Preserving Chinatown’s legacy a work in progress
Vancouver resident May Tsang checks out the roasted duck and barbecued pork being chopped with a cleaver inside Chinatown BBQ.
This is a new restaurant on East Pender in Chinatown. It evokes the Cantonese- style meat shops of the area’s past, but is also an example of how the city might, in the future, support so- called legacy businesses.
Tsang heard the owner of Chinatown BBQ hired staff — two servers, a chef and a dumpling maker — from a well- known and nearby restaurant, which operated for decades but closed after a fire destroyed its premises in 2015.
“They didn’t name it ( on the radio report), but everyone knows it was Daisy Garden,” said Tsang, who doesn’t live in Chinatown but is a frequent and longtime shopper who rattles off details about the area — which store moved two blocks east, the physical attributes of particular shopkeepers — going back several decades.
For Tsang, seeing the familiar face of former longtime Daisy Garden server Mon Yee Kuang now inside Chinatown BBQ gave it instant credibility.
“People who have been coming to these places for years have relationships. It’s really about a feeling that is from the heart. It’s an emotional attachment.”
For proprietor Carol Lee, a Harvard- educated businesswoman and daughter of Bob Lee — the Vancouver real estate magnate and former chancellor of the University of B. C. — Chinatown BBQ is part of a larger, personal effort to bring back businesses in Chinatown “where the people, whose neighbourhood it was, can feel this is their community.”
For some time, Lee has been chasing down employees from old Chinatown businesses that have closed. She has paid them salaries, while encouraging them to hone niche techniques, keep recipes and not leave the area.
Now, the City of Vancouver is looking into the potential of programs and tools used in other cities — like San Francisco — that help businesses that define neighbourhoods stay alive in an era of rising occupancy costs and intense development pressures. It has hired heritage and community experts to reach out to residents and merchants in Chinatown for thoughts on how to identify its legacy businesses.
It’s a process that could be used to assess businesses in other neighbourhoods of the city, said Amy Robinson of Loco B. C., which is leading the project.
Two years ago, San Francisco ushered in a Legacy Business Program in response to skyrocketing rents, commercial evictions and the loss of longtime businesses. It created a registry for businesses at least 30 years old and requires nominations to come from city hall. In return, these businesses receive annual grants based on its number of employees. Property owners who extend 10- year or longer leases to these businesses also get an annual grant.
“We are asking some questions, trying to understand the mechanics of it,” said Wes Regan, social planner for community economic development at the City of Vancouver. “We’re not actively developing a program, but trying to see what aspects can we use. Is there a Vancouver version?”
While Robinson has been taking stock of tools used in London and Toronto, Bill Yuen, a researcher at Heritage Vancouver, has focused on San Francisco.
Already, they see that while age is one determining factor, it may not be the only or best one. Besides, many businesses with a 30- year history in Vancouver have already gone, Robinson said.
“We don’t want to make museums out of neighbourhoods. So, if new businesses are moving in, we can move away from the idea of age being used to define heritage. Instead, we can ask if a business embodies values in a neighbourhood,” Robinson said.
Yuen said, “In Chinatown, you can look at whether or not seniors and lower- income people feel welcome. There is an element of affordability to it. If it’s too expensive, people feel ‘ it’s not my place.’ Language is also part of it.”
Affordability, a feeling of being welcome and being able to function in Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Toishan run deep in a neighbourhood with roots as a refuge of sorts for Chinese- Canadians in the city’s early history.
Yuen adds that protest and activism for rights and against discrimination, dating beyond but including the marches from Vancouver to Ottawa in the late 1970s over barbecued meat bans, are also key values.
“Expressive activity has always been a characteristic of Chinatown,” Yuen said. “It’s about developing businesses to enhance those values that make this place meaningful to people.”