Central Business District

by Chris McBeath

If one thing could characterize downtown Vancouver, it would be its relationship to the water. Through every decade since the city’s inception the harbor has fuelled commercial activity, bearing witness to a city skyline that has evolved to a forest of glass and steel where virgin timber once soared.

Vancouver’s Central Business District, bordered by Stanley Park, the West End and Cambie Street, lies nestled between the Burrard Inlet and False Creek. Presently its centre covers a 10- block business and retailing radius from the Georgia and Granville intersection, but with over 405 hectares of downtown urban renewal under way, refurbished neighborhoods such as Yaletown, cosmopolitan Robson Street, historic Gastown and Coal Harbour are pulling the city’s hub to its perimeters.

In the 1860s and 1870s all activity focussed along bustling Burrard Inlet. Settlers staked land claims for $1 per acre. Canoes paddled up to Water Street’s floating boardwalks. Prospectors gathered supplies enroute to the Kootenays, and later to the Klondike Gold Rush. And busy sawmills, lining the waterfront, supplied lumber to ships bound for California, Australia, Asia and Europe. At one time, the mill at the foot of Dunlevy Street (called Luk’luk’i by the Salish meaning “grove of beautiful trees") provided the masts and spars for most of the world’s sailing ships.

It was the powerful Canadian Pacific Railway which charted Vancouver’s future, and by the time the city was incorporated in 1886, the railway had already secured land grants which comprised one-quarter of what is now this city, including the entire downtown peninsula. Lauchlan Hamilton, the CPR’s first land commissioner, driving his stake into the earth at Hastings and Hamilton, began laying out and naming the downtown’s streets.

Wherever tracks were laid, communities grew, businesses boomed and real estate prices spiralled upwards. Downtown lots that sold for less than $300 in March, changed hands for $1,000 in May and parcels “out in the woods” at Hornby and Georgia were listed at $620.

Even the Great Fire of 1886, reducing the township to ashes, did little to halt its growth. Rebuilding began as stumps still smouldered. Within months, signs of the disaster had all but disappeared and by New Year’s Day, 1887, there were 14 office blocks and civic buildings, 23 hotels, 51 stores, 9 saloons, a church, a livery stable, a miller and a wharf, with more construction under way as far west as Thurlow.

Five months later on May 23, 1887, Engine No. 374, CPR’s first transcontinental train, steamed into the western terminus at the foot of Howe Street. A week later the Abyssinia sailed into harbor, her cargo of oriental silks and teas destined for Europe. With CPR’s new harborfront West-East link, they reached London via New York within record-setting time and Vancouver’s role as a “trading gateway to the Pacific Rim” was secured.

While the gentry gravitated to Hastings Street west of Burrard (known then as Seaton Street), building mansions and private clubs, the city’s hard-working commercial district flourished around Gastown, Cordova and East Hastings streets, where evidence can still be seen of its once grand Victoria-era hotels, warehouses and specialty shops.

But as CPR’s influence took hold, a shift was inevitable. CPR cut Granville Street through from Burrard Inlet to False Creek, spent $200,000 to clear and pave Hastings and Pender streets, developed the ritzy West End and, by 1887, had built its imposing Hotel Vancouver on the highest point of land, 42.7 metres above sea level where Eaton’s now stands. The hotel was relocated to its present site in the thirties. In 1893, when the Hudson Bay Company left Cordova Street to set up shop opposite the hotel, on a $2,250 plot on which it still stands, it signalled an East-West retailing rivalry which was to last, in earnest, until World War I.

On June 28, 1890, Vancouver’s first streetcar rattled a rectangular route along Main, Cordova, Granville and Pender streets. Finally the busy waterfront and popular Gastown were connected to the newly emerging business area along tree-lined Granville. Slowly the heart of the city moved west, leaving an area which Statistics Canada today designates as the lowest-income postal district in Canada.

By the turn of the century, Vancouver’s population was doubling every five years, reaching 120,847 in 1911. Real estate agents multiplied from a modest 50 to a fervent 650 in less than a decade, outnumbering grocery stores three to one. Land prices rocketed. Motor cars (driven on the left side of the street until January 1, 1922) became a common sight. Around 1907, at the foot of Cambie near Smithe, Imperial Oil opened the first gas station in the Dominion of Canada.

By 1912 the central business district was fully developed, flanked by comfortable residential neighborhoods and accessed by electric streetcars carrying 100,000 passengers a day. Flamboyant, high-rolling speculators financed a freewheeling stock exchange. The post office at Granville and Hastings handled the fourth largest volume in Canada, and Vancouver’s fire department on Seymour near Robson, the first to be motorized in the country, was ranked among the world’s best, matched only by Leipzig, Germany and London, England.

The Vancouver Block Office Tower (whose clock stopped in the 1918 and 1946 earthquakes), the World Tower and Dominion Trust Building each boasted the title of tallest building in the British Empire in its time, and the stately courthouse at Georgia and Howe reflected the city’s growing stature. Vancouver’s infrastructure included 58 kilometres of streets, nearly 40 kilometres of wooden sidewalks, electric, water and sewerage systems, a number of factories, a five-storey hotel, two newspapers, two cathedrals, 12,000 telephones and a new opera house on Granville advertising seats from 25 cents. By 1927 furnished apartments at Burrard and Thurlow rented for $45-80 per week and the Rogers Building, opened in 1911, had sold for an unprecedented one million dollars.

