are no longer in business as of Jan. 20. I captured a small part of it in the Globe final story today. But there’s much more and more to come.

While the meme has boiled down to “condo development drives out funky arts venue and despairing Vancouverites flood Tahrir Square to protest,” a few things to be noted:

– the hotel’s current owner, who still legally controls the building until September, says the hotel and its bars, restaurant, etc., will stay open, according to what Charlie Smith and the Georgia Straight are reporting. Presumably, however, it won’t have any of the creativity the current owners bring.

– the developer, Solterra Group of Companies, does not get control of the building until September. I hear from some sources that Solterra was itself blindsided by what looks like a breakdown of talks between the current owner and the Waldorf operating partners

– everyone has gone crazy, with at least one petition out there demanding that city council deny any rezoning and Solterra’s Facebook site filling up with hate messages

– the land is zoned industrial and CANNOT have condos built on it without a rezoning, which means public hearing, council approval, etc.

– although the Wall property at 955 East Hastings five blocks away was zoned industrial and had to be rezoned to allow condos — which Mainlander/COPE critics are saying has led to condo speculation with the Waldorf property — the Millennium site across the street from the Waldorf does not require a rezoning. It will have 101 condos over retail, which is allowed within the zoning. My understanding is that the Canadian Tire site across from the Waldorf, bought by PCI, is going to be a commercial/industrial development, not condos.

– one could argue that the real gentrifying forces in the area are Gourmet Warehouse, right across from the Waldorf, and Les Amis du Fromage, a few blocks west — two yuppie food places that have brought new people to what some see as a dismal stretch of Hastings.

– yes, Solterra bought a table at the pre-election Vision fundraiser — as did some arts groups

– the hotel operators financial situation seems a bit murky. They sank a lot of sweat equity and money into a huge reno of the building, but didn’t get any tenant-improvement money from the landlord, as is usual. Then they couldn’t pay their rent for several months at some point, yet they seemed to be giving at least one gallery space rent free. They asked the landlord if they could not pay for a while, which later made them vulnerable to the landlord demanding to break their 15-year lease.

–

Statement from Mayor Gregor Robertson:

The Waldorf closing is a big loss to Vancouver’s growing creative community. They built a great culture hub, and it’s my hope that they’ll be able to re-launch and return in some form in the near future. Supporting Vancouver’s dynamic arts and culture sector is a top priority of our City Council, and the City is exploring ways to support the Waldorf continuing as one of Vancouver’s most unique and vibrant cultural spaces.

Additional background from the Mayor’s Office:

The site at 1489 East Hastings is currently zoned for mixed-use commercial purposes, not residential development. Any change in zoning would require extensive neighbourhood consultation and approval by City Council.

This was sent out by the hotel’s young developers, who made it into a real cultural hub the last two years.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 9, 2013, Vancouver, British Columbia:

East Vancouver’s cultural institution the Waldorf Hotel has been sold to real estate development company forcing imminent closure.

The Waldorf Hotel re-opened its doors on October 31, 2010 with a vision: create a welcoming cultural hub in the heart of East Vancouver. Prior to this, the complex, which was built in 1947, had seen better days, and was just one of many dilapidated Eastside dive bars. But in the summer of 2010, a 15-year lease was signed by a group of partners led by Thomas Anselmi, Ernesto Gomez, Scott Cohen, and Daniel Fazio. They proceeded at great financial and sweat equity costs, with no assistance from the landlord, to restore the building to its former glory.

A restaurant, hotel rooms, a world renowned tiki bar, two nightclub spaces, a recording studio, and an art gallery were housed under the re-imagined Waldorf’s roof. It was embraced by the community and dubbed “a Cultural Oasis in the middle of nowhere” by the Globe and Mail.

The Waldorf was well on its way to growing into an economically viable and profitable business. But, given the scope of the project and its “middle of nowhere” location, it should come as no surprise that the first year was a financially difficult one. The landlord, Marko Puharich, was sympathetic and understanding and some rent was forgiven to give the project breathing room. But in August 2012, the landlord’s attitude changed overnight and it was baffling. Phone calls stopped being answered. Emails and texts were unreturned. A smug litigator, rather than the jovial landlord, became the point of contact. The property was on the market and the landlord was using the Waldorf’s growing pains to break the lease.

