The allure of Roar_One in Point Grey lies in invisible or intangible elements

Chantal Eustace
Sun

In the Roar homes, the kitchen appliances were not the selling tool that other new-home-project developers wield. The powerful green paint used throughout the homes was applied to warm the steel-and-concrete construction. Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

Standing atop that which they wrought, the tree-lined West Point Grey neighbourhood and towers of the West End behind them, developer Sergio Rodriguez (left) and the Roar_One architect, Oliver Lang, demonstrate why natural light and Vancouver views influenced their work at the new-home project. Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

The Roar — One homes ask their residents to weigh the attractions of light-filled, view residency against their need for, and obligations for, privacy. ‘If you want big views and big light, obviously you’re going to, to a certain extent, have less privacy,’ developer Sergio Rodriguez says. ‘If you want full privacy, there’s things you could do, like adding blinds.’ Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

ROAR_ONELocation: 4387 West 10th, Vancouver (and the site of the old Varsity Grill and Varsity Video)Project size: 10 2-storey residences, 4-storey buildingResidence size: 800 sq. ft. – 1,991 sq. ft. Developer: Sergio and (brother) Andre RodriguezArchitect: Oliver Lang, Lang Wilson Practice in Architectural Cultural (LWPAC.)

When seasoned architect Oliver Lang met ingenue developer Sergio Rod-riguez, two visionaries collided – and created an “architectural masterpiece” that could change the way Vancouver looks in the future.

Roar_One, an award-winning new-home project in Point Grey, is an extraordinary addition to the neighbourhood.

The homes don’t boast fancy fixtures or name-brand appliances. Instead, everything about the concrete, steel and glass building celebrates the absence of things.

The allure or Roar_One lies in invisible or intangible elements — space and light, material and air.

“It’s not about style. I’d call it an armature for living,” Lang says. “It’s architecture designed to facilitate the practice of everyday culture.”

Despite rain and grey skies, transient light bounces through a north-facing home (asking price, about $1.5 million).

It’s difficult to describe how the homes look since much of the viewing experience is about materials and movement — glass instead of walls morphs into sliding doors attaching rooms to patios.

“You walk through and you say ‘wow, this is just completely different,” Lang says. “Is it possible to rethink the idea of an apartment and rethink the experience?”

The use of light, reflected through all levels of the building, including an internal courtyard, particularly impressed James Boldt, a development planner at Vancouver city hall.

Boldt says in the future, he expects Roar_One will be considered one of the city’s “heritage building,” respected for influencing future buildings and a uniquely Vancouver style.

“It’s a candidate for something that people point to and say, ‘that’s something great,’ ” he says.

“[At city hall] we see a lot of different levels of design and quality . . . . When we see the architect and developer motivated to do an architectural masterpiece that is livable and affordable, we’re definitely on to make it happen,” Boldt says.

Design magazines such as Azure and Enclave have already featured the Roar homes in articles abut innovative design.

So far Roar_One has won five separate design awards, including the 2006 Lieutenant Governor’s Award of Excellence for B.C. and the 2005 Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Award for North America.

“We sold an idea,” Rodriguez while standing on the deck of a Roar penthouse, gesturing to the North Shore mountains behind him, framed by rooftops and coated with sky.

The Roar developer, 31-year-old Rodriguez, is a first-time developer. He says he hopes to build on what he learned with Roar_One in future developments. Despite initial skepticism, people are impressed once they tour the finished space, he says.

Rodriguez climbs down a skeletal staircase, then opens a wall of glass, exposing a patio area half-covered by the floor above. Most of the area is dry despite rain. He says this “interesting interfacing between the outdoor and the indoor” was intentional.

It means residents can sit outside during soggy days, enjoying more livable space and a well-ventilated home.

“It isn’t static,” agrees Lang, a Roar resident, his home on the West 10th side of the project. “Even on a rainy day, it’s quite magical.”

Photographs don’t do it justice, he says, describing it as a “house in the sky.”

“We really wanted to blur the boundaries between external and internal space,” Lang says. “If a lot of daylight pours in everywhere, it can feel quite light.”

Clever design tactics – including anodized aluminum screens on the West 10th side of the building that can be moved by residents to suit their needs – keep the space both private and climate-controlled.

Floor-to-ceiling windows inhale the outdoor, the effect boneless, lighter-than-air.

Rodriguez says the biggest challenge he faced as a new developer – working to get the unique structure built – was plain, old doubt.

“The biggest mistake I made was not fully believing in it in a way,” Rodriguez admits.

He worried it wouldn’t work out as planned, that it was taking too long and he worried it looked “cold.”

