Reduce tax impact by deducting cost of improvements

Province

TORONTO — With baby boomers scouring the country looking to buy cabins and recreational properties, you may be tempted to sell that slice of summer paradise that has been in the family for 40 years.

But it’s not a slam dunk, even if you’re in a desirable part of cabin country, with strong demand and a bustling regional economy.

Before putting your property on the market, you have to decide whether to sell privately or list it with a real-estate agent.

And how do you show it when you’re hundreds of kilometres away and visit the cabin only once or twice a month?

Cashing in on rising demand and booming prices for cabins could also produce a major tax headache.

Let’s hope you kept all those bills years ago when you put in a new septic tank, remodelled the bathroom or built a new dock for the boat. You’ll need them.

Unlike your home, a cabin faces capital-gains taxes if it’s sold for a profit. Federal tax changes in recent years have reduced that amount to 50 per cent of the gain, but you’re still talking tens of thousands of dollars in potential new taxes.

Still, there are ways to minimize the tax hit, but you have to be organized.

“Selling a cottage is tricky and you’ve got to do your homework,” says Douglas Hunter, author of The Cottage Ownership Guide, a book chock full of tips for buyers and sellers of recreational properties.

“With capital gains, you almost need to be planning to sell it from the day you buy it. Over time there are any number of things that are improvements to the cottage you can use legitimately to offset the appreciation of the property.

“Considering how much property prices have increased over the years, anything you can grab on to that reduces the capital-gains impact is really important.”

A capital gain is the difference between what you get from the sale of a property and what you paid for it. Capital gains don’t apply to your principal residence — your home — but kick in for cabins, income-producing apartments or other second properties.

So, if you sell a cabin that cost $50,000 about 15 years ago for $250,000 today, you would face a $200,000 capital gain. That translates into a $100,000 increase in taxable income you would have to report on your income taxes next spring. That could mean a tax bill of more than $25,000 or more.

Even if you transfer ownership of the cabin to your son or daughter to avoid the hassles of a sale, it’s called a deemed disposition, with capital-gains-tax implications as well.

But there are deductions you can make to reduce your capital-gains exposure. You can deduct what you paid to add value to the property — everything from a new roof or extra bedroom to a new septic tank — even landscaping.

If over a decade, you spent $50,000 in

materials and professional labour to improve the cottage — and you have receipts to prove it — you can deduct those costs from your capital gain and cut the tax hit by thousands of dollars.

The problem is that you have to have receipts, cancelled cheques and bills of sale to show the Canada Revenue Agency if they carry out an audit. Work you’ve done yourself can’t be included.

“You can claim the materials you use to perform work, but you can’t claim your own time,” says Hunter.

“You can’t say you’re worth $80 an hour and put that against the capital gain.”

Recent reports from major real-estate brokerages suggest that sales of cottages and luxury recreational properties will soar this spring and summer as affluent baby boomers push up demand across the country.

Western Canada’s energy-rich economy has seen the biggest increases, with starting prices topping $500,000 in nearly a third of the markets surveyed by the Re/Max brokerage.

“Baby boomers are investing in the future — from both a lifestyle perspective and an economic standpoint,” says Elton Ash, regional director of Re/Max of Western Canada. “Tremendous equity gains have been realized in recent years as demand for recreational properties across the country swells.

“Given the aging of the population, this trend is expected to continue for at least the next five to 10 years as baby boomers move through the cycle.”

While the financial implications of capital gains is the biggest headache for cabin owners, Hunter says the practicalities of how to go about selling the property are also top of mind. While the Internet has helped get wider display of properties and help attract new buyers, it’s advisable to hire a knowledgeable real-estate agent to help price the cabin properly and show it when you are away.

— Canadian PressTORONTO — With baby boomers scouring the country looking to buy cabins and recreational properties, you may be tempted to sell that slice of summer paradise that has been in the family for 40 years.

But it’s not a slam dunk, even if you’re in a desirable part of cabin country, with strong demand and a bustling regional economy.

Before putting your property on the

market, you have to decide whether to sell privately or list it with a real-estate agent.

And how do you show it when you’re

hundreds of kilometres away and visit the cabin only once or twice a month?

