Chinatown cool on Georgia St.
Old and new elements merge in the 200 block to create a delightful street in the historic neighbourhood
Without any fanfare, the 200-block of East Georgia may have turned into Vancouver’s most interesting street. It’s a mix of traditional Chinatown retailers and modern bars and restaurants — the street where the Fresh Egg Mart meets Fat Mao.
Chinese Vancouverites come from across the Lower Mainland to shop at classic Chinatown businesses like Carley B.B.Q. and Hot Pot Supplies, Gar Lock Seafood and Tin Lee Supermarket. Many are so old-school, the people working there don’t use English.
A new wave of hipsters can be found at the London Hotel pub, Mamie Taylor’s restaurant and the Ramen Butcher, which had instant lineups when it opened last year.
The old-meets-new theme continues in the architecture, which includes several handsome old brick buildings and one of the city’s most striking new condos, the nine-storey Flats on Georgia.
The block has grit, it has character, and it has street life.
And it all just kind of happened, without any grand plan.
“You’ve got everything that new urbanists strive for,” said heritage expert John Atkin. “You have your interesting and quirky restaurants; you have existing kind-of-cool Chinese vegetable retailers; you’ve got your tea shop; you’ve got art galleries; you’ve got your dentist’s (office).
“It is a street that people strive to create, and it has managed to evolve into that (on its own).”
How much longer it will retain its unique blend is a matter for debate. The city has rezoned the street for structures that could go up to 120 feet, which may spell doom for the one- and twostorey buildings currently there. But for now, it’s happening. “It’s almost like a little microcosm of the city,” said Sirish Rao, artistic director of Indian Summer Festival.
“It’s dense with all my favourite places. There’s Phnom Penh (Cambodian restaurant), Fat Mao (noodle house), Access Gallery, Centre A (art gallery), some wonderful fruit and vegetable markets.”
“There’s lots going on here,” said Olivia Cheung of the Treasure Green Tea Company, which has been on the block since 1981. “It’s vibrant from the morning all the way to midnight. We have a pub and a restaurant right in the middle.”
That restaurant is Mamie Taylor’s, which took over a space formerly occupied by the Keefer Bakery.
Co-owner Simon Kaulback said he decided to open in Chinatown three years ago because it was close to downtown and offered a chance to get a big space with lots of character.
“We were a couple of foolish white guys opening a restaurant in Chinatown — a lot of people thought we were kind of crazy,” he said. “(But) we absolutely love the neighbourhood. We love the uniqueness of it, we love the sense of community that we’ve been welcomed into.
“When we were reaching the end of our construction, the owners from Phnom Penh came over and said, ‘Hey, come with us.’ (The owner) took us around the neighbourhood and introduced us to the owners of Gar Lok Seafood, to the owners of Carley B.B.Q, to the owners of Tin Lee Supermarket, and said, ‘These are good guys, they’re opening up, let’s do business with them.’ “And ever since then, every single chicken we’ve sold in the restaurant has come from next door at Carley B.B.Q. A lot of our seafood comes from across the street, and a lot of our produce comes from across the street.”
Carley B.B.Q.’s manager Ken Su welcomes the new businesses.
“Change is better,” said Su. “Lots of different people are coming (to the block).”
That said, most of his customers last week were older Chinese, not young hipsters.
“They come from Coquitlam, Surrey, Richmond,” said Su. “We know the customers for a long time.”
The 200-block East Georgia is a one-block wonder: Georgia ends at Main to the west and at Gore to the east. This is because the entrance to the first Georgia Viaduct used to be at Main and Georgia, and the Maclean Park social housing project was built on the 300-block East Georgia in the 1960s.
It was originally called Harris Street, becoming East Georgia in 1911. Houses started popping up on the street in the late 1880s (you can still see the top of one peeking above the storefront of Kwong Hing Herbal Products at 275 East Georgia).
The modest house may have been built in 1889, but isn’t on the city’s heritage register. Neither is the teal green art deco building that used to house Ho Sun Hing Printers at 259 East Georgia, which may date to 1909.
The 200-block is in Chinatown, which was designated a provincial heritage district in 1971 and a federal National Historic District in 2011.
