Tony Gioventu
Province

Dear Condo Smarts:

Our townhouse complex has been plagued with grow-ops over the past five years. It seems every few months, we have another visit from the drug squad and another unit is busted.

Two units have been busted more than once. There are constant legal costs being paid by the strata owners, routine damage to common property and the neighbouring units have had their homes and personal property affected.

The police have always been very co-operative, but we’re at the point we can’t pay the costs any longer and we’re, quite frankly, tired of being an easy target for grow-ops.

How have other strata corporations solved this problem?

— Mrs. D. Warren, Richmond

Dear Mrs. Warren:

There are several parts to a solution for grow-ops and meth labs. The first is to have enforceable bylaws that address common area damages and related costs, including legal costs for enforcement.

The second is to have a good working relationship with your local government. Most municipal bylaws make a provision to name the strata corporation in an order for repairs where there is a grow-op identified.

It is critical that the order include the legal name of your strata, for example, “the owners, strata plan ABC 1234.”

By including your legal name, this order empowers the strata corporation to effectively meet the obligations of the repairs in the order and then under the Strata Property Act, to file a lien for those related costs of the order against the offending unit. This takes priority over other charges like bank mortgages and makes the owner of the offending lot pay the bills.

Your strata council must actively enforce your bylaws. Routine inspections of every strata lot for operation and maintenance requirements make it inconvenient for growers to set up operations.

If an owner fails to comply with inspections, enforce the bylaws requiring access for inspections. This may also include proceeding with a court order to enforce the bylaws and gain access to the suites.

Simply put, enforce the bylaws and act quickly. If the operation is a meth lab, the contamination may result in uninhabitable situation for many other units as well.

For those strata corporations with no history of grow-ops as of yet, there are also some insurance options. While the deductible may often be $50,000 or greater, consider that grow-op or meth-lab damages can easily exceed $250,000.

Tony Gioventu is the executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association (CHOA). Contact CHOA at 604-584-2462 or toll-free 1-877-353-2462, go to www.choa.bc.ca, fax 604-515-9643, email [email protected]

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Kerry Moore
Province

Amenities aren’t the big draw at Patina, location is.

“We went on Google Earth and had a look at where Patina was going to go up and we couldn’t believe it. It was literally the epicentre of Vancouver,” says Rod Wilburn of Concert Properties.

How it got is prime location on rising land at Barclay and Burrard involved years of planning with, of all partners, the 66-year-old YMCA already on the site.

As a result, the Y will gain a new athletic centre which will connect to its historic brick building on Burrard. Patina’s 42-storey tower is to be at the back (or west end) of the property.

“In its prime location, Patina will have the residential appeal to people who like the West End feel of a tree-lined street and opportunity to walk everywhere.” Another bonus: “You won’t be living in a construction zone because the area is largely finished,” says Wilburn, senior vice- president of sales and marketing.

Patina is designed to have three levels of lifestyle appeal, almost like three separate buildings.

“Up to the eight floor and to a degree to the 14th, are studios, one- bedroom [units] and one-beds and a den. We refer to these as pied-a-terre suites,” says Wilburn, adding that these are likely to appeal to people who split their time between the city and recreational property.

The 15th to 36th floors will likely attract empty nesters (called “lifestyle buyers”) and business professionals who want to be close to work and keep the car parked.

Another group of buyers who are expected to choose these same floors are young people “who bought into Yaletown several years ago and are upgrading in quality and recognized value.”

Above the 37th floor are expensive and expansive corner homes containing two bedrooms and a den. Prices start at $1.35 million. The two top floors are penthouses, and are in the stratosphere in cost as well as height.

All levels offer between four and 11 different floor plans with the most choices on the lower levels.

“Finishings have all the sophistication you’d expect in a downtown residence” says Wilburn, pointing out fine details that reinforce a plan for practicality and elegance.

All suites have porcelain tile throughout, except in bedrooms which have a soft low-pile wool carpet. The floor tile is rectangular rather than the predictable squares and is heated in the bathrooms. Glass tiles on the kitchen backsplash and shower walls catch and hold the light, adding a softness to areas often dominated by hardware or appliances.

Speaking of which, there is a full package of Miele and Liebherr appliances plus built-in air conditioning, dual-flush toilets, choice of three co-ordinated colour schemes, including three wood-grain finishes in light, dark and a warm teak.