Cashing in on rising demand and booming prices for cabins could also produce a major tax headache.

Let’s hope you kept all those bills years ago when you put in a new septic tank, remodelled the bathroom or built a new dock for the boat. You’ll need them.

Unlike your home, a cabin faces capital-gains taxes if it’s sold for a profit. Federal tax changes in recent years have reduced that amount to 50 per cent of the gain, but you’re still talking tens of thousands of dollars in potential new taxes.

Still, there are ways to minimize the tax hit, but you have to be organized.

“Selling a cottage is tricky and you’ve got to do your homework,” says Douglas Hunter, author of The Cottage Ownership Guide, a book chock full of tips for buyers and sellers of recreational properties.

“With capital gains, you almost need to be planning to sell it from the day you buy it. Over time there are any number of things that are improvements to the cottage you can use legitimately to offset the appreciation of the property.

“Considering how much property prices have increased over the years, anything you can grab on to that reduces the capital-gains impact is really important.”

A capital gain is the difference between what you get from the sale of a property and what you paid for it. Capital gains don’t apply to your principal residence — your home — but kick in for cabins, income-producing apartments or other second properties.

So, if you sell a cabin that cost $50,000 about 15 years ago for $250,000 today, you would face a $200,000 capital gain. That translates into a $100,000 increase in taxable income you would have to report on your income taxes next spring. That could mean a tax bill of more than $25,000 or more.

Even if you transfer ownership of the cabin to your son or daughter to avoid the hassles of a sale, it’s called a deemed disposition, with capital-gains-tax implications as well.

But there are deductions you can make to reduce your capital-gains exposure. You can deduct what you paid to add value to the property — everything from a new roof or extra bedroom to a new septic tank — even landscaping.

If over a decade, you spent $50,000 in

materials and professional labour to improve the cottage — and you have receipts to prove it — you can deduct those costs from your capital gain and cut the tax hit by thousands of dollars.

The problem is that you have to have receipts, cancelled cheques and bills of sale to show the Canada Revenue Agency if they carry out an audit. Work you’ve done yourself can’t be included.

“You can claim the materials you use to perform work, but you can’t claim your own time,” says Hunter.

“You can’t say you’re worth $80 an hour and put that against the capital gain.”

Recent reports from major real-estate brokerages suggest that sales of cottages and luxury recreational properties will soar this spring and summer as affluent baby boomers push up demand across the country.

Western Canada’s energy-rich economy has seen the biggest increases, with starting prices topping $500,000 in nearly a third of the markets surveyed by the Re/Max brokerage.

“Baby boomers are investing in the future — from both a lifestyle perspective and an economic standpoint,” says Elton Ash, regional director of Re/Max of Western Canada. “Tremendous equity gains have been realized in recent years as demand for recreational properties across the country swells.

“Given the aging of the population, this trend is expected to continue for at least the next five to 10 years as baby boomers move through the cycle.”

While the financial implications of capital gains is the biggest headache for cabin owners, Hunter says the practicalities of how to go about selling the property are also top of mind. While the Internet has helped get wider display of properties and help attract new buyers, it’s advisable to hire a knowledgeable real-estate agent to help price the cabin properly and show it when you are away.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

How Realtors’ Commission Fees Are Under Assault

Lesley Stahl
Other

Video Clip of Article

Even with today’s housing slump, real estate agents will pull in about $60 billion this year. And the reason is, as any homeowner knows, they charge a six percent commission on the price of every house they sell. So, for instance, a home that goes for a half a million dollars will net agents $30,000 right off the top.

For realtors, the six percent commission is sacrosanct. It’s remained in place, even as the price of homes has quadrupled over the past 25 years.

But as correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, things are beginning to change. What happened to travel agents, stock brokers and book sellers – the encroachment of the Internet – is beginning to affect real estate agents. And the sacred six percent is under assault from online discounters.

Lehrer Willis and his fiancée Bridgette Takeuchi of Seattle, young and Internet savvy, took a big chance when they decided not to hire a traditional real estate agent. Instead, they both sold their old house and bought a new one online.

“What did you have to do yourselves that the traditional real estate agent would have done for you?” Stahl asks.

