The former Woodward's department store in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside isn't just a realized dream, it's a sleeping revolution. After a period of neglect Woodward's has been reborn as a deluxe apartment complex, yet as Stefania Seccia reports many residents and activists in the Downtown Eastside fear that the mixed-market housing which now comprises Woodward's is merely a further step towards displacing the neighbourhood's poor.
As a department store, it served the city and surrounding suburbs with many goods and services-memories too. Now, it's a feather in the cap of both politicians and developers who turned the site into a one-of-a-kind "intellectual property". It once served as a campground for angry, disillusioned protesters-now just shadows of a memory, as four towering buildings stand and replace them.
During a recent media tour, the City of Vancouver, provincial government, developers and architects couldn't seem to stifle their exuberance over the project that will see residents move in as early as this August. Ex-COPE councillor Jim Green gave a speech, along with a handful of other politicians, thanking everyone involved and placing his rubber stamp of approval over the execution of the project.
"I think this is going to be the catalyst and it's a very positive catalyst because it's inclusive," said Green, once considered the "Mayor of the Downtown Eastside", from the roof of a parking lot overlooking construction on the new Woodward's.
Listening to Green on that cold, grey morning was a motley crew of media as well as B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, the developers and architects of Woodward's and a group of police officers who looked like they may have been training for the SWAT team on the other side of the parkade.
Members of the media donned complimentary red hard hats, each with its own Woodward's sticker, as they ventured on the tour led by Gregory Henriquez, the architect of the site. Strewn through the interconnected buildings were piles of wooden boards, railings and plastic bags. In the midst of all the rubble, Henriquez answered questions while leading the media hive through a labyrinth of buildings until he reached a rooftop Jacuzzi with a view of the city.
"It would be fabulous if other developers built large buildings in the area as long as it included non-market housing as well," he said, speaking expertly into a recorder tucked under his chin.
While Henriquez has the support of many of the city's developers, not everyone shares his enthusiasm. Residents and activists in the Downtown Eastside have expressed concern that the mixed-market housing in Woodward's is a further step towards displacing the neighbourhood's poor.
$1.49 days
Before the old Woodward's shut its doors in 1993, it was renowned for its stunning Christmas window displays, affordable prices and the huge neon "W", floating in the sky, beckoning to its customers like a mother to its child. For 100 years, Woodward's was a mixed-retail centre-many Downtown Eastside residents fondly remember the $1.49 days and grabbing coffee and lunch in the cafeteria.
By the early nineties, however, most Woodward's locations across B.C. and Alberta were either converted to other department stores or, like in the case of the Downtown Eastside, shut down completely. The loss of Woodward's was a blow for the community, which had seen business after business shut down and move further west along Hastings Street or out to the suburbs.
In 1995, the Woodward's building was bought by Fama Holdings, which intended to develop private housing on the heritage site. Plans died, however, when residents protested the project's lack of social housing. In 2001, the provincial NDP government stepped in and bought the site, claiming they would turn it into social housing. But when the newly elected BC Liberals put that plan on ice in 2002, homeless Downtown Eastside residents and social housing activists, frustrated by the building's continued vacancy in the face of a major affordable housing crisis, squatted outside Woodward's for three months until the city forced them out.
The Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) initiated the squat, which the media quickly took notice of, followed by politicians rushing to show their support before the civic election.
APC member David Cunningham says the city, anxious to find a solution to what had soon become an electoral nightmare, scrambled to put about 60 of the 200 protesters into the Lamplighter Dominion Hotel, then 40 of the 60 were moved to Stanley New Fountain. "The others went into the black hole," he says in a phone interview.
The squat became a front-page issue during the civic election and galvanized the neighbourhood and the rest of the city around solving Vancouver's homelessness crisis.
"COPE got elected on the back of the Woodward's squatters because it was the first time homelessness was really addressed after the squatting got so much media attention-attention to the entrenched saggy, shitty tents outside of the old Woodward's where pneumonia quickly spread and the rise of the antagonizing characters in the ghetto," Cunningham says.
But it helped put enough pressure on the province to abandon its plans for private development.
When Green and the COPE council took power in 2002, the City of Vancouver purchased Woodward's from the province and the public was consulted over what to do with the site. After a two-stage competition between three developers, the idea for the new Woodward's-a project with social housing and community space existing amongst private businesses and condos-was born.
But will Woodward's act as the catalyst for developers in the Downtown Eastside as several politicians have promised? These are the same politicians who, according to The Globe and Mail, have little to show for the $1.5 billion already spent in the area since 2000-all in the name of solving homelessness.
Don't fear the reaper?
Henriquez is confident that Woodward's is the answer to temporary stop-gap shelters. With the 2010 Olympics developing blitz slowing down and the recession firmly stalling development throughout the city, Henriquez says any fear of gentrification in the Downtown Eastside is disappearing along with the dwindling number of cranes over Vancouver's skyline.
"There shouldn't be a fear over gentrification," he says. "The only reason the developers could build that kind of density is because the project was subsidized by the government. But, it was still a very difficult project to orchestrate."
A difficult project indeed-Henriquez repeatedly referred to complications surrounding finances and budgeting during the tour around the construction site.