Privacy is ensured by restricted floor access, encrypted security key fob and in-suite TV-monitored entry system. Suites are wired for advanced telecommunication requirements and parking is underground.

Oh, yes, there are amenities despite a lack of emphasis on them. Owners share the Patina Club on the eighth floor, a fully furnished lounge and fitness studio opening on to a rooftop garden terrace. They can also enjoy a “serenity” lounge on the mezzanine adjoining a private garden courtyard.

A full-time manager is on site. And, of course, there will be a state-of-the-art YMCA a few metres away from Patina’s Barclay Street entrance.

The YMCA will open in 2009, Patina in 2011. “Yes,” grins Wilburn, “there is life after the Olympics.”

THE FACTS

Patina

What: A 42-storey highrise containing 256 suites.

Where: Barclay & Burrard, Vancouver.

Developer: Concert Properties.

Sizes: 550 sq. ft. to 3,200 sq. ft., from studios with dens to penthouses.

Prices: $375,000 to $6 million.

Open: Register at discoverpatina.com to view the two-bed-and-den display suite near Alberni and Burrard. Viewings start Sept. 15/16.

 

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Bob Ransford
Sun

There are real estate connoisseurs, aficionados of select world-class properties and savvy investors. And then there are those who make up the rest of the market — first, the “players” whose enthusiasm for the market drives their next real estate investment, and then the typical homebuyers looking for an affordable roof over their head.

A new Vancouver company with seasoned real estate experts who cut their teeth in the frenzied selling of Vancouver condominiums and North American mountain resort properties is blazing a new trail to focus on the individual needs of a select group of international buyers looking for the world’s real estate “jewels”.

This latest chapter in Sid and Pete’s excellent real estate adventure has S&P Destination Properties establishing itself in Vancouver as a world leader that identifies and invites select international real estate connoisseurs to not only buy the world’s finest resort and luxury properties, but to also contribute their individual views and desires to influence the design and construction of those signature properties.

Sid Landolt and Peter Dupuis are two realtors who partnered in New Westminster almost 25 years ago to operate one of the country’s most successful ReMax franchises. I first met the two in 1989, when they were starting one of this area’s first condominium-project marketing firms, operating out of a basement office in Peter’s home.

They pulled together family and close friends to staff a few of their first projects and hit the market at the right time with a couple of large projects. Before long, they partnered with Toronto project marketer Hunter Milborne and used the Milborne name to take the Vancouver condo market by storm. Over a five-year period in the mid-1990s, they sold homes in more than 100 projects with a sales volume topping $1.5 billion.

Sid and Pete weren’t afraid to share what they learned about project marketing. Ironically, when realtor Bob Rennie was doing well capturing a huge share of the Burnaby resale market in the early 90s, his business associate Vince D’Ovidio convinced him to attend a Real Estate Board-sponsored seminar on project marketing. According to D’Ovidio, he had to twist Rennie’s arm to take time out of a busy resale practice and sit in a small downtown hotel conference room to listen to two experts talk about something like “project marketing”. The “expert” presenters were Sid Landolt and Peter Dupuis.

When Vancouver‘s market softened in the late 90s, Sid and Pete teamed up with Intrawest and Sapera — Sid and Pete’s Excellent Real Estate Adventure — was born to pioneer marketing innovations in resort properties. They grew as Intrawest grew across the continent, marrying their sales methodologies with some of Intrawest’s direct-marketing expertise. Finally, Intrawest acquired Sapera and turned it into its in-house marketing agency, today called Playground.

Sid and Pete weren’t ready to retire and quickly realized that all the knowledge they acquired about selling homes related back to the same part of the buying and selling transaction–the buyer. They realized that, by focusing on buyers and their desires and dreams, they could turn the real estate transaction from being one in which buyers are being sold into one in which savvy buyers are buying because they see a certain select property as one which will enrich the way they want to live.

The realized that “living” in a home is much more than selecting a view lot and picking granite countertops. S&P is founded on the belief that savvy real estate buyers are buying not just the durable product that is the property and the house constructed on it; they are also buying the “experience”.

That experience has to be breathtaking. Owning a property in this class of properties is like owning a rare jewel. Owning has to excite. S&P works with developers to design and create these unique properties.

