subscribe to our RSS feedGeorgia Straight: Vancouver’s bright lights challenge the status quo
September 18th, 2008
Vancouver’s bright lights challenge the status quo
Georgia Straight
by Charlie Smith
Published: September 18, 2008
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Gastown was on the decline, with an excessively high vacancy rate in its empty, old buildings. The area’s historic nature was protected in provincial legislation, but property owners couldn’t breathe life into the neighbourhood because of a financial straitjacket imposed by the cost of rehabilitating properties to meet modern building codes.
The situation changed in 2002 when the NPA–controlled council of the day granted Gastown heritage-building owners “residual density” of 5.5 FSR (a floor-space ratio of 5.5 square feet of building for every one square foot of property). Residual density is granted to owners of smaller buildings so they will have more air rights to sell to other developers to help cover the rehabilitation costs.
In 2003, the COPE–controlled Vancouver city council approved other incentives to encourage heritage conservation in Gastown, Chinatown, Victory Square, and the Hastings Street corridor. The heritage-façade rehabilitation program provided grants for up to 50 percent of the cost of restoring the front of a building.
That has resulted in a flurry of activity, turning Gastown into one of the most vibrant areas of Vancouver. Robert Fung, the 42-year-old president of the Salient Group, has been at the forefront. The former Concord Pacific executive rehabilitated the 97-year-old Taylor Building at 310 Water Street, winning awards from the City of Vancouver and the Urban Development Institute. Then Fung’s team added two storeys to an existing nine-storey heritage building on Beatty Street called the Bowman Block. Recently, Fung led a tour of the Flack Block, a recently completed heritage project at the corner of Cambie and Hastings streets. The Salient Group also plans to rehabilitate a heritage building in New Westminster called the Trapp Block.
“It’s a big building, 50,000 square feet, right on Columbia Street that has been vacant for 35 or 40 years,” Fung said in an interview in his Gastown office. “It’s because the building is in terrible shape. Nobody could lease it up.”
Fung, the son of well-known Toronto financier Robert Fung, also described his company’s biggest project to date: the restoration and redevelopment of the Terminus, Garage, and Alhambra buildings in Gastown in three phases. There’s already a bunch of construction work under way near the statue of Gassy Jack at the corner of Water and Carrall streets. By the end of the third phase, it will include live-work strata units, offices, and retail space.
“We tried to put together a mix that we feel pretty strongly helps reinvigorate the local economy and the local area while also maintaining the heritage context and bringing in some really high-styled design for the modern components,” Fung said.
The city has imposed a moratorium on the creation of new transferable density from Gastown until it can determine if there’s a surplus, which will lower its value in the market. Fung said that without this program, his company wouldn’t have been able to complete its recent projects.
With all of his business activity, Fung still sets aside plenty of time for community service. He has chaired the Dragon Boat Festival and volunteered with Science World, the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, and a multicultural think tank called the Laurier Institute. He is also on the boards of UBC and Covenant House, which provides shelter for street kids and helps them become self-sufficient. When asked why he takes on these tasks, Fung replied that one of his influences was financier and local philanthropist Milton Wong.
Fung also has three girls between the ages of three and six, which means he doesn’t have a lot of free time. “But my schedule pales in comparison to my wife’s,” he quipped.