“Print out the flyers, you know, that would go on our signposts, and describe our house to potential buyers. And then we held an open house ourselves,” Willis recalls.

What did they didn’t get, says Takeuchi, was having a real estate agent to show the house and actively sell the property.

“Who’s out there, really pushing for us?” Stahl remarks.

“And that’s what I kept saying,” Takeuchi acknowledges. “Those insecurities started to really seep in for me and I started to really question. It wasn’t until the ink was dry on the paper that I was a hundred percent sold, to be honest.”

Willis says they saved $26,000 by not going through a traditional realtor and paying a commission. “Now we can walk down the aisle. Actually, pay for people to eat at the wedding,” Takeuchi adds.

They used a real estate company called Redfin, an online discounter based in Seattle. It has a cadre of e-agents who, for the most part, do their work on computers and on phones. Rob McGarty says early on a number of people called who were skeptical about the whole idea.

“Are there real people there? Is this just some shop in Bangalore! A call center taking real estate transactions? And, you know, after they talked to us [they] realize we were real agents in the same city they were in … they were like: ‘Whoa, this is for real!'” McGarty explains.

Willis and Takeuchi’s agent, Kelly Engel, used to be a traditional agent. “I had done quite a few deals where I spent maybe five hours total working on the deal. I never saw the house. My client found it online and, you know, I would make $12,000 for four hours of work. And I thought this cannot keep going on like this. Someone, I felt like I was going to get caught! You know, someone’s going to see that this is happening and I think a lot of them hold that truth inside of them right now. They’ve got the clients that are finding houses on their own. They make $20,000 and did 10 hours of work,” she says.

Glenn Kelman may look like a bike messenger, but he’s an Internet entrepreneur, the president and CEO of Redfin. “Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America,” he says. “And we feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo have done of other industries, we can do for the real estate industry.”

Because of the Internet, he says, his agents can handle many more transactions and charge the clients much less. “Because they didn’t have to sit in the back of a Lexus with a real estate agent, and use up all of this time, we’re able to pass on a lot of savings to them,” he says.

And he does mean “a lot” of savings. Usually, a seller’s agent and a buyer’s agent split the commission, so they each get three percent. But when Redfin represents the seller, it charges a flat fee of just $3,000, and that’s it. That alone drives the traditional agents crazy. But then, when Redfin represents the buyers, they give them money back.

 

“We’ve refunded over $3 million in commissions to our customers,” Kelman says. “When we’re the buyer’s agent, we take our commission, which is usually three percent. We keep one-third of it. And we give two-thirds of it back to the buyer. So, on a $1 million house, we would get $30,000 normally. But we only keep $10,000 and give $20,000 back to the buyer.”

How is he making money?

“The average agent processes eight deals a year. We have an agent that can do that every week,” Kelman explains.

“Are you spinning me?” Stahl asks.

“I mean, seriously,” Kelman replies.

There’s no way to independently check the number of deals his agents close in a week, but it is clear that they do make it easy for their customers who can sit home at night in their pajamas and click on the Redfin webpage to read critiques of houses in their price range, see what comparable homes in a given neighborhood have sold for and to even tour a house they might be interested in.

Redfin displays, for free, information that’s part of the package you pay a traditional agent to get. “So, for example, if we were looking for the turkeys in this market, we could find properties that haven’t sold in the past 45 days,” Kelman explains.

If you like the house, you can click the “start an offer” button. A Redfin agent at his or her computer in the office contacts the seller’s agent and negotiates a price. Redfin then coordinates all the paperwork for a loan and closing the deal.

Willis and Takeuchi say the Redfin agent helped them come up with an asking price. Eventually, they sold for $10,000 under, which Willis says they’re happy with. It was in their range, he says.

“But perhaps they’ve left quite a bit of money on the table if it had been put in the hands of somebody that really knew the business,” argues Deborah Arends, who has been a top RE/MAX agent in Seattle for 18 years. She says that Redfin customers get the “Wal-Mart treatment” when what they really need is an experienced, hands-on professional. And besides, she says buying a house is a high-touch business, not high tech.