The City of Vancouver purchased the site from the province in 2003 for just $5.5 million. Construction started in 2006, the same year 536 high-end condominiums in Woodward's sold in one day, bringing in more than $200 million in sales. The B.C. government subsidized half of the 200 non-market units and the city compensated the developers-Westbank Projects Corp/Peterson Investment Group-to the tune of millions of dollars in concessions for the heritage building restorations, some of the public amenities such as the daycare and, of course, for non-market housing. The mixed use brought in a nice variety of com-pensation, Henriquez says, and enabled such a prolific project.
However, the provincial and civic subsidies are just spare change compared to the $348.6 million the various levels of government have poured into Downtown Eastside housing since 2000.
But with all the money being spent on just 200 units of social housing and the promise that Woodward's will bring more businesses and developers to the neighbourhood, could taxpayer money have been better spent? In the end, the city and its tax-payers may not get their money's worth, although it may be too early to tell.
Just another brick in the Wall
Though Henriquez paints a rosy picture of what the new Woodward's could bring to the Downtown Eastside, not everyone is buying it. Wendy Pederson of the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) says residents are living on the street outside of hotels where they could once afford to call home.
According to a recent report released by CCAP, hotels in the Downtown Eastside are raising rent to higher rates than people on welfare can afford.
In Still Losing Hotel Rooms, CCAP reports that rents were raised to $425 or more in 694 rooms in 2008. These "soft conversions"-the loss of low-income units due to price hikes-are putting people on the streets. With only 43 per cent of hotels in the Downtown Eastside having shared information with CCAP, Pederson says the situation is only getting worse.
"Unless affordable hotel rooms are kept available to low income people, we can expect homelessness to keep increasing," the report states.
Pederson suggests that the increases in rent can be tied to the new Woodward's and its high-end condos-suggesting that the project sparked a feeding frenzy in the neighbourhood with landlords and developers. However, she also argues that rent hikes are only part of a larger, negative impact Woordward's is having on the Downtown Eastside.
"Poor-bashing will happen," says Pederson after explaining how it's not an ideal social mix. "People don't like to live in such close proximity with the poor, they don't feel comfortable."
Although Pederson was on an advisory committee for Woodward's, she says she was largely ineffective, something she attributes to the high-pressure tactics of the people in charge as well as her own inexperience.
"Either we got nothing or we had to vote for something," she says. "Or everyone else would be pissed off. We were just there to rubber-stamp it."
Pederson sees more developers moving into the area, such as Concord Pacific and its plan to build a 154-unit condominium project at 58 West Hastings that does not include any non-market housing, and is very concerned with the reality of gentrification.
"With an exclusive community centre on top of Woodward's and the jacuzzi, to me, it's social exclusion," she says.
But, her argument doesn't sway the project's architect. Henriquez has stated that there is no other site in North America that serves so many different uses while helping bridge the gap between rich and poor.
Woodward's "goes beyond its parameters"
While Henriquez doesn't think many more developers will enter the Downtown Eastside during harsh economic times and Pederson claims that they're flooding in, a Woodward's developer has a different idea.
The Westbank developers, who won the bid for the new Woodward's in 2004, are also responsible for the design of some of the most exclusive residential buildings in Vancouver, such as the Living Shangri-La and the Shaw Tower, as well as a number of other high-end sites across North America.
Dave Leung, project director of Woodward's, says the site shows other developers that it's not as difficult as everyone perceived.
Leung, who shepherded the project from its design, to its approval stage and will oversee its completion, says there are a multitude of factors considered when a developer moves into a potential location for development: there's the land itself, the land costs, soft costs, construction costs, profitability-it just depends on the market.
"If the developer can be given confidence to develop a community, it can happen," he says. "The confidence is driven by the market, regardless of whether or not it's in the Downtown Eastside."
Leung says that non-market development gets more traffic into the investment, allowing for more housing overall. To him, it just makes sense to build a site and incorporate non-market housing, as it is a means to build bigger and better.
"If you go into the surrounding areas, like Gastown, there's a whole bunch of new stores and businesses," he says. "That's what is needed for the revitalization of the Downtown Eastside-economically, socially and culturally."
As far as rent increases around the new Woodward's, Leung says that rent is rising all over the city and is reflected by the market, which no one controls.
He insists the building will be a catalyst for the neighborhood. "The project goes beyond its parameters," he says.
Sustainability or commercialization?
Some say exclusive, others say exclusion. It all depends on whether your view is from the top or from the street.
The media tour of the new Woodward's included the future site of Simon Fraser University's School for Contemporary Arts; a balcony overlooking the coming retail space; the Atrium in the Hastings Building; a non-market family housing unit in the Abbott Building; a market unit in the Cordova Building; and the 42nd floor's rooftop garden in the W building.
Woodward's is undeniably a dream come true for the politicians who were there when it was first brought to the table. As a concept, the new Woodward's tries to satisfy the palate of many by its design as a socially, environmentally and economically sustainable project. The truth is no one can agree on what sort of developers it will attract and what the bottom line will be for tomorrow's homeless.
"For the Downtown Eastside the model is great," says Leung. "You have to be careful. If there is too much non-market housing you have ghettoization. If you have too much market housing, you risk gentrification. You have to find balance."
Like any other neighbourhood, balance is all the Downtown Eastside can really ask for. Only time will answer the question looming in everyone's minds: Will Woodward's help the situation or add a much unneeded touch of chaos? Everyone remembers the Christmas windows and deals in the old Woodward's. What will this Woodward's be remembered for?
By Stefania Seccia
Reprinted from Megaphone
© Street News Service: www.street-papers.org
