PRESERVING CHINATOWN SHOULD BE OF LOCAL AND NATIONAL IMPORTANCE
Great cities have texture. They have buildings, places and communities that reflect their unique character and history.
Vancouver may yet become a great city. But for now, it is, as Douglas Coupland so aptly described it, a City of Glass, all shiny and new.
Except for its spectacular setting, visitors might be hardpressed to say exactly where they have landed.
There are, of course, unique places. But they are rapidly disappearing, and none is at greater risk than Chinatown, which teeters on the edge of extinction despite being designated a
National Historic Site in 2011.
It is so close to the edge that Carol Lee of the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation fears that without a concerted local, provincial and national effort, it may be lost by the end of this year.
The neighbourhood has been eroded one neon sign, one family-run business and one clan building at a time.
But at greater risk than the bricks, mortar and unique streetscapes blending Chinese and late 19th-century Canadian architectural styles is the neighbourhood’s cultural heritage.
Hipsters have heralded gentrification. Trendy restaurants, skateboard shops, coffee bars and cannabis dispensaries may be the tipping point, she said. And not in a good way.
“Relentless development threatens the physical fabric of this nationally significant urban cultural landscape,” the National Trust said last year when it put Chinatown on its list of 10 most endangered sites. “Design guidelines meant to maintain a ‘Chinatown look’ are often overlooked and building heights have been dramatically increased ... (I)ntense speculation is driving up rents and displacing longtime residents, many of them seniors, who are central to the area’s rich cultural identity.”
Chinatown began in the late 1880s, a magnet for Chinese labourers who played a significant role in the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s transcontinental line. By 1911, there were 3,559 people living and working there, despite antiAsian riots a few years earlier that eventually led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act on July 1, 1923. It replaced the head tax and restricted Chinese immigration to merchants, diplomats and students.
It wasn’t repealed until 1947, when Chinese-Canadians were given the vote. But it took until Canada’s centennial year before the rules for Chinese immigration were brought into line with that of other nationalities.
As restrictions were lifted and prejudice abated, Chinatown thrived for a few decades. But with opportunities to live and work beyond its confines, many people moved out.
Today, the neighbourhood is dotted with empty storefronts. Aging shopkeepers struggle to carry on with fewer customers and ever-increasing taxes. The most vulnerable are seniors — many of whom are frail, female, Cantonese speakers living at the poverty line.
Some will be at Tuesday’s public hearing protesting a proposal to build a 12-storey luxury condo building at Keefer Street and Columbia. The plan does include 25 units of social housing, but only eight of those will be available to those with the lowest incomes.
The building, according to the heritage consultant’s report to council, “respects the historic Chinatown context by not attempting to mimic or replicate its area neighbours. Indeed, the building’s form, scale, massing, materials and colours will help distinguish the building as a contemporary addition.”
In other words, it will stick out like a sore thumb.
Myriad things have contributed to Chinatown’s decline, including decaying, century-old buildings that are expensive to repair, the encroaching chaos and dysfunction of the Downtown Eastside, and the disinterest and even disdain some Vancouver-born Chinese have for a ghetto that their ancestors worked so hard to leave.
Who are we saving Chinatown for, a prominent member of the Chinese-Canadian community asked at a recent public forum. It wasn’t for her, she said.
Ideally, the Chinatown Foundation’s Lee says it would be for everyone. The goal isn’t to preserve or replicate every building. Rather, she says it is to restore the neighbourhood vibrancy by injecting new energy into the old forms and rebuilding a sense of community.
But that requires big gestures and big money — $42 million is what the foundation needs to raise for three redevelopment projects, and another $300 million for a property investment trust that would help heritage building owners perform essential repairs and renovations.
The projects are already beyond the imagining stage. In March, the foundation purchased the May Wah Hotel for $9.8 million from the Shon Yee Benevolent Association. It is home to 100 low-income seniors and is in desperate need of structural repairs, seismic upgrading and renovations to ensure the residents are more safely and comfortably housed.
At 58 West Hastings, the foundation has a partnership agreement with Vancouver Coastal Health to build 250 units of low-income housing and a health clinic on the empty lot that was recently the site of a tent city.
At 168 East Pender, the plan is to convert the former Bank of Montreal building into a storytelling centre with senior and student housing on the upper floors.
Vancouver’s history is so recent that some of its retelling still hurts.
But that is all the more reason this unique neighbourhood and community should be given the help it needs to survive and thrive.