You have to go and see it for yourself. “This is not like buying books on Amazon.com. Real estate is typically people’s largest investment,” Arends argues.

“If someone comes and challenges you and says, ‘You don’t do enough for the six percent.’ What’s your response?” Stahl asks.

“My response is, ‘I’m not the agent for you,'” Arends says.

Some agents have been known to lower the commission, but Arends says to give clients her ultimate, she needs to charge the full six percent.

“Now here’s what Glenn Kelman of Redfin says: ‘The price of homes has gone through the roof, pardon the pun, over the last several years. And yet your commission has still stayed at six percent,'” Stahl remarks. “You’re not lowering your commission to give the buyers this advantage. You’re just raking in the money?”

“Wish that were true,” Arends says. “I think what’s happened is a lot of expenses have gone up, everything from postage to gas, which affect real estate agents’ profits.”

 

She says she has to spend money to make money for her clients, especially when they’re trying to sell a house in today’s down market.

To move a property, Arends comes up with a strategy, then creates buzz by blanketing neighborhoods with fliers and sending postcards to notify other agents. She also spiffs up a house for viewing. As an accredited “staging” professional, she polishes, re-decorates and de-clutters.

“It is the single biggest moneymaking thing a seller can do, because getting their own belongings out will allow buyers to imagine themselves in the home,” she explains.

When the house is ready, she then targets potential buyers as well as agents, and holds an open house to dazzle them.

“Redfin very proudly says that they returned in rebates $3 million last year to its buyers,” Stahl remarks. “You can’t boost of anything like that.”

“Absolutely not,” Arends acknowledges. “I don’t know how to answer that one.”

Other agents have an answer: try to drive the discounters out of business, which is what happened to Steve DelBianco.

He helped launch the first Internet discounter, eRealty, in 1999 in Texas. No sooner than they were up and running, the local agency in Austin that regulates the industry adopted a new rule that effectively barred e-realty from listing houses for sale on its Web site.

Then, DelBianco says, “They sued us for breaking the rule they created to shut down eRealty’s ability to compete.”

“Was the main objection, do you think, the cutting of the commission?” Stahl asks.

“That was the only objection,” DelBianco argues. “Realtors embrace the idea of some automation and some use of the Internet. But the minute it cuts into their pocketbooks, well, all hell broke loose.”

eRealty won the lawsuit. But then it ran into the National Association of Realtors, the industry’s powerful governing body. In 2003, the association issued new rules of its own, ones that threatened to block Internet discounters’ access to the multiple listing service, or MLS. That’s the data base that lists virtually every home for sale in the country. It’s the lifeblood of any agent or brokerage, including discounters like eRealty.

“The threat of the new rules meant that our investors closed their pocketbooks and new investors wouldn’t answer the phone,” DelBianco explains.

“‘Cause they knew if you couldn’t get access to the MLS, you were dead anyway, and they knew that,” Stahl remarks.

“They cut off our air supply. They knew it,” DelBianco says.

In the end, eRealty went belly up. DelBianco says the company lost $33 million.

 

The Justice Department is now suing the National Association Of Realtors, or NAR, for adopting policies that are “fundamentally anti-competitive and harmful to consumers.” The NAR told 60 Minutes those accusations are untrue.

“Now the NAR argues that it’s their agents who contribute to the MLS. That’s their listings, and that they should, therefore, have the right to withhold them since they belong to the agent. Doesn’t that make some sense?” Stahl asks DelBianco.

“I don’t think so,” he replies. “When you hire an agent to help sell your home, you’re paying them a six percent commission to put your home in front of as many possible buyers so that you get the best possible price in the shortest time. How does it serve your interest then if they suppress the showing of your home to a whole category of realtors who show it online?”

NAR has suspended the rules pending the outcome of the case, which is scheduled for trial next year. But Redfin’s Glenn Kelman says the effort to shut down the discounters continues.

“The traditional brokerages have figured out nine ways from Sunday to try to screw up our business,” he says.

Asked if they’re targeting him, he says, “Oh, absolutely.”

One way is to influence local and state legislation and rules. The brokerage industry has a powerful lobby.

“The people who made the rules are the real estate agents themselves. And almost all of the rules are for the benefit of those agents. They have control of this industry and they intend to keep it,” Kelman argues.