But the protected part of Chinatown is limited to Pender Street, which leaves many old buildings on Georgia ripe for redevelopment.
An 1892 house at 245 East Georgia was recently torn down for a nine-storey, 40-unit condo building.
Atkin said most of the street’s small buildings may meet a similar fate.
“We’ll probably lose those, just because they’re underbuilt,” he said. “Once the code guys were finished with you (during a restoration) you’d have nothing left (of the original building) anyway.
“But I think it’s the rhythm of the street that’s most important.”
The rhythm of the street comes from its 25-foot-wide lots, which make for a jumble of storefronts. Atkin said it is tricky to build a tower on such a small footprint, which may slow development.
The one condo that has been completed is the Flats on Georgia, which went up on a parking lot at 219 East Georgia. It’s tall and thin, and features yellow shutters on the front that evoke historic Chinatown, without being cheesy.
“One of the things I like about that is that it is very much a Chinatown building, in that it references all of the ideas around what you might think of as Asian architecture, but doesn’t fall back on a cliché,” said Atkin.
“So you’ve got the shutters that you would find on shop houses in Southeast Asia, rendered in a way that makes them very, very modern.”
Even if a bunch of condos go up, the 200-block will have a mix of housing. The Lore Krill Housing Co-op takes up about half the north side of the street, and the city protects SRO spaces at Georgia’s London and Argo Hotels.
There are more low- cost rooms above the Yee Fung Toy Society at 226 East Georgia. Walking into the society’s storefront is like walking into Chinatown in the 1960s — the decor is vintage, and so are the society members.
“People just pass time in here, play mah-jong,” said the society’s Wayne Yee, a “70-something” who was born in China and lived in Hong Kong and Saskatchewan before coming to Vancouver in 1964.
Societies like this have long formed the backbone of Chinatown.
“Before Chinese people came (to Canada), they didn’t speak English,” explained Yee. “There were a lot of things they didn’t understand, so they joined together and discussed it, and asked for information from each other.” But times have changed. “I would say that (the old) Chinatown is changing, it’s almost finished,” said Yee. “But some new blood is coming in. How the future is going to look, I don’t know. ... The generation is changing, the younger people don’t have interest in (societies like) this anymore.
“They have their own families to take care of. They have a different type of lifestyle.”
The changes don’t always sit well with fans of old Chinatown like Michael Chow, who has been going there for four decades.
“Once they change things, we won’t have any more Chinatown,” he said.
“There is room to improve it. But one day there may be no more Chinese- owned shops around here, or very few.”
It’s almost like a little microcosm of the city. It’s dense with all my favourite places.
SIRISH RAO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, INDIAN SUMMER FESTIVAL
Chow was interviewed at the Treasure Green Tea Company, a specialty shop which offers “premium” traditional Chinese teas.
Treasure Green’s Olivia Cheung said Chinatown is retaining its Chinese character “at the moment.”
But she would like to see more Chinese restaurants opening in the area.
“Right now, it’s more fusion (restaurants), which is very good for people to get into,” she said. “But we’d like to see authentic Chinese restaurants open in Chinatown.”
The City of Vancouver has come under fire for some nearby developments on Main that are spread over several lots, and don’t reflect Chinatown’s architectural character.
So the city may make some small changes to Georgia’s zoning, such as limiting new developments to 25 or 50 feet in width.
“We have heard from the community that they are concerned with losing Chinatown character if this pace of redevelopment continues,” said Kevin McNaney, Vancouver’s assistant director of planning.
“We are looking into making some tweaks to the zoning and rezoning policy to better address that concern.”
Atkin said the city has to tread carefully.
“A street like Georgia has kind of always worked, because it has been off the grid,” he said.
“It hasn’t been improved, it’s never had its sidewalks done over.
“It’s attracting people because of the type of street it is. And you can just see the city waking up one morning going, ‘ Oh my goodness, that street’s popular, we should do something.’ And they’ll come up with their sidewalk treatments and suddenly it becomes a parody of itself.
“They should just really stay away from it.
“We have so few spots in the city that are a little rough around the edges. East Georgia is just a nice, ‘rough around the edges’ street.”