The Salient Group

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Nov. 26, 2010

When did Gastown get so busy? I went for lunch recently – well, twice – and the streets were buzzing with activity. Although Gastown has long been the most vibrant spot for new restaurants in Vancouver, it’s now filling out in all sorts of spaces. Here are two new lunch spots that are helping to make it feel like a real neighbourhood.

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Globe & Mail
Globe Real Estate

Turning their backs on snazzy project names with instant cachet, housing developers have found value in connecting to local history

Read the full Article: Builders fin their roots

Globe & Mail
Multiculturalism -
CANADA: OUR TIME TO LEAD EIGHT DISCUSSIONS WE NEED TO HAVE

Robert Fung, founder and president of the Salient Group, is one of Vancouver’s most influential businessmen, as well as a philanthropist. His company focuses on the reuse of heritage buildings, and on restoring and creating vibrant communities in the city.

Read the full article: CANADA: OUR TIME TO LEAD

Globe and Mail – Housing plan flourishes as market slumps
Group seizes chance to ease homelessness in New Westminster with space left over from commercial reno jobs that were put on hold

The economic downturn has resulted in a short-term shot in the arm for affordable housing in New Westminster.

With development plans for a trio of heritage buildings sidelined as a result of a deep chill in commercial real-estate financing, developer Robert Fung has turned over one of the buildings for use as social housing.

The building, which was vacant when Mr. Fung’s Salient Group acquired it in 2005, is to be managed by the non-profit Atira Women’s Resource Society and will provide 23 units for women and children who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

Provincial agency B.C. Housing has provided some financial assistance to renovate the building.

Salient has committed to the arrangement for at least two years. The neighbouring buildings have interim tenants.

“Philosophically we don’t like vacant space, because it has such a negative impact on the street,” said Mr. Fung, whose company has tackled several high-profile renovations of heritage buildings in Gastown and who sits on the board of Vancouver’s Streettohome Foundation.

Continue reading “Trapp Block: Housing plan flourishes as market slumps” »

Robert Fung has turned some of Vancouver’s worst eyesores into high-end housing. But the financing model he used to cover the added expense of saving the city’s grand old buildings has run into a brutal new reality.

Globe and Mail – Heritage projects suffer collateral damage in downturn

Kerry Gold
Special to The Globe and Mail
Friday, May. 15, 2009

Developer Robert Fung stands on Water Street in Vancouver’s Gastown, surveying a row of heritage buildings that comprise one of the city’s most beautiful streetscapes.

They represent some of the city’s oldest buildings, and each of them had been long neglected until Mr. Fung came along and restored them as work, retail and condo spaces.

“He’s the poster child of heritage,” says Heritage Vancouver president Don Luxton.

But with the downturn in British Columbia’s property markets, Mr. Fung now sees himself tied to a complex financing model that no longer works.

The Alhambra building, circa 1887, anchors Water Street, the most historic block in the city. It is part of Mr. Fung’s $60-million, three-phase, five-building project that involves “a high level of heritage restoration.” The condo building Terminus, once on Heritage Vancouver’s Top Ten Endangered Sites list, is the first phase. The heritage building, with its sleek, uniquely modern interior, is finished and mostly occupied. The Garage condos next door, once the location for the city’s first jailhouse, will be complete by November.

Continue reading “Globe and Mail – Heritage projects suffer collateral damage in downturn” »

Robert Fung stands in front of the newly restored archway at The Flack Block building on Hastings Street.

Globe and Mail: Paying the price for heritage
Vancouver’s wildly successful restoration program raises questions about trade in ‘density bonuses’

by Robert Matas
Globe and Mail
July 3, 2008

VANCOUVER — Robert Fung is the most active player in Vancouver’s hugely successful heritage restoration program, undertaking six of 25 buildings that have been saved in the past five years. He spearheaded multimillion-dollar projects on the promise of incentives from city hall intended to help pay extra costs associated with preserving the city’s history.

But Mr. Fung now suspects the city may have a memory problem, forgetting its commitments to those who took risks on heritage restoration.

A proposal to modify the program to help other neighbourhoods would be a betrayal to those who invested in the projects, he said in an interview.

“We negotiated in good faith years ago,” Mr. Fung said. Any move by the city to alter the nature of the program “is really reneging on a good-faith arrangement.”

The heritage building rehabilitation program, introduced in 2003, has sparked unprecedented private investment of more than $400-million in heritage preservation in Vancouver’s historic Gastown, Chinatown and more recently in the Downtown Eastside. Continue reading “Globe and Mail: Paying the price for heritage” »