In early January 2013,  Anselmi and Gomez were informed that the complex had been sold to the Solterra Group of Companies, a condominium developer. “Solterra were unwilling to sit down and discuss negotiating long-term lease possibilities. We were offered a week-to-week lease until September 2013, when the property must be delivered vacant.  We obviously can’t move forward under these conditions as our business requires commitments to artists, organizations and entertainers months in advance,” Anselmi explains. He then adds: “This has cost 60 people their jobs. This has destroyed our business.

“The irony that the Waldorf was taken over by a condo developer in the very area we helped reinvigorate is obvious to anyone. The Waldorf filled a void. People responded because they needed it. We tried to stand for something authentic and real in a city with thousands of empty condominiums and a community starved for cultural spaces,” says Anselmi.

During its tenure, institutions like the Cheaper Show, the East Side Culture Crawl, the New Forms Festival, the Polaris Music Prize, the Presentation House Gallery, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Vancouver International Film Festival all held events at the Waldorf. And the city’s top culture producers like Black Mountain, Douglas Coupland, Rodney Graham, Grimes, Japandroids, Michael Turner, and Paul Wong all headlined events here as well. “On top of international entertainment programming every weekend, the team was constantly working towards the next big event, such as Food Cart Festival and our legendary hotel-wide Halloween and New Year’s Eve Parties,” Fazio recalls. “We were always trying to out-do ourselves.”

Everyone at the Waldorf takes great pride in the fact that the complex was operated as a community-oriented cultural institution. The Waldorf had an open door policy. Countless emerging artists, non-profits, and community groups were facilitated. The Chef-in-Residence program devised by Gomez and Cesar De La Parra hosted international culinary stars, Bob Blumer, Rodolfo Sanchez, and Pedro Martin. The Waldorf hosted an international artist-in-residence program for musicians and visual artists in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and the French Consulate.

“We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all the people who supported the Waldorf since we reopened our doors. We’re extremely proud of all the artists and events that we’ve hosted over last two and a half years. We’re extremely proud of our incredible staff who helped to execute world class events,” says Gomez.

The Waldorf will be vacated on Sunday, January 20, 2013. The Waldorf was nothing without its creative team and they are currently looking for a new space where they can continue to develop the high quality and eclectic arts and entertainment programming that the complex has become known for and that Vancouverites want and deserve.

The gossip phone tree informed me recently that Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem had a serious ski accident over Christmas.

I checked, wondering if this might mean she was sidelined for a while. But no. Dr. Ballem, as she has shown in the past, has proven to be unsquelchable.

In the time I’ve writing about her, she has fallen out of a tree and broken her arm, fallen while riding her bike and broken her hip, and now had this encounter with the mountain at Whistler. I understand she broke her sternum and compressed some neck vertebrae.

However, she is back on the job. Apparently she took pain drugs for a couple of days and that’s all she needed. You have to be in awe of that kind of resilience, whatever else. (I’ll be deleting all troll comments, btw, just in case you were thinking of trying that.)

Comings and goings all the time among current and former city people.

The latest: Former Sullivan chief of staff Daniel Fontaine, who was working at the innovation-boosting organization MITACS until recently, has moved on to become CEO of the B.C. Care Providers Association. Not sure if David Hurford, also formerly with Sam Sullivan as communications guy, is still there as well — he was the official spokesperson as recently as August 2012. If so, they can reminisce about old times together. I was wondering if Daniel was going to move into radio, though — for those who didn’t hear, he hosted the Simi Sara show several times on CKNW over the holidays.

Also, announced last week: Lee Malleau, who has been with the Vancouver Economic Commission for four years — four years where Mayor Gregor Robertson has turned the commission into an agency for promoting Vancouver as the digital-high-tech-animation-green hub of the world — is leaving for the Calgary economic commission. It’ll be interesting to see who becomes the next CEO, a telling sign of what new direction the mayor wants to go in here.

The announcement re her new job below here.

January 4, 2013

After four years with the Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC), CEO Lee Malleau is announcing her departure from the City’s economic development agency.

Ms. Malleau’s tenure with the VEC will end in late January when she begins her new role with the executive team at Calgary Economic Development.