“You always have doubts. Like it’s different and it’s crazy. In different points in construction it looked really cold,” Rodriguez says.

To counterbalance the grey of the concrete and steel, Rodriguez and Lang decided on a vibrant lime green paint in the courtyard. The same coulour highlights some walls inside the units.

“We thought the green . . . it’s a peaceful colour that goes with the landscape but it adds a bit of warmth to it,” says Rodriguez.

Construction took 24 months – longer than he expected, says Rodriguez, who rented an apartment across the street so he could be on-site easily.

“There’s a lot of just – like – waiting until things are done. It’s sort of like hanging in there for the long haul.”

Even in his sleep, he says, he sometimes dreamed he was on site, working on the project.

It seems his worry was unfounded, since he says there was a “niche market” of buyers seeking an architecturally unique space like Roar. Eight of the homes were sold before construction was completed.

“To be honest, I didn’t think it would get such a good result at that stage,” he says, adding they used a computer-generated image instead of a show suite. “We were conscious of buyers also taking a risk with us.”

Looking back on how things turned out, Rodriguez says he regrets pre-selling the spaces.

“If I had thought ‘okay, I’ll just keep half of it,’ knowing ‘okay, it’s going to turn out amazing’ – I would have made real money from this,” Rodriguez says. “I barely recouped everything I put in.”

This month Rodriguez sold his Roar home. Right now he’s working his “day job” as a lawyer and keeping his eye out for another potential site.

“If I find a site to develop ‘Roar_Two’ in Vancouver – I think I’ll have to be a renter again, ” he says. “Can’t afford both a development and a home in Vancouver these days – it’s the cost of wanting to be a developer.”

Next time around things would be different he says. If he does find a good development site, he says he plans to be more “hands off” during construction.

Looking back on what he accomplished as a first-time developer, he says he’s pleased he learned a lot and broke even.

“But that’s not bad for a first project,” Rodriguez says, smiling. ” That was the object too. I thought, it’s the first project, it’s a learning experience.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Court rules Vancouver residents can’t appeal decisions of the city’s planning department

Frances Bula
Sun

Vancouver residents have lost a long-held weapon in their fights with city hall.

A surprising B.C. Supreme Court decision, which will have a dramatic effect on city procedures, has ruled that residents do not have the right to appeal to the board of variance if they object to city planning decisions about neighbouring properties.

In a judgment released late Thursday, Judge Richard Goepel wrote that only a property owner who has been denied something by the planning department can appeal.

For several decades the city’s board of variance has heard appeals from neighbouring residents of a property who feel that the planning director’s decision to allow something — a higher or bigger building; a demolition; an addition — will have an adverse impact on their property.

The appeals have been increasing in recent years, as residents look more aggressively for avenues to block unwelcome development.

As a result of the ruling, based on Goepel’s interpretation of the Vancouver Charter, the city’s board of variance staff has been instructed to refuse all third-party appeals as of Friday.

Two scheduled appeals, both by west side residents objecting to aspects of development on a neighbouring property, will no longer proceed, said board of variance clerk Louis Ng.

The ruling has shocked some and amazed even the lawyer whose case provoked it.

“I think this is the most dramatic municipal-law decision in years,” said lawyer Jonathan Baker.

Baker had been fighting a much narrower issue, a board of variance decision last year that said the owner of a lot near Commercial Drive could not tear down the 1907 houses on the property to build a new duplex. That decision came about after local residents appealed the planning department’s permission to the owner to demolish and rebuild, over their objections that the existing houses were heritage structures and that the lot should be turned into a park.

But rather than addressing Baker’s point, that the board had exceeded its jurisdiction, Goepel looked at the Vancouver Charter legislation and decided that it has been wrongly interpreted for decades.

“The legislation does not … create a general right of appeal for third parties to challenge the decision of the director of planning,” he wrote. “It contains no provision to regulate such appeals. The legislature did not give the board, a lay panel with no professional training, the power to veto developments approved by the director of planning.”

The only people who can appeal to the board are the property owners who applied for exemptions or discretionary permission from the planning department and have been turned down, he ruled.

Both Baker and the lawyer who acted for the former board of variance that made the decision — a five-member board that Vancouver council fired during the summer on the grounds that it was racking up unacceptable legal bills because of its controversial decisions allowing third-party appeals — say Goepel’s ruling is going to have a dramatic impact on city processes.

The current board chair, former councillor Marguerite Ford, agrees.

“I think there will be some repercussions,” said Ford.

“For 40 years, we’ve trained the public that they’re entitled to be heard. The city will have to develop some alternative mechanism.”