Wyndansea is one. This 370-acre Jack Nicklaus signature golf course resort is under construction on the rugged Pacific coast of Vancouver Island in Ucluelet. The first 30 homesites in Wyndansea’s “signature circle” are on the market now, with a half-acre lot starting at $1.4 million. Units in Wyndansea’s ocean-front hotel condominium, perched above the rugged surge channels of the West Coast shore, will be offered later this year. There will be studio, one- and two-bedroom units and six signature penthouses, with prices starting under $500,000.

“The finest real estate in the finest places on earth” is S&P’s motto.

Wyndansea is proof that one needs to search the entire globe to find those finest places. It is the only Canadian property on S&P’s current select roster of resorts, which includes, among others, the Trump Ocean Resort in Baja, Mexico, The Residential Suites at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, Maui and the One Hotel and Residences in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The philosophy behind S&P Destination Properties — that residential real estate is about pride of ownership and the experience of living — will likely be one that becomes standard mantra in the next incarnation of our local residential real estate market. Our market is currently driven by a gluttonous demand more closely resembling the retail fast-food business than anything else. We have trivialized investing in real estate to the point that a home is little more than a commodity.

It is refreshing to see a local firm like S&P attempting to reorient the real estate profession to focus not on the insatiable appetite of developers producing one formula project after another to meet the superficial desires of the mass market, but on the enduring qualities of real estate — the sense of freedom that ownership can offer and the sense of place a home represents.

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with CounterPoint Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. E-mail: [email protected]

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

American homebuilders and buyers are being hit but experts say the B.C. market is much healthier

Peter Simpson
Sun

American subprime mortgages have gone prime time in the media.

First made available in the 1990s to low-income families — many of them minorities, most with poor credit ratings — subprime mortgages helped boost the U.S. home ownership rate to nearly 70 per cent. Ah, the good life, picket fences and tree swings, the quintessential American Dream.

Well, for some it was good while it lasted. As mortgage interest rates began to creep higher, the rising monthly mortgage payments on variable or adjustable-rate mortgages caused homeowners to miss a monthly payment, then another, and another. When homeowners were unable to meet their financial obligations altogether, lending institutions were forced to foreclose.

The ramifications were far-reaching as the blame was spread liberally around.

The U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee blamed lenders for predatory practices, mortgage brokers for steering buyers into unaffordable mortgages, appraisers for inflating property values, investors for backing subprime mortgages without proper due diligence, and homebuyers for overstating their incomes on loan applications and assuming debt they could not service.

Westcoast Homes readers are likely familiar with the much-publicized Riverbend debacle, where a Coquitlam developer pulled the plug on sales contracts. That unconscionable act caused 32 families to lose their place in the housing market — property values throughout the Vancouver area had increased by a whopping 34 per cent since the families plonked down their down-payment cheques in 2005.

The opposite is happening in many U.S. regions. For Sale signs, some with foreclosure tags, dot the landscape in high-population centres such as California, Florida and northeast rust belt states. When the value of their homes dropped below what they owed on mortgages, homeowners walked from their once-coveted homes, leaving lenders and builders holding the bag on thousands of properties.

Earlier this summer, I joined 300 of my association counterparts from across the U.S. at a leadership conference in California. The mood was somewhat sombre. One housing analyst remarked with a sigh that housing starts in some markets were experiencing an “off-the-cliff decline.”

We were told the economic meltdown was spreading beyond real estate to consumer spending and job growth. Discretionary spending has been curtailed. Corporate boardrooms, too, are awash in worry — automakers about sagging vehicle sales; airlines about fewer travellers and higher fuel costs. Big-box, home-improvement retailers plan to cut staff to mirror the moderating housing market.

David Ellis, executive director of the 4,000-member Greater Atlanta Home Builders’ Association, told me last month his members are feeling the pain of a housing market in retreat.

Atlanta new home sales have dropped more than 25 per cent from last year. More declines are expected. Skittish buyers are walking away from sales contracts, abandoning deposits. Builders looking to salvage deals and gain an advantage over competitors are offering costly incentives such as finished basements, one-year leases on Mercedes, and free in-ground swimming pools.

Ellis might well be in the frying pan of homebuilding issues, but were it not for a timely career move, he could be sitting in the middle of a raging fire.