Growth and gaiety came to an abrupt halt after the Wall Street Crash in 1929. The destitute thronged downtown streets in search of work, joined daily by hundreds of the unemployed who rode the rods west. Receiving relief payments of 20 cents a day and living in “hobo jungles” (shanty towns) beneath the four-lane Georgia Viaduct and along the False Creek flats, they soon earned Vancouver the unwelcome title of “Hobo Capital of Canada.” World War II pulled the city out of depression, but it would be nearly 20 years before the Vancouver downtown core would renew its rapid expansion.

Traffic congestion was a fundamental issue in post-war city planning. During the decade of the Roaring Twenties the number of cars catapulted from 650 to 36,500. The city’s first traffic light blinked on October 18, 1928, at the corner of Hastings and Main and an innovation called parking meters were installed in 1946, charging one nickel for one hour’s parking. A deteriorating transit system compounded the congestion problem and, in spite of a population that had doubled to 800,000 between 1946 and 1964, transit use halved.

The issue peaked in the mid-sixties, when conservationists defeated a freeway proposal that would have cut through the historic heart of the city. Pro-developers, however, succeeded in reorganizing the downtown core around massive Pacific Centre, the flagship project for a 20-year rejuvenation program for central Vancouver. It cued the $160 million Robson Square complex, the restoration of a rundown Gastown, the distinctive white-domed B.C. Place Stadium, the Sinclair Centre heritage project, the less-than-successful refit of Granville Street into a pedestrian mall which, unexpectedly, breathed new life into Robson Street (now the hottest retail strip in the city), as well as a revamped transportation system.

Expo 86, celebrating Vancouver’s centennial, spurred further development. Its legacies such as Canada Place are city landmarks, and the lingering benefits of significantly higher international visitor counts and a broadening, culturally diverse population and investment base are reshaping the downtown core for the new millennium.

Unlike many urban centres, downtown Vancouver has a vibrant residential population base. Almost 50,000 people live on its doorstep with forecasts indicating growth of an additional 80,000 within 20 years. increases of 60,000 in the city’s workforce are also anticipated, reaching 230,000 by 2006. Add to this the 500,000 people and 300,000 vehicles that already enter and leave the downtown core almost daily, plus the astounding fact that nearly 98 per cent of downtown’s rush-hour comprises passenger cars, and it becomes apparent why a walk-to-work, pedestrian-oriented philosophy is vital to maintain a healthy city core.

The Greenways Plan--linking the city’s parks and walkways with greenery--is helping to defray mounting pollution counts from vehicular traffic and, coupled with new bicycle pathways, seawall walkways and restrictive one-way systems, is a key component of much downtown development.

In the past decade Vancouver has racked up over $3 billion in construction annually. Eighteen major downtown projects are under way or recently completed, including the $160 million General Motors Place arena, the $100 million Library Square, the $24.5 million Ford Centre for the Performing Arts and the $8.6 million Pacific Space Centre. Projects such as the Bentall Group’s fifth tower on Burrard will contribute to the district’s 74,320 sq. metre annual average of new office space, while ventures such as university “satellite” campuses and sophisticated retail outlets along Hastings Street are redefining the downtown core.

Along the once industrial north shore of False Creek, the former Expo 86 site, Concord Pacific Developments, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, is undertaking the largest private redevelopment in North America. In a 15-year project estimated to cost in excess of $3 billion, 82.5 hectares are being transformed into nearly 1.2 million sq. metres of mixed office, retail and residential space for 15,000 people, including 1.7 hectares of parkland and the preservation of the historic Round House for Engine No. 374.

Along Coal Harbour and the Bayshore Lands, Marathon Developments (the name for the new company created when C.P. Limited sold Marathon Realty) holds tenure on much of downtown’s prime real estate. Marathon is lifting the CP tracks after more than a century to make way for a 20-year redevelopment of 19 hectares of land. The mixed use project includes offices, a hotel and the first residential neighborhood on Burrard Inlet. Plans call for 2,240 residences, 185,800 sq. metres of commercial and retailing space, and almost 7 hectares of parks and open space including a 3.2-hectare waterfront park.

Zoning changes are creating new high-density residential neighborhoods such as Crosstown, an artist’s colony on the fringes of Gastown, and the 8-hectare International Village nearby. And in downtown south, between the Burrard and Granville bridges, the density ratio is slated to be three times greater than the West End, giving rise to a vigorous Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA), formed to protect the interests of its many long-time, low-income residents in hotels such as the Austin, the California and the Ambassador.

Asian interests own over 20 per cent of downtown Vancouver and, financing two-thirds of its major development projects, they signal a new type of business leadership. Although resource- rich corporate giants in fishing, forestry, real estate and mining are still prominent, most economic growth is in the service-related industries: finance, insurance, retail, hi-tech and hospitality.

Tourism has ballooned over the last ten years with convention delegates, cruise ship arrivals and visitor counts climbing to unprecedented highs. In 1994 visitors topped 6.3 million, of which an estimated 148,609 convention delegates alone spent $168 million, inciting fierce competition between Greystone Properties Ltd., Concord Pacific and Marathon Developments to provide enlarged convention facilities.

For all its bustle and new construction, Vancouver’s relationship to the water continues to mark its prosperity. As salt air sweeps through downtown streets and seaviews peek through canyons of glass, Vancouver is clean, safe and ranked as one of the most livable, urban centres in the world, as if fulfilling the vision of Captain Vancouver when he wrote in his log: “It requires only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages and other buildings to render it the most lovely country that can he imagined.”

(0)

Excellent Good Average Not that good Poor