She thinks the planning department might have to develop a new process in order to give local residents a say in the case of developments that are controversial but don’t legally require a public hearing. Currently, they get a letter from the planning department about a proposed development and are invited to respond, but there is no public gathering or public process.

“Now the public will be hounding the planners directly instead of going to the board,” said Baker, who blamed the fired board for that outcome. He said that if that board hadn’t pushed the envelope so far on its decisions, the issue would never have been forced at the Supreme Court.

“This would never have happened if the previous board had shown any judgment at all,” he said.

Derek Creighton, a former city of Vancouver lawyer who is now in private practice and acting for the fired board, agreed that the planning department is going to have to create some kind of mechanism to give the public a voice.

He said he is recommending that his clients appeal to the Court of Appeal.

In the meantime, he said, the ruling is going to create a difficult situation in Vancouver because of the unique nature of its zoning practices.

In all other municipalities, the planning department can allow a certain number of limited relaxations from very fixed zoning guidelines.

But Vancouver has all kinds of discretionary zoning categories, in which the planning department essentially has the right to negotiate broadly with a property owner or developer over giving extra height or density in exchange for a certain kind of design, retention of a heritage building,or something else a planner thinks will benefit the city.

“But that results in unelected individuals making up zoning as they go along, without a public hearing. The flaw in all of this is that all zoning that impacts people’s interests needs a hearing.””

As it stands now, said Creighton, only very wealthy people who choose to go to court will have an outlet for objecting to planning department decisions on smaller projects that aren’t subject to the requirements for a public hearing.

Ford said council could ask the provincial government to amend its charter to clarify that it does allow third-party appeals, but she is not sure council is interested in doing that because of the small number of cases involved.

For Kitsilano resident Don Pickering, who was set to have his appeal heard in October, the ruling is frustrating.

He said he didn’t want to appeal to the board, but the letter he got from the planning department essentially told him that if he didn’t like what his neighbour was going to build, that’s what he should do.

Pickering is trying to persuade his neighbour and the planning department that the neighbour’s proposed new house, a three-storey residence in the 3400 block of West Second Avenue that will replace a smaller structure, should be moved forward on the lot two metres so it doesn’t throw so much shadow onto his smaller house and back yard.

“The whole process shocked me because nobody seemed to care that we were going to be affected,” said Pickering, for whom the whole process, which he says has included the developer phoning him up and yelling at him, has been stressful.

“The city is going to have to let people like me have a say.”

BOARD OF VARIANCE

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Total appeals heard 299 334 348 346 342

Third-party appeals 24 35 57 28 31

% of appeals allowed 39 49 46 51 66

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Malcolm Parry
Sun

Steph Nicolls (left) is managing director of Rob Macdonald’s St. Regis hotel, which will be renovated to match his Gotham and Hudson properties

Rob MacDonald has big plans for the rather faded St. Regis hotel, which abuts the $110-million Hudson project he developed with Wall Financial principals Peter and Bruno Wall at Granville and Dunsmuir Street.

He’s installed frequent former public-relations and marketing consultant Steph Nicolls as managing director of the 90-year-old, 72-room hotel. And, starting early next year, he and designer Elaine Thorsell will begin a $3-to$4-million refurbishment — “or basically whatever it takes to make it one of Vancouver’s nicest boutique hotels,” Macdonald says.

That’s considerably less than the $11 million then-owner Peter Eng spent on the Hotel Georgia before Macdonald and the Walls reportedly bid $65 million for it. That unconsummated deal would have entailed the adjacent parking garage becoming the small-footprint site for a contentiously high tower that, though proposed, was not realized under Eng’s ownership.

The St. Regis, though, will have links to some top-drawer neighbours. There’ll be direct lobby access to the Gotham steakhouse that Keg-chain boss David Aisenstat operates on Macdonald’s adjacent Seymour Street property. And across the alley from the Hudson project — which is scheduled to open in March — there’ll be Aisenstat’s top-ticket Shore Club. Now nearing completion, that seafood restaurant will cost $7.2 million — more than twice the like-sized Gotham’s $3.1 million in 1999.

Even a neighbouring 24 Hour Fitness centre will cost the New York-based Forstmann Little concern $4.7 million.

As for saving money, Macdonald says construction costs locked in at $110 million in early 2003, would be $180 million today.

That makes a quid-pro-quo expense of $15 million sound like a bargain. Getting rights for the 423-unit Hudson tower saw the developers spend $20 million on a “universal access” SkyTrain station for which TransLink paid $5 million. Mayor Sam Sullivan will officially open that facility Friday.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

It’s money, of course, but the CREA is fighting a losing battle in trying to restrict access to its listing service

Tsur Somerville
Sun

The Canadian Real Estate Association wants to prevent discount real estate brokers from using its website, claiming the current situation hurts consumers.