In 2000, Ellis lived in Naples, Fla., where he purchased a custom-built, family home for $320,000. In May, 2005, after accepting the Atlanta job, he sold his home for $608,000.

Sounds a little like Vancouver, doesn’t it? This is where the similarity ends, however.

The individual who purchased Ellis’s custom-built Florida home tried to flip it soon after the deal closed. Timing is everything, especially in regions where the real-estate pendulum can swing overnight. Ellis’s timing was perfect, but his purchaser, two years later, is still looking out the window at the weathered For Sale sign on his front lawn.

Known affectionately as God’s Waiting Room because of its burgeoning seniors population, Florida seems to be in a real-estate free-fall these days. Investors — a.k.a. speculators — are nowhere to be seen.

Many coastal condominium projects under construction got caught in the market collapse. At one, early-bird buyers paid $500,000 for their condos, then were shocked to learn similar units were later being marketed at $375,000. The result was predictable. The folks who paid half a million walked away from their commitment, and deposits. Some even threatened lawsuits to get the deposits returned.

Another shell-shocked developer dropped prices on his oceanfront condos from $600,000 to $400,000 in an attempt to cut his enormous losses. For sure, development is not for the faint of heart.

So, what’s going to happen throughout the Vancouver region? Experts say relax, what is happening in some U.S. markets will not affect us, that we are insulated by a potent economic environment.

The chief economist for the B.C. Real Estate Association, Cameron Muir, says housing demand is currently broad-based and both home sales and prices will continue to increase.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. expects housing activity to continue its upward path, supported by income and employment growth, and high levels of overall consumer confidence.

Housing starts here are behind last year’s pace, likely exacerbated by horrid winter conditions and the Vancouver civic workers’ strike. Autumn is expected to be robust, and by year’s end we should see close to 19,000 single-family and multi-family housing starts for the fourth straight year — a healthy, sustainable housing market, with no significant spikes or dramatic drops.

As I left my American colleagues to deal with their housing demons, I thanked my lucky stars I was returning home to the Vancouver region, which, notwithstanding its affordability challenges and quirky political wrangling from time to time, is a wonderful place in which to live, work and play.

Peter Simpson is chief executive officer of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association.

SPECULATORS, LENDERS NEED NOT APPLY

Flanked by his secretary of housing, Alphonso Jackson (left), and his secretary of the treasury, Henry Paulson, U.S. President George Bush on Aug. 31 promised relief for American homeowners facing foreclosure.

One measure he announced, in a news conference in the Rose Garden of White House, would allow homeowners with a good credit history but who cannot afford their current payments to refinance into federally insured mortgages, likely at lower rates.

He also encouraged lenders to try to work out payment arrangements with financially strapped homeowners and urged Congress to pass additional relief measures.

The day after the news conference, the president put limits on his largesse: His administration “will not bail out lenders — because that would only make a recurrence of the problem more likely.

“And it is not the government’s job to bail out speculators, or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford.

But I support action at the federal level that will help more American families keep their homes.”

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Andrew A. Duffy
Sun

VICTORIA – The developers of a massive resort on Vancouver Island‘s west coast say the project will include the greenest five-star hotel in Canada, a sprawling $200-million facility that could use the area’s wind and tides to minimize its environmental impact.

Vancouver‘s Marine Drive Properties, the developers at the helm of the waterfront Wyndansea Ocean Front Golf Resort, say they’re building their 175-room hotel sustainably not because it’s the trendy thing to do, but rather because it’s the right thing to do considering its location.

“The site is really asking for environmental responsibility in terms of its natural environment. It’s pristine, a world attraction, and it is that way because it’s unspoiled,” said architect Ron Lea of Folio Architecture, who has drawn up the plans for Wyndansea’s strata hotel, noting the site itself dictates how the development takes shape.

“At this point to develop a building that doesn’t conform to some level of LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) is archaic.”

Wyndansea is a 150-hectare resort development with 5.6 kilometres of coastline surrounding a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course near Ucluelet.

The $650-million development promises a high-end residential component including 30 residential lots (half of which have already been purchased for an average of $2.2 million), waterfront villas, full-ownership hotel rooms, single-family homes, condominiums, commercial space and a deep-water marina.

The development is expected to break ground in the late fall, with the golf course to be completed in 2009.