Eight states have “minimum service laws” that require realtors to provide a level of service many Internet discounters can’t afford. Eleven states flatly prohibit rebates.

“Oregon is a perfect example of that. We would love to go into Portland, Oregon. But there’s a law against giving people who buy a house part of the commission back,” Kelman says.

“Are you going to try to go national?” Stahl asks.

“Our goal is to get in every major market in America by the end of 2008,” he says.

Asked if he expects the fighting to get more intense if he goes national, Kelman says, “We expect it to be hand-to-hand in every market that we go into. And so we’re just going to go door-to-door, house-to-house, and try to change this industry.”

60 Minutes

Video Clip of Above Article

Project Dream of former Calgary engineer

Other

He’s bucking the trend.

While people are drawn to the oil and gas industry in Alberta like baseball fans are to hot dogs, Henry Man isn’t about to strike out with his new career.

The chemical engineer moved from Calgary to Vancouver, leaving a management position with a large oil company to work in the residential construction field ­ and he hasn’t looked back since.

“My favorite pastime when I was in Calgary was to go to the parade of homes there,” he says. “I was interested in how the homes were laid out, and the design and functionality of the rooms. Eventually, I invested in a property and put it into rental. Little did I know that I already had that mindset.“

While in Calgary, he worked with British Petroleum and completed an MBA degree from the University of Calgary.

In Vancouver, “Concord Pacific Group came beckoning, and I joined in 1994,” he says.

Man played a pivotal role in developing properties such as Vancouver’s Concord Pacific Place and CityPlace in Toronto.

He served as executive vice-president and CEO of Concord Pacific Group and director and CEO of Concord Adex Developments Corp, in Toronto before retiring in 2002.

“But opportunity beckoned,” says Man. Retirement wasn’t in the cards.

He joined a friend who was developing a property and had asked for his help.

“I said, yes, originally, I would help direct the architects and work once a week,” says Man.

“At the end of the day, I was doing it full-time. Now, I’ve stared my own company and I find myself doing a $140-million project.”

“I have a staff and, although I’m not looking for new sites or bidding for land, I already have two other sites when I’m ready to move on.”

People call Man the “gentleman developer,” he says, alluding to the gentleman farmer who has a small acreage that is a hobby farm more than a career choice.

Man is president and CEO of Magellen 20/20, and the $140-million project is Atelier, a sleek, modern highrise condo tower in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

Soaring more than 20 storeys over Robson Street at Homer Street, the building will have 202 suites by completion, which is expected to be in the fall of 2009.

Derrick Penner
Sun

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Enchanting, calming structure, and grounds, are critical, photographer writes

Mike Chadwick
Sun

Mike Chadwick is the author of Vancouver In Focus:

The City’s Built Form, a photographic survey of downtown Vancouver buildings and landmarks. The West End resident and North Shore forest ranger here shares, with Westcoast Homes readers, in pictures and text, his favourite residential buildings downtown.

Among the sea of buildings in any downtown, a select few catch the eye. Why? What makes one stand out? The obvious answer is unique architecture, but there is more to it.

When you are around a particular building, do you feel you want to spend more time around it? Is it a welcoming structure? Is it a calming presence, perhaps because its design includes features such as reflecting pools or gardens? Is it a right-for-the-site structure? Does it complement its surroundings?

Of the many residential buildings — mostly towers — in downtown Vancouver, only a handful are truly unique, in opinion. I have compiled a list of 10 significant residential buildings in the downtown core, using the following criteria:

The building has to be primarily residential.

The building has to demonstrate unique design and architecture.

It must integrate well into its environment

It must be historically, socially, culturally or technically significant.

Qube

Built in 1969 and known as the Westcoast Transmission Building for 31 years, this Vancouver icon was converted to residential use in 2005 and renamed Qube.

It is technically unique because it was built from the top down. It is culturally significiant because it was designed and constructed when the Cold War race for space supremacy inserted space-age considerations into architecture and interior design.