Who suffers under the status quo? Is it the public, or the full-service realtors whom CREA represents?

From an economist’s perspective, less competition is bad. In the short run, the proposed changes would certainly reduce competition and restrict the availability of low-priced, reduced-service real estate agents to consumers.

The changes would provide more protection for existing CREA members and maintain the current fee structure.

In the long run, however, little the CREA does is likely to slow the growth in alternatives to the traditional realtor business model.

In Canada, the CREA and its local boards dominate the provision of information about homes for sale through their trademark Multiple Listing Service and Web databases such MLS.ca and RealtyLink.

More than 85 per cent of Canadian home sales occur through the MLS. Only member agents, however, are allowed to list homes for sale on these websites.

While commissions are not fixed, they amount to nearly $30,000 for a benchmark house in the Greater Vancouver area. This fee is typically split between the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent.

Discount online real estate agent services such as Erealty.ca in British Columbia and Realtysellers in Ontario are a challenge to the traditional real estate broker industry and its fee structure.

These businesses offer dramatically lower fees to sellers in exchange for providing a reduced set of broker services, mainly done online.

They use the Internet to replace some of the activities traditionally done by an agent. Critical to their success is their ability to list properties on, and have access to, the MLS.

The CREA is proposing a set of restrictions that would prevent certain types of reduced-service agents from listing on the MLS. By barring access to the MLS, and in the absence of other large Web-based data bases of properties, these proposed changes would remove some reduced-service and lower-fee agents from the market.

If a reduced-service, online agency cannot list your house on the single site where the vast majority of consumers search for housing, why would you sign with it, even for a lower rate? This is why the Competition Bureau has raised concerns that these changes may be an “anti-competitive act,” or unduly lessen competition.

If enacted, the changes mean those consumers willing to accept fewer services in exchange for a lower fee will have fewer options, and be forced to pay more than they would like to. Even those of us wanting to use a higher-priced, full-service agent will be hurt because of reduced competition.

The problem for the CREA is that, in the long run, its proposed restrictions on access to MLS are unlikely to make much of a difference.

The Internet is driving a revolution in the way people acquire products. It gives consumers unprecedented access to information about goods and services and brings buyers and sellers together at a much lower cost.

The Web excels at connecting buyers and sellers or disseminating information at very low cost. Agents who provide reduced service at full-service prices, doing nothing more than linking buyers and sellers and showing them their download of MLS listings, are the ones who have the most to fear from Web-based real estate agents.

Ironically, the true full-service brokers whom the changes are intended to protect are the ones least in need of any protection. These agents provide advice, guidance, insight, understanding, and hand-holding that computers cannot match.

Buying or selling a home is a major financial decision that most people do only a few times during their lives. Many consumers will continue to prefer a full-service agent. These agents are not threatened by the reduced-service agents because they provide what is largely a completely different service.

If the CREA wants to protect consumers from inaccurate information and protect the MLS, there are ways to do so without restricting competition and reducing consumer choice.

More information about the listing agents, their experience, records, consumer satisfaction and the services they will provide would be a start.

This would go a long way towards protecting homebuyers from being mislead by those agents who pretend to offer full service, at either a discount price or at full price.

Tsur Somerville is director of the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Matt Krantz
USA Today

Home builders broke ground on 6% fewer homes in August to a more than three-year-low, the government reported Tuesday, stunning forecasters at how rapidly the housing boom has gone bust.

The slowdown, which curtailed the number of homes entering construction to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.665 million, has come on faster than many experts expected. The consensus was for starts to fall just 1% to about 1.75 million.

“Anyone watching the market knew this was going to come,” says David Rosenberg, economist at Merrill Lynch. But, he says, it was the magnitude of the downturn that was surprising.

Wall Street apparently also was caught off guard at how quickly home building has cooled. Home-building stocks, already devastated this year, got whacked again. KB Home fell 89 cents to $45.27, Toll Bros. fell 74 cents to $27.42 and Pulte Homes fell 46 cents to $31.61. A basket of eight leading home builders has lost nearly 31%, on average, in 2006, while the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up nearly 6%.

The question is why the slowdown has been much sharper than expected, and possible reasons include:

• Falling prices. Forecasts were too high because they didn’t account for the fact that prices are falling so rapidly in some markets that buyers are walking away from homes they’ve agreed to buy, says Maury Harris, U.S. economist for UBS Securities. That’s a staggering fact, because buyers often forfeit 5% deposits when walking away. Harris says buyers are able to find similar homes in similar neighborhoods, in some cases, for 15% less than the ones they’d agreed to buy. “You’re still 10% ahead,” he says.

