The Salient Group

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” »

New housing helps homeless women
Theresa McManus
The Record
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Women and children who are at risk of homelessness will soon have a new home in New Westminster.

The Salient Group, which owns the historic Trapp Block on Columbia Street, is making space available to the Atira Women’s Resource Society. The group will provide housing to women and children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, with priority being given to women and children who are homeless in New Westminster.

“In a nutshell, we did not see that there would be a market for the new project for a little while. We thought it was a real shame to see the units in the Holbrook Block sitting vacant,” said Salient president Robert Fung. “When we bought the building, those rooms were vacant. To have them sit there further, when there is a need, didn’t seem to make any sense.”

Salient’s project would incorporate the Holbrook Block at 660 Columbia St. and the Trapp Block at 668 Columbia St. Atira will make use of 27 rooms in the Holbrook Block that were formerly used for housing.
Fung, a member of the Streetohome Foundation’s housing committee in Vancouver, mentioned the empty space to fellow committee member and Atira executive director Janice Abbott.

Continue reading “Trapp Block: New housing helps homeless women” »

“If you build it, they will come”
Developer sees Columbia as one of the great city centre streets in the Lower Mainland

Theresa McManus
The Record
Saturday, April 26, 2008

Columbia Street is on its way to reliving its glory days.

Robert Fung, president of the Salient Group, is working on plans to restore the façades of the historic Trapp Block and the Windjammer Hotel and to build a new tower behind those buildings. He believes in the “if you build it, they will come” adage.

“It’s a great street,” he said. “It has always been a great street. It’s like every great street that was the original city centre.”

Many of those streets are undergoing a resurgence, Fung said, because they have so much innate historical, cultural and social values.

“New Westminster has the greatest historical downtown in the Lower Mainland apart from Gastown,” he said. “Gastown has a condensed inventory of historical buildings. For the most part they have been maintained fairly well.”

Fung is well acquainted with the historical buildings of Gastown, having done several projects in that area. He said his approach hasn’t been to do a “plop and run” development but to contribute to the area’s economic energy.

“We are creating a critical mass and creating an energy that will influence investment,” he said. “I see potential for others. This one project has a critical mass.”

Fung said the proposed project in New Westminster is roughly the same buildable area as a three-phased project his company is doing on Water Street in Gastown.

Continue reading “The Record: Trapp Block: “If You Build It, They Will Come”” »

[Edit] – this story is no longer online at bclocalnews.com.

A view of downtown New Westminster and the Quay from the Fraser River: 17 construction projects are now underway in the core, mostly residential. LEFT: Heritage preservation is a cornerstone of New Westminster’s official community plan.

REGIONAL ROUNDUP – New Westminster has a whole new plan and a lot of fans as it continues a major makeover 

Dermot Mack
Western Investor
January 2008 

When residential development consultant Jennifer Podmore was asked recently where she saw the best real estate investment for 2008, the managing partner of MPC Intelligence didn’t hesitate.

“New Westminster,” she said, “is a fantastic market.” 

As Podmore explained, the Royal City has lower new condominium prices than Surrey, Skytrain links to Vancouver, and an aggressive downtown renewal strategy that has drawn a rush of developers. She estimates 2,000 new condominiums will be built in the city over the next two years, yet “you can still buy resale condominiums for under $200,000.” 

Podmore, who herself has purchased a home in New West, is among a growing number of fans of the first capital city of the British Columbia as it prepares for a new century. 

On December 1 the city unveiled its new official community plan, which provided meat to the bones of a redevelopment plan that civic planners and politicians have chewed on for years. 

Details remain elusive, but the city clearly has a vision to concentrate highdensity residential development, and it does give a nod to encouraging light industrial and commercial development.

Continue reading “Western Investor: Royal Ascent” »

Beside the renovated 1912 Lumberman's Building, Robert Fung says his Salient Group 'takes the life-cycle clock back to zero.'

Robert Fung should have H as a middle initial. It would stand for “heritage,” because that has characterized the Salient development firm’s president since he left Concord Pacific to found it in 2001.

His first acquisition was the now-121-year-old Alhambra on Gastown’s Maple Tree Square where Salient has its offices. When city workers resume their duties, Fung should be able to start renovating the 26,000-square-foot structure into “what will still be one of the city’s oldest but also most modern buildings.” 

Ditto the nearby 50,000-square-foot Flack Block, where $15 million, including hard costs of $12 million, will add a fifth floor and totally renovate a “substantially vacant” building that housed “a pawnshop, booze cans and grow-ops” when Fung paid $2.5 million for it in 2005. 

“It was technically an office block, but the city had a broad definition,” Fung said, smiling. 

He was standing across Richards Street from the Lumbermen’s Building, which he bought vacant for $4 million in 2005. Closer to the Central Business District and in better physical condition than most of Salient’s Gastown centred projects, the building still broadly fits Fung’s aim of “breathing new life into vacant, desolate buildings, and bringing in a new population that appreciates them.”

He means folk who’ll occupy 29 live-work condos in the 1907 Paris Block at Hastings-off-Carrall Street. Demolition began this week for an 18-unit annex where similar units will fetch $600 per square foot. Sensitive to gentrification charges from Downtown Eastside residents, he said Salient projects will “round out the community… [and] the street feels more comfortable.”

Continue reading “Vancouver Sun: Robert Fung says his Salient Group ‘takes the life-cycle clock back to zero.’” »

Panorama – You are here
Lofty Ambition

Vancouver Magazine
September 7, 2007

A spacious loft-style condo under $300,000? New Westminster is chockablock with them. This unit, found on the top floor of the former post office, was one of the first heritage building renos in the city’s downtown core, in 2002, the minimalist concrete structure was overhauled to accommodate a police station on the first two floors (forget property crime, and loud parties for that matter) and 45 apartments above. On completion, this unit sold for around $149,000 (similar spaces in downtown Vancouver went for $250,000). It looks much as it did then, with its 11ft. ceilings, contractor’s cream paint and pristine cabinetry and tile. It’s a low-maintenance starter, sure, and one block from the nearest SkyTrain station, but is a condo in New West a wise buy? Tough call. A few years back, local journalists were writing about the city’s “exciting resurgence;” every new business and condo development received column inches. Now, the optimism seems premature. This stretch of Columbia Street, once the “Miracle Mile,” still lacks decent eateries, pubs and shops – unless you’re in 

the market for a fuschia bridesmaid dress. And Price Waterhouse Coopers until recently was warning of an over-supply in the condo market. The gap between planned starts and estimated housing requirements is narrowing, mostly because of fewer planned starts, but there’s still reason to tread carefully.

502-549 Columbia St.
$299,000
Monthly Condo Fee: $214.33 House size: 798 sq. ft.
Bedrooms: 1 Bathrooms: 1

1. Antique Alley
Front Street’s antique row is a lot like Main Street’s: quality is hit and miss. The major difference is price. Here, a mid-century teak credenza can still be found for $500, and pariking in the waterfront parkade overhead Is cheap and abundant. Definitely worth a rainy-day trip.

2. 668 Columbia St.
Sign of the times: The Trapp Block – Columbla Street’s prettiest heritage building – used to house a family hardware store. Now its main floor is home to a Yaletown Sofa Co., a chainlet that specializes in condo-sized furniture, and the bullding is slated for redevelopment by Robert Fung’s Salient Group, the developer remaking Gastown.

3. Columbia Station
From here, the termlnus of the original SkyTraln line, it’s only a 20 minute ride to Waterfront Station provided you don’t have to wait for a train during peak hours.