Lea said the hotel, which will be built to LEED gold standards, is looking into using renewable energy systems such as seawater geo-thermal exchange, tidal and wind power, and using regional materials in the construction — that could mean an on-site quarry for rocks to be used in landscaping and road building, establishing an on-site cement plant to save them from trucking in material, and using local stone and wood for the finishing work.

“To introduce a hotel that would have some spoiling of the environment is not where the owners or we want to go,” said Lea. “We’re looking at something more integrated with the site.”

And the developers expect the sustainable elements of the project to be part of its attraction.

“We feel it’s really important and green is finally going mainstream,” said B.J. Turner, sales director for Wyndansea. “You just have to look across pop culture and everything it touches — cars, fashion, music and real estate.

“Our customers understand it’s not a trend or fad, but it’s really being woven into the social consciousness and buying decisions, and a lot of people are basing their buying decisions on sustainability.”

But not everyone’s convinced.

While the west coast of the Island is world-renowned for pristine scenery and tends to attract tourists and residents with a true affinity for nature, one tourism industry consultant wonders how big a market there is for a golf resort and coastal living in what can be a relatively harsh climate outside the peak of summer, not to mention how big a draw being considered environmentally sustainable really is.

“It’s becoming one of those monikers that some profess creates a market advantage,” said Frank Bourree of Chemistry Consulting in Victoria, who added being sustainable or green is nothing new in the hotel industry. “In environmentally sensitive areas like Vancouver Island it’s really mandatory that you do it to get community approvals and yes, increasingly the people who visit these high-end places have a social conscience and appreciate it, but they also have lots of other options.”

Bourree said weather could limit golfing at the resort and therefore limit returns for those individuals buying into the hotel, while those buying lots may be disappointed with just how often they get to hit the links.

“I’m fairly skeptical, the development is huge in scale, it’s far away and golf is not exactly year-round — the farther north on the Island you go the fewer days you have,” he said.

Turner said the draw at Wyndansea is not just golf — storm-watching has become a huge draw and will allow the resort to extend the tourism season into winter.

Wyndansea has recently opened its sales presentation centre, offering units in the hotel for just under $500,000.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

New regional plan to focus on industrial and seniors’ needs

Frances Bula
Sun

METRO VANCOUVER – In the next 25 years, the Vancouver region will see a boom in its seniors population, a struggle to create affordable housing as more people live on their own, and an increasing challenge to find space for 400,000 new jobs.

So planners are looking at dramatic changes to Metro Vancouver’s (the former Greater Vancouver Regional District) regional plan in order to cope with that. Some proposals include an industrial land reserve, a fixed urban-growth boundary to contain development, and a policy that would require developers to build affordable housing and turn it over to housing authorities as part of new residential projects.

Those ideas, and more, will be thrashed out over the next year, after Metro’s land-use committee voted Thursday in favour of going ahead with a process for developing a new plan to replace the 11-year-old Livable Region Strategic Plan.

That plan was revolutionary in its day, asking the 21 municipalities to reserve land for a Green Zone and agree to growth-concentration areas that would put most housing development close to transit lines and away from rural areas.

It has had some successes — keeping agricultural and other Green Zone land protected and developing town centres served by transit — but also seen failures, as some suburbs chose to allow development outside the growth areas, while business parks far from transit service proliferated.

Land-use committee chairman Derek Corrigan, also the mayor of Burnaby, said it’s time to come up with a new plan that responds to new trends, but also carries on with the good ideas from the last one.

“The guts [of the new plan] will be a reinforcement, but with a new generation that will be buying in.”

Planner Chris DeMarco said there will be more attention paid to the issue of room for industry and workspace because there has been so much pressure put on commercial space by housing development in the past decade.

“Each municipality making decisions on its own is not going to give us enough industrial land,” said DeMarco. The business community has been beating the drum for the past year about the drastic shortage of industrial land in the region.

The future plan will likely, in acknowledgement of the existing massive development south of the Fraser River, designate much larger areas of the region as urban and allow for urban-level services.

But, in a move to protect the rural land still left, DeMarco’s report suggests that the region look at identifying a defined urban-growth boundary, similar to what exists in Portland, Ore.

Regional planners are also grappling with mechanisms that could help provide affordable housing.

By 2031, the number of older people will expand substantially, with one in four people over 65 by then, which will drive a demand for more kinds of housing and especially affordable housing.