• Builders’ early denial. Despite signs demand was peaking in June of 2005, builders trusted their strong backlog of orders and didn’t even imagine orders could be canceled, says Rosenberg. Home production wasn’t cut in a meaningful way until February, he says, causing them to do it viciously now. “It’s a classic case of the supply response being too late,” he says.

• Builders’ delayed reaction. Initially, home builders thought they could dampen the downturn by throwing in fancy countertops or providing discounts, says Brian Bethune, economist at Global Insight. Now, they’re “grabbing the bull by the horns and adjusting the rate of production,” he says.

Experts differ on how bad the housing downturn will get before it heals. The fact that housing starts are being slashed so much will shorten the recovery period, Bethune says. “Short-term pain may avoid a more significant adjustment down the road,” he says.

But others see this latest disappointment as just the beginning. Rosenberg characterizes the ongoing home-building “recession” as only about halfway done. “We’re not even past the fourth or fifth innings,” he says.

For starters, scrap the transfer tax

Don Cayo
Sun

The news about the Lower Mainland’s housing affordability seems to get only worse.

The latest, an RBC Economics report released Tuesday, reveals that a bungalow or townhouse is less affordable for most British Columbians than ever before, and a condo or a two-storey is almost as far out of reach as in 1990, so far the worst time to buy.

What can be done?

For starters, why don’t all three levels of government stop wringing their hands — and also stop wringing an unconscionable amount of money out of hard-pressed homebuyers?

Here in B.C. we hear frequent calls to scrap or ease the burden of the two-per-cent property transfer tax on every home sold, or to improve the GST exemption which, if more fairly applied, would cut the cost of most new homes by about 21/2 per cent.

Although there’s no doubt every little bit helps, two or 21/2 per cent doesn’t sound like much in a market where prices soar in double-digit percentages most years. So the people making these calls never really build up a full head of steam, and the issue dies.

But if you think paring away at taxes of just two or 21/2 per cent would make only a small dent in a big problem, then how about 25 per cent? That’s how much Peter Simpson, CEO of Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, reckons that taxes, levies, fees, etc. add to the price of every new house in the region. This includes things like the provincial sales tax on building materials, the ever-increasing municipal development charges (up to $20,000 per home in some suburbs), and myriad other fees and levies, mostly small in themselves but huge in total.

These costs not only serve to keep thousands of potential buyers out of the new-home market, they also help drive resale prices to levels that are out of reach for so many.

Part of the problem stems from distortions that occur as prices rise. The GST exemption, for example, applies to homes valued at less than $350,000 — a boon to average homebuyers in most parts of the country, but almost useless in this region where barely over two per cent of new homes qualify for the full rebate.

Similarly, ordinary homebuyers got a break in 1987 when the property transfer tax was introduced. The rate was one per cent of the first $200,000 of value at a time when the average house price was $111,000 — so only high-end properties got hit with the full tax of two per cent.

Today, virtually every purchaser gets dinged with two per cent. And the province has raked in about $6 billion over the years.

At least three things need fixing:

n Ottawa’s GST exemptions should reflect real-world prices. A sliding scale should replace the single cutoff of $350,000 that gives a break to only a handful of Lower Mainland homes, yet to virtually every home built in low-cost parts of the country. Simply exempting the cost of land, which is proportionately sky high in hot real estate markets, would help level the field. Even better would be to peg the exemption level to the average price of homes in each region.

n The province should recognize that its property transfer tax can’t be made fair by tinkering, and it should be scrapped. It penalizes anyone who moves — ambitious workers who go where the best opportunities are, prudent young buyers who start with something very small to build equity, young families who trade up, empty nesters who downsize. And it aggravates an already difficult situation for British Columbians struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

Municipalities should take a sharp pencil to their tax and fee structures, and pay close attention to the costs of regulations they impose as well. This isn’t to argue that they shouldn’t recover costs or protect public interest, but rather that they resist the temptation to overdo it. It’s their own future citizens, not impersonal building firms, that’ll be hurt by high costs they impose on home-building.

I think the three levels of government could, if they were being efficient and fair, pare five, six or even seven percentage points off their excessive take from new home sales. With the average price of a stand-alone house well over $500,000 in this region (and much higher in many neighbourhoods) that would provide a break in the ballpark of a year’s take-home pay for a great many workers who’d like to, but can’t afford to, buy homes.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006