Vancouver’s Future Hinges on Chinatown
The perennial debate over density is pitting a ordability against heritage in one of the city’s oldest, most distinctive neighbourhoods.
As the perennial debate on density reaches a turning point, will affordability or heritage win out?
F third- oor o ces, Carol Lee has the perfect view into Chinatown’s storied past, as well as to the harbingers of its potential future.
Lee’s building, at 127 East Pender, is home to Linacare — a skin care company she co-founded with Dr. Henry Fung in 2003. The heritage property dates to the turn of the 20th century and has been in the Lee family since 1921, when grandfather Ron Bick Lee bought it and later opened an import-export business. In form and function, it’s similar to many of the two- or four-storey buildings on this street—the restaurants, greengrocers and general merchants who form the backbone of historic Chinatown.
“Back when I was growing up, this area was vibrant,” says Lee, surveying the trickle of foot tra c on Pender Street late on a Friday afternoon. “It was a really exciting place; it was a neighbourhood place. Idon’t just mean for Chinese people—everybody. If you grew up in Vancouver, you had some sort of recollection of coming here.” In recent decades, however, Chinatown has declined— partly due to changing economic conditions, which have driven many businesses (and shoppers) to other parts of the city, and partly due to the creeping social issues spreading from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
This being Vancouver, where some see decline, others see an opportunity to develop abandoned lots and dilapidated buildings, and inject new blood into Chinatown. In the past few years, the surrounding streets—Main, Union, East Georgia and Keefer—have received an in ux of non-traditional businesses and residents looking to capitalize on the area’s central location and relatively cheap rents.
For some Chinatown stalwarts, the change is cause for concern. That is why Lee formed the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation in 2012, which counts as board trustees Bob Lee (Carol’s developer father), Robert H.N. Ho (a renowned Chinese cultural philanthropist) and Brandt Louie (CEO of the H.Y. Louie Co. and London Drugs). Their mission: to purchase and rehabilitate many of Chinatown’s historic properties, reinvigorate its business community, and preserve and enhance the neighbourhood’s unique cultural heritage.
Lee is quite animated about the last two points.