De Marco’s report suggests creating an “inclusionary-zoning” policy similar to what some American states with high housing costs have done. That policy would require developers by law to build some affordable units in any housing development, which would then likely be turned over to a housing authority to manage. In Montgomery County, Md., one of the pioneers of inclusionary zoning, an average of 15 per cent of all units in any project over 50 units have to be built for the affordable-housing supply. More than 200 cities in California have inclusionary-zoning laws.

The development of the new plan has already had some bumpy spots.

Maple Ridge Mayor Gord Robson said at Thursday’s meeting that Maple Ridge will to ask to be exempted from Metro Vancouver’s planning control, unless some reasonable method for making amendments were included.

Robson said 70 per cent of Maple Ridge’s land is designated as Green Zone, some of it mistakenly included because of mapping errors. The city has not been able to get any of it removed because the process for making amendments is so onerous, requiring the agreement of every other municipality along with neighbouring regional districts.

“But there’s something wrong if Vancouver and Burnaby point at Maple Ridge and say, ‘You have to keep that farmland but it’s at your expense.’ “

Corrigan said there does need to be a better way to make changes to the plan, perhaps by a vote with a two-thirds majority.

Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini also said the previous LRSP plan didn’t always work the way it was supposed to.

Port Moody, over some residents’ objections, did add the housing and population that the plan called for. But it still doesn’t have the promised rapid transit.

But Richmond Coun. Harold Steves, echoing others, said that overall the previous plan worked well. “In Richmond, we were the main holdout last time. But it’s worked for us and we didn’t leave [the district].”

Richmond has concentrated a lot of its population and development to the west, leaving the east half as agricultural land.

“Without that plan, God knows what would have happened in Richmond,” he said.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Some of the factors affecting Metro Vancouver now and in 2031

Population: 3 million (2.17 now)

Number of dwellings: 1.27 million (about 850,000 now)

Number of jobs: 1.53 million (1.1 million now)

Number of private vehicles: 1.8 million (1.3 million now)

Number of people over 65 in the population: One in four (one in eight now)

Source: Metro Vancouver Report

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Other

September 2007

10 More Years! That’s how long the Okanagan Boom is predicted to last. 2007 to 2017 will see 25% of Canada’s population turn 60 (Stats Canada). The Baby Boomers Most have enjoyed a full working career uninterrupted by wars and depression. They had the advantage of cheap Real Estate, cars, gasoline, and computers. To top it off many have already or will soon receive an inheritance from their parents. This will be significant transfer of wealth. Many Boomers now vacation in the Okanagan and enjoy the lifestyle we have: The Right Location: 395 km from Vancouver 600 km from Calgary 900 km from Edmonton Plus a strong diversified economy, high employment, recreation, ski hills, lakes, golf courses, wineries, UBC Okanagan & Kelowna International airport. The Right Climate: Best in Canada. The Northern tip of the Sonoran Desert. Mild winters and long summers. Less annual precipitation than Los Angeles California. The Right Accommodations: Luxury Homes and Condos at the Lakeshore, on one of the many excellent Golf Courses or in Resort communities. It’s all here! Did you know….That major development companies independently commissioned extensive research to determine the best places in the World to develop and invest multi millions of dollars. They wanted to know where to invest and what to build. A partial list of these companies include: Concord Pacific, Intrawest, Ledingham McAllister, Medican, Melcor, Pointe of View, Renascence, Rycon, Wesbuild and 20/20. If their expensive research convinces them to invest here in Luxury Homes and Condos you should consider that too. Get expert advice. Buy during construction; Luxury Homes, Condos on the lake, and on the Golf Courses and in Resort Communities.

Decline a ‘natural variation in data,’ Statistics Canada says

Sun

The value of building permits issued by B.C. municipalities dropped by 24.3 per cent from June to July, Statistics Canada reported Thursday.

The drop, to $987.5 million from more than $1.3 billion in June, included an 11.3-per-cent cut in the value of residential permits and a 45.6-per-cent plunge in the non-residential sector.

Statistics Canada cited a sharp drop in the seasonally adjusted number of permits issued for multi-family projects as a factor in B.C.’s July residential-permit decline.

And a sharp drop in the value of Vancouver census metropolitan area (CMA) non-residential permits contributed to the B.C. decrease in that sector.