“I want to thank Lee for her service to Vancouver, I have very much appreciated working with her and look forward to her future success,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson, who chairs the VEC. “She helped lead our city’s economic development agency through some tough economic times with great results.”

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The little house, the little apartment — they’re all I’m hearing about these days.

Laneway houses continue to be popular. At last count, there were 600 that had been processed at city hall. Micro-suites have come to Surrey. Coquitlam is letting people build multiple-units on single-family lots.

Some of this is welcomed, I think. We’ve come to realize we don’t all need to maintain personal park spaces next to our houses.

But I do hear people worrying about how much little stuff is being built. Because little usually means that the housing is restricted to a single, a couple or at most a couple with a dog or youngster. And having such narrowcast communities is a worry. (Of course, suburbs and downtowns used to be, by definition, narrowcast. All families here. All singles, young and old, there. But that’s been changing slowly.)

That’s how I got onto this story about the shrinking condos and houses — councillors from Coquitlam worrying aloud about the impact of, for instance, the Fraser Mills development asking for an extra 1,000 units in the same four million square feet they’d already been allowed.

My Globe story here and below.

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Okay, I’m back. Every piece of shortbread in our house got eaten, the pine needles have mostly been vacuumed up, the presents all exchanged. It’s time to get back to work. (Burp. Yawn.)

I’ve still got too much Christmas brain to come up with some brilliant list of Trends I Foresee for 2013, but here’s my beginning thought for the year.

Can everyone stop being so shriekingly pissed off all the time?

How about, as we’re biking, driving, walking on the public streets and open spaces, if we do NOT assume that the person we encounter — who has advanced into the crosswalk mistakenly or jostled us as they go past or who has moved ahead of us in the line-up — is some kind of malevolent moron who won’t get the point unless we yell at him/her.

It’s a busy city. We’re all a little bit distracted at certain moments. I don’t know anyone who is totally on at all moments.

So maybe that driver who let the car start advancing really just didn’t see you because s/he was looking in the other seven directions, trying to watch out for everyone there. Maybe the pedestrian who stepped into the crosswalk even though you had the right-turn signal was just careless or distracted or emotionally distraught. Maybe the cyclist isn’t actually aiming to destroy city life as you know it, but is just trying get from Point A to Point B without a car or bus, which isn’t the worst thing to do on the planet.

Same goes for movie line-ups, customer-service calls (tho of course I do always reserve everyone’s right to yell at a cellphone provider who has not given a satisfactory explanation for why YOU are responsible for your cell signal accidentally bouncing off an American tower near the border, even though you were on the Canadian side), blog posts, radio phone-in comments, public-hearing tirades about evil developers, muttered behind-the-scenes tirades about residents who are just against everything, and all the rest of it.

This goes doubly true for all political people (politicians and attendant media, spinmeisters, party stalwarts, etc.). How about if you stop slagging the other side, just because they are the other side. I’m so tired of listening to partisan commentators trash Politician A for doing something (because s/he is from the other party), when if their own Politician B were doing it, they’d be defending that brilliant decision all the way.

We actually live in one of the more privileged places on earth. Could we maybe appreciate a little bit how lucky we are? Could we possibly discuss our stupid little first-world problems like adults, instead of angry five-year-olds?

I realize, of course, that I have broken my own rule and am sounding shriekingly pissed off here. So, deep breath, how about it everyone? Just a little bit less nasty, a little bit less inclined to start yelling at the driver/pedestrian/cyclist, a little bit more willing to understand the other?

I’ll go first.

For those who don’t know, the Globe does a wonderful thing every Christmas running stories about “things that work” in the city. That allows all of us reporters to rave on about things that we love in the city. (Rod Mickleburgh did the library, Mark Hume did Kits Pool.)

I love the archives. (As a self-confessed hoarder, how could I not love a place that is dedicated to storing paper.)

But, besides the fact that the Vancouver Archives is a lovely, tranquil little building with a gorgeous view, besides the fact that you could live for days there just looking at the great old photos, city directories and more, besides the fact that staff gave me a special tour where I got to look at and HOLD the book of the first council minutes of the first Vancouver council ever (written in longhand), the archives has really distinguished itself by making its collection so accessible in all the new electronic forms available. Pictures, films, maps and, soon to come, council minutes are all available online.

My story on their efforts is here.

For those who want to go searching themselves, the link is here.

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