The central pillar was the first component of the building constructed. The floors were then hung from the top, using suspension-bridge technology — the goal a building that could withstand an earthquake. Only half-a-dozen buildings in North America utilize this suspended design.

my opinion. I have compiled a list of 10 significant residential buildings in the downtown core, using the following criteria:

The building has to be primarily residential.

The building has to demonstrate unique design and architecture.

It must integrate well into its environment

It must be historically, socially, culturally or technically significant.

Qube

Built in 1969 and known as the Westcoast Transmission Building for 31 years, this Vancouver icon was converted to residential use in 2005 and renamed Qube.

It is technically unique because it was built from the top down. It is culturally significiant because it was designed and constructed when the Cold War race for space supremacy inserted space-age considerations into architecture and interior design.

The central pillar was the first component of the building constructed. The floors were then hung from the top, using suspension-bridge technology — the goal a building that could withstand an earthquake. Only half-a-dozen buildings in North America utilize this suspended design.

The Qube has aged very well. During conversion, each side of the building was removed, exposing the floors and the building’s innards. The windows were replaced, but retained the dark look of the originals.

The modern, minimalist style of the building is reflected in the concrete aggregate plaza under the suspended portion of the tower. (The passerby can walk under the majority of the building — suspended above his or her head. Definitely a unique experience!)

In the front, there is almost no landscaping and there are no benches. The building itself is the focus, because it is so unique. A modest garden with shade-tolerant species can be found on the north side.

Even the lobby is stark, serving only as an entry point and waiting area for the elevators.

Address: 1383 West Georgia

Completed: 1969

Architect: Rhone & Iredale

Floors: 13

Height: 82 metres (269 feet)

The Pointe

Fins of aluminum are The Pointe’s defining exterior feature. They act as solar controls and align the building — rotated to provide maximum views — with the street. There is no other building in the city with this feature.

The tower, on the corner of Georgia and Jervis, is set back from Jervis, allowing an extra-wide, divided sidewalk. The passerby has a choice: Walk the sidewalk street’s edge or walk the stairs at the property’s edge. A row of trees and plants separates the two and a gentle waterfall nearby follows the grade of the street, adding to the singularity.

On West Georgia, the entrance is surrounded by a ring of concrete pillars which aid in supporting the main structure of the building, five metres above. Looking up at the tinted green glass, the unusual geometric shadows caused by the fins are noticeable.

The Pointe was one of the city’s first residential towers designed and outfitted to support home-based businesses — a forward-thinking feature anticipating Mayor Sam Sullivan’s ”ecodensity” initiative.

Address: 1331 West Georgia

Completed: 1999

Architect: Bing Thom Architects

Floors: 29

Height: 84 metres (275 feet)

Residences On Georgia

The design of the four towers that make up the Residences is not as significant as the treatment of the site. By employing restraint, the result is an urban oasis which features a large open greenspace that serves as a transition between the forests of Stanley Park and the dense towers of the downtown core.

A large duck pond, public art and a continuation of the seawall are components of the space.

The towers have generous spacing between them, allowing ample public spaces and preserving the treasured view corridors to the mountains of the North Shore. The development won a lieutenant-governor’s gold award in 1998 and helped to set the standards of urban design in downtown Vancouver.

Address: 1200 West Georgia – 1288 West Georgia

Completed: 1998

Architect: James KM Cheng

Floors: 36

Height: 108 metres (354 feet)

Eugenia Place

The most significant feature of this modern tower is found on the Beach Avenue facade, an approximation, or suggestion, of a giant syringe, with a large tree atop the “plunger” and the entrance to the structure at the pointed base.

Henriquez Partners, the firm responsible for Eugenia Place, brought a surreal concept to reality in a way that works very well.

The design pays tribute to the area’s natural history: The building’s height is the same as the original Douglas firs that occupied the site; the oak tree on the ”plunger” is a reference to natural continuity; the concrete stumps at ground level, to cultural continuity. The “syringe” and the tree on top may be interpreted as injecting mother earth back into the environment.

Address: 1919 Beach

Completed: 1991

Architect: Henriquez Partners

Floors: 19

Height: 58 metres (189 feet)

Electra

The former headquarters of BC Hydro is one of the first modernist buildings in Canada, completed in the 1950s. It was sensitively converted to residential use in 1995.