In the Vancouver CMA, total building permit values fell 26.2 per cent from last month, mostly due to a 55.9-per-cent drop in non-residential permits.

The value of commercial permits in the Vancouver CMA dropped 59.8 per cent, to $108.0 million from $268.4 million in June.

Industrial permits slipped 12.7 per cent to $10.7 million, from $12.3 million previously, while institutional-government permits fell 47.6 per cent to $32.7 million in July, from $62.4 million in June.

Vancouver CMA residential building permit values dipped 3.4 per cent to $432.0 million from $447.2 million in June.

A strike by civic workers has slowed the issuing of permits in the City of Vancouver, however, Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association, said in a news release: “This [July] dip reflects a natural variation in the data and is not directly related to the civic strike,” which began late in July.

But for the first seven months of the year, the value of building permits issued in B.C. has risen by almost 20 per cent compared to the same period last year, topping $7.5 billion in planned construction investment.

B.C.’s increase in the first seven months included a 22.9-per-cent jump in the value of residential permits, to $5 billion, and a 14.2-per-cent rise in the non-residential sector, to $2.5 billion.

And in the Vancouver CMA, building permit values shot up by more than 27 per cent, to more than $4 billion, when comparing the January-to-July numbers to the same period last year.

That included a 25.7-per-cent increase in the value of non-residential permits, to $1.52 billion, while residential permits rose 30.4 per cent to $2.710 billion.

In the Kelowna CMA the value soared more than 40 per cent to $472 million, when comparing the January-to-July numbers to the same period last year.

The Victoria CMA recorded a 37.8-per-cent hike, to $631 million, comparing January-to-July to the same period last year.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

‘Green’ edifice to honour Douglas Jung

Lena Sin
Province

After months of controversy and consultation, Ottawa has finally picked a new name for an eco-friendly office building in downtown Vancouver.

It will be officially announced today that the 401 Burrard building will be named after Douglas Jung, the first Chinese-Canadian member of Parliament.

But while some are applauding the new name — and Ottawa‘s second attempt at naming the building — others have been left fuming over the decision.

“I’m disgusted,” said John Green about the naming process. “They took [my father’s] name off without any research.”

Last September, Public Works Minister Michael Fortier originally named the building after Green’s father, Conservative MP Howard Green.

But public outcry soon followed from Japanese-Canadian groups who remembered Howard Green as one of the most feared politicians in B.C. for his racist remarks in the 1930s and ’40s.

Ottawa soon rescinded its decision and asked for a new naming committee to come up with fresh suggestions for Fortier to consider.

“The irony there is supreme. Dad played a key role in getting him [Jung] into the House of Commons and also took him to the UN as part of the Canadian delegation,” said Green. “My dad was a mentor of Douglas Jung.”

Green had resubmitted his father’s name for consideration in May.

He said he has no objection to Jung but rather to Ottawa‘s decision to backtrack on the original name.

“My objection is to them removing my father’s name on an incorrect and unjustified slur,” said Green.

He said his father was not a racist and maintains that his father’s public campaign to oust Japanese-Canadians from B.C. in the 1930s and ’40s was based on concerns for Canada‘s security at a time of war.

But Mary Kitagawa, who played a key role in lobbying for a name change, said she’s relieved about the new name.

“I was quite relieved the process has come to an end,” said Kitagawa, of the Japanese-Canadian Citizens Association Human Rights Committee. She said she’s happy with the new name.

Jung was born in Victoria in 1924 with no legal status as a Canadian.

He and a dozen other Chinese-Canadians joined the army at the start of the Second World War.

Jung said this was in order to help them gain citizenship — which they were granted after the war, in 1947.

In 1944 Jung and the others were sent on a secret mission to Malaysia to train locals to fight the Japanese.

Veterans’ Affairs paid for Jung to go to the University of B.C. to study law after the war.

Jung joined the Progressive Conservative Party and in 1957 was elected MP for Vancouver East.

He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 1990 and died in January 2002.

The unveiling of the name coincides with 100th anniversary of Vancouver‘s anti-Asian race riots.

On Sept. 7, 1907, a white mob swept through the Chinese and Japanese sections of Vancouver, smashing windows and attacking Asian immigrants.

A march through Vancouver commemorating the riot will take place today.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

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