SOUR NEWS FOR WHOLESALERS
Galilea Espinoza, left, and Hayley Thomas sort grapefruit at Discovery Organics, just one of many produce and fresh-food wholesalers on Malkin Drive that may have to close or relocate due to a proposal to turn the street into a major arterial.
Fresh-food wholesalers along Malkin Drive in Strathcona, unofficially known as Produce Row, are worried about their future.
Some are running businesses with roots tied to the early days of Chinatown and farms across the Lower Mainland and in the Fraser Valley. There are also owners and workers who trace family migration routes to southern China’s Sze Yup and Zhongshan counties.
Now, it’s also an area of sharply rising property values with the city planning to take down the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts and Providence Health Care to build a new St. Paul’s Hospital.
All of this has made for an ongoing and heated debate in this east Vancouver community about who gets to decide where new roadways will go.
The latest flashpoint comes with wholesalers worrying that a City of Vancouver community panel that is looking into options for an arterial won’t represent their interests and is being rushed into making decisions that could force their closure.
The wholesalers are in favour of the “Williams Street Option,” which they say would allow their delivery trucks to continue backing into their loading bays off Malkin Drive, an essential part of their operations, said Damien Bryan, general manager of Discovery Organics.
“The (loading bays) are northfacing, so we don’t have the sun beating down on the produce when we unload,” Bryan said.
The Williams Street Option would however cut across the southern edge of Strathcona Park, removing a running track, soccer field, some baseball diamonds, tennis courts and a field house.
Last week, the Strathcona Residents Association came up with another proposal they are calling the “National-Charles Option.” This would have the main arterial run one street down from Malkin, on National Avenue, and curve up to Charles Street before ending on Clark Drive.
Richard Taplin, a retired civil engineer and Strathcona resident, said the National-Charles option would avoid having an arterial cut through Strathcona Park and allow Produce Row wholesalers to keep their access off Malkin Drive.
“We are sympathetic to the Produce Row wholesalers,” Taplin said. “But the design they want is a bad design. It creates headaches for them and wrecks the park.”
Bryan said wholesalers on Produce Row haven’t considered the new National-Charles proposal. “We don’t know enough about it. However, as a group, we believe the Williams Street is the best option.”
The businesses, said Bryan, are hearing a panel might be formed ahead of the upcoming municipal election and recommendations for an arterial route could be rushed for presentation to a new slate of councillors, park board officials and mayor by December. They would like more details about the process.
Heritage expert John Atkin said Produce Row was important because it was a unique, interdependent group of businesses that gathered there informally as the firms grew too big for their Keefer and Georgia Street premises.
“Most of the firms have their roots in Chinatown and those personal relationships are still evident today on the row. It’s a cultural landscape, and that makes it important to retain,” Atkin said.
Susanna Haas Lyons, chairwoman of the Flats Arterial Community Panel, did not reply to an email from Postmedia News.