The triangular panels on the vertical fins (on the building’s Georgia and Hornby facades) are illuminated at night and were recently restored to their original blue and green brilliance.

The steel and glass on the Nelson Street facade resemble a massive waterfall. In contrast, the side profiles are slim, with the vertical fins adding to the perception of height.

In all areas, there is attention to detail. Doors, lobby tiles and elevator motifs, for example, reflect the six-sided shape of the structure.

Truly the city’s most elegant tower, the building was Vancouver’s first postwar building to achieve heritage designation.

Address: 989 Nelson

Completed: 1957

Architect: Thompson Berwick Pratt

Floors: 22

Height: 89 metres (293 feet)

Carina-Callisto

As glass towers, this pair is, perhaps, the best around, because the design incorporates a unique shape which reflects the nautical nature of the site.

Their southern profiles are flat, to blend with the surrounding architecture. But their other profiles feature a three-dimensional curve which is meant to resemble a giant sail, complementing the sails of Canada Place. The effect is dramatic, with protruding balconies adding texture to the smooth glass surfaces.

Electra

The former headquarters of BC Hydro is one of the first modernist buildings in Canada, completed in the 1950s. It was sensitively converted to residential use in 1995.

The triangular panels on the vertical fins (on the building’s Georgia and Hornby facades) are illuminated at night and were recently restored to their original blue and green brilliance.

The steel and glass on the Nelson Street facade resemble a massive waterfall. In contrast, the side profiles are slim, with the vertical fins adding to the perception of height.

In all areas, there is attention to detail. Doors, lobby tiles and elevator motifs, for example, reflect the six-sided shape of the structure.

Truly the city’s most elegant tower, the building was Vancouver’s first postwar building to achieve heritage designation.

Address: 989 Nelson

Completed: 1957

Architect: Thompson Berwick Pratt

Floors: 22

Height: 89 metres (293 feet)

Carina-Callisto

As glass towers, this pair is, perhaps, the best around, because the design incorporates a unique shape which reflects the nautical nature of the site.

Their southern profiles are flat, to blend with the surrounding architecture. But their other profiles feature a three-dimensional curve which is meant to resemble a giant sail, complementing the sails of Canada Place. The effect is dramatic, with protruding balconies adding texture to the smooth glass surfaces.

Both towers feature the now-usual townhouses at the base. This urban planning directive helps to define the street edge and serves to prevent the feeling that the towers loom overhead.

Address: 1233 West Cordova

Completed: 2003

Architect: Hancock Bruckner

Eng + Wright

Floors: 27

Height: 79 metres (259 feet)

Le Guernesey

This West End heritage building was beautifully restored and renovated two years ago. The exterior features brand new iron fire escapes, windows, brickwork and paint; the interior, modern suites.

This is a rental building, which makes it quite significant. In a time when stratification is taking away rental stock, Le Guernesey’s restoration team took a bold step by resisting stratification.

Address: 859 Thurlow

Floors: 5

Banff Apartments

The Banff Apartments, built in 1909, are among a small cluster of heritage apartment buildings located between Georgia and Melville streets, at Bute. It is truly surprising that the Banff Apartments have survived nearly a century of development and redevelopment, especially given its location in one of the downtown core’s most prominent business areas. This is important in a city that is changing at such a rapid pace. Heritage buildings serve as an anchor to the past; a point of reference for the senior who was raised in Vancouver.

The Banff Apartments, finished in red and green, add colour, texture and form to the the modern urban landscape’s glass and steel. Also notable is the fact that it has remained a rental building.

One Harbour Green

This new building is unlike any other in the downtown core. Its appearance is bold, yet sensible when viewed against the backdrop of the North Shore mountains.

The salmon marble panels (which appear red in direct sunlight) of One Harbour Green provide a vivid contrast to the blue waters of Coal Harbour and green forests of the North Shore mountains.

Architect James KM Cheng has done it again with this building, signalling how the next generation of Vancouver architecture might unfold. Building upon the success of the glass towers of the previous 20 years, the time has come to incorporate colour and different exterior materials into the mix.

Address: 1169 West Cordova

Completed: 2005

Architect: James KM Cheng Architects

Floors: 24

Height: 80 metres (263 feet)

The Melville

This tower, to be completed later this year, anticipates the future by incorporating sustainability features such as steam heat and rainwater retention for landscape irrigation.

Tall and slender, the Melville’s striking features include a curved glass sail on the roof; recycled heavy timber facades at street level; copper cladding from ground level to the roof, cumulating in an offset triangle behind the glass sail.

Address: 1189 Melville

Completed: 2007

Architect: Hewitt + Kwasnicky Architects Inc.

Floors: 42

Height: 141 metres (464 feet)

Vancouver In Focus: The City’s Built Form, by Mike Chadwick and with a foreward by James KM Cheng, is available at book stores, amazon.ca. and vancouverinfocus.com ($39.95 plus shipping).

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

3,000 U.S. lawyers among customers signing up to use the expanded facility through 2019

Gillian Shaw
Sun

What do you get when you get together 3,000 lawyers? Approximately $18 million, which is what Vancouver’s Convention & Exhibition Centre estimates 3,000 delegates will bring to B.C.’s economy when the American Association for Justice holds its annual conference in 2010, marking the first time the association representing American trial lawyers has chosen Vancouver as its convention destination.

They are joined by a fast-growing lineup of customers who are booking Vancouver’s soon-to-be expanded convention centre right through to 2019, with current bookings expected to add a whopping $1.1 billion in direct and indirect economic spinoffs to the provincial economy.

“I think it bodes well,” VCEC president Barbara Maple said. “We are starting to get a lot of interest in the convention centre and we believe there has been pent-up demand.

“Groups have wanted to be here, but it was not only the size of our facility . . . we didn’t have the complexity of room configuration that they needed.”

The facility already has 54 non-Olympic events confirmed or contracted for April 1, 2009, and the decade beyond — 28 would have been too large to squeeze into the pre-expanded centre.

If you’re one of those people who can’t plan ahead for the weekend and are wondering just who would book an event for 2019, you’ll have to wait to find out. That event is confirmed only, not yet under contract, and so the VCEC won’t disclose what it is.

However, the forward-thinking Canadian Cardiovascular Congress is planning to meet here in 2017, by which time the new convention centre will already be eight years old.

The new combined facility, with delays pushing back its scheduled completion to the spring of 2009, will have more than 316,000 square feet of convention and meeting space; triple the current centre and enough to cover the equivalent of four city blocks.

It also answers a demand among convention planners for break-out space, those meeting rooms where delegates gather in smaller groups. The current centre has 20 such spaces, while the newly expanded one will add another 52.

And if you’re planning a wedding for 10,000, note the new facility will have Canada’s largest convention centre ballroom with more than 55,000 square feet of swing room, up from the current 16,600 square feet.

The combination of tripling the convention centre size and improving the mix of space offerings is working, according to Maple.

“We’re attracting more of the same size of events that we have today, but we are also attracting large events,” she said. “One of the goals of the convention centre is not only to book bigger groups, but to book more groups.”

The expanded size means the centre can host simultaneously the equivalent of two of the largest groups it can handle currently, according to Maple.

“We will carry on with the groups with 2,000 to 2,500 delegates,” she said. “That traditionally is the size that makes up the bulk of the market.”

Not only are a lot of delegates expected, they also spend more money than your average tourist.

Maple said the typical spend attributed to conference delegates is $500 a day, an estimate that includes everything from their room and meals to the cost of the convention space itself. That is four to five times the expected take from regular visitors to the city.

“The other thing about these groups is that they travel throughout the province,” said Maple. “They often come back on holidays or with their families to visit and we all benefit from that.”

The Olympics will garner the lion’s share of the first year’s bookings after the new centre opens, with that organization slated to fill the entire space from late fall of 2009 right through March 2010.

When it clears out, the Pacific Dental Conference running form April 13 to April 17 will be the first-post Olympic customer bringing with it more than 9,000 attendees. It will mark the 21st year that conference has been coming to Vancouver and over the years it has grown to the point that it can only squeeze in with the convention centre relying on industry partners such as hotels. The VCEC said the expansion means that for the first time the dental conference will fit into one facility.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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