Iain MacIntyre
Sun

VANCOUVER – You are Andy Griffith, or at least will think you are when you stroll west on West 10th Avenue, between Trimble and Sasamat streets.

The row of tidy, streetfront businesses on the north side includes, in order, a tea room and bakery, chocolate shop, toy store, a newsstand, barber shop and a small hardware store. Across the street and down a few doors is the library.

When did West Point Grey become Mayberry?

And where the heck is the ice cream parlor and fishing hole? You can even park on the street without needing to rob a panhandler to feed a meter.

Among this quaint lineup of shops is the preview of Trevor Linden’s life after hockey.

Of course, Linden would come to Mayberry. His reputation is every bit as pristine as Sheriff Andy’s and he is more popular among the citizenry.

Linden could do just about anything he wants when he finishes playing hockey with the Vancouver Canucks, probably after this season. We always figured he’d just be premier, unless he aspired to something higher, more noble.

But Linden may be headed to the dark side. And we don’t mean the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Nestled between the hardware store and a bistro, cloaked in black, is the emerging concrete frame of a four-storey retail-and-condominium building called West that represents the 37-year-old’s first foray as a land developer.

“I feel very strongly about what we’re doing,” Linden says, sitting in a sandwich shop a block away from the building site. “I want, at the end of the day, to have had a fun experience. If we make a little money, that would be great. If we break even, that’s the way it goes, but it’s a learning experience. I’ll have had an opportunity to learn and understand what this is all about.”

And be better prepared for his next development project. And the one after that.

Trevor Linden swears he never tires of being Trevor Linden — the autographs and lack of privacy, the iconic status earned in this city through longevity and deeds on and off the ice. The halo to uphold.

But it is clear he longs for something more, too.

“Honestly, I feel so blessed to be a professional athlete, a hockey player, and to have played in this city as long as I have,” he says. “That has never ever ever been a burden to me. Trust me, I don’t particularly enjoy the attention all the time, but it’s what I signed up for. The game has been so good to me.

“But I don’t just want to hang around [in hockey]. I’m not saying I won’t do something in the game, but it has to be something I enjoy, something I feel passionate about.”

He has been passionate about design, about esthetics, for a while, but only now is coming out of the closet. His keenness and knowledge about real estate is better known.

Besides his home on Point Grey Road and the duplex he bought on Kits Point in 1991, three years after he arrived from Medicine Hat, Alta., to help resurrect the Canucks, Linden owns property in Whistler and Westbank and, by all accounts, is as savvy in business as he is in hockey.

Sucker punch root of project

But West could represent a launch point for him, the start of a career outside the game.

He is one of four partners developing the 19-unit project and they make a fascinating foursome.

The project’s catalyst is former Kamloops Blazer junior Jeff Watchorn, although, specifically, the root of the development was a sucker punch he delivered to Jamie Linden, Trevor’s younger brother, during a Western Hockey League game 15 years ago.

“He played for Spokane and I played for Kamloops and he was involved in a fight with Chris Murray,” Watchorn, a 33-year-old investment adviser for CIBC Wood Gundy, recalls with a laugh. “Jamie got bent over the boards and into our bench. I had just got high-sticked in the mouth.

“[Kamloops coach] Tom Renney is behind the bench and he’s yelling ‘nobody touch him, nobody touch him.’ But I was bleeding out of my mouth and all of a sudden Jamie’s head is right there in front of me, so I popped him. I got a penalty and Renney benched me the rest of the game.

“Jamie never knew it was me until I told him when we met at a friend’s wedding [years later]. We just hit it off. We found out we lived in the same neighbourhood and he told me what he was up to, doing renovation work.”

The neighbourhood is part of Point Grey, “West Point Grey” as some of the locals call it.

Watchorn was a Richmond minor-hockey sensation who didn’t become the junior scoring star he was projected to be. He earned a business degree from the University of B.C. and after a failed pro hockey tryout with the minor-league Las Vegas Thunder — “As soon as they cut me, they signed Jamie” — Watchorn went to work in finance.

Eighteen months ago he purchased, with the help of a friend, the property on West 10th.

Watchorn had never done a development but was eager to try and said the parcel of land in his neighbourhood, two blocks from the University Endowment Lands and with views out the back to English Bay, was too good to pass up.

His first call was to Jamie, by then a good friend and skilled tradesman.

“I wanted to put together my dream team,” Watchorn says.

Jamie, 35, suggested they invite Trevor to be a partner, and his older brother knew a guy who could help — local architect and developer Howard Airey, whose Formwerks design and development firm has long been regarded as one of the city’s more progressive.

Airey, who grew up on the west side, liked the concept of building something beautiful and luxurious and lasting that would enrich the neighbourhood. It was the novice partners who gave him pause.

“I didn’t know Jeff and I only knew Jamie a little bit,” the 47-year-old architect says. “Trevor said to me: ‘If you do this, do the design and run the development, then I’m in.’ So I said: ‘If you can vouch for these other guys and tell me they’re stand-up guys, then I’m in.’

“I met Trevor three or four years ago. The first time I talked to him I could tell right away he had more than just a passing interest in design. He is very interested in design and I played hockey very badly. But I can do a little of what he does and he can do a little of what I do.

“He loves real estate. When we go for dinner, we talk a lot more about real estate and design than we do hockey.”

Airey, whose recent developments include Nine on the Park at UBC and Maison farther east on 10th, provides the expertise. Jamie Linden is acting as site manager. Watchorn and Trevor Linden are involved in all decisions.

In the design phase, the four of them visited every new high-end development they could access to see what they liked and what they didn’t. Out of this, to cite one example from Trevor, they decided the one-bedroom units of about 680 square feet should have collapsible, brushed-glass walls between the sleeping and living areas that would allow the space to open up.

“I went into this as a learning experience, to see how the business works,” Trevor says. “I wanted to be as hands-on as possible. It’s a good group of guys and it has been fun. It’s been fascinating to see how much goes into this, whether it be obtaining permits from the city or construction financing, deciding on layout.

“We really wanted this to be a building we could be proud of, so we spent a lot of time looking at ideas, looking at other suites around the city. We really wanted our specs to be high. To be honest, I’d rather have something to be proud of rather than just build something [to make money].”

A unique project

To those of us whose real-estate investment consists of making sure the paycheque is direct-deposited on time to feed the mortgage every two weeks, residential land development seems, well, entirely profit driven. Don’t developers pre-sell what they can for working capital, build as cheaply as possible, then sell what’s left for as much as they can to squeeze every nickel out of the project?

“Some do,” Airey says. “But at Formwerks, everything we’ve done is pretty unique and pretty neighbourhood oriented. At our meetings [for West], there’s not a lot of talk about the bottom line. We don’t want to lose money, but it’s more about trying to improve the community. It’s my neighbourhood, too. I grew up on the west side.

“When you have this many partners, there isn’t as much money to make for each person, anyway. It really is more of a passion.”

Watchorn explains: “Jamie and I live in the neighbourhood. I pass the building every day. A hundred years from now, long after we’re gone, that building will still be there. So we wanted to build something we’d be proud of and that the community would love.”

To that end, Watchorn says, the building will have a weathered brick facade and other heritage touches, “tumbled quartz” counters, glass-block backsplashes, Miele appliances, handmade cabinets and top-end flooring.

Eighteen months into the project, the group plans to start selling units about a month from now. Prices will range from the high-$400,000s to over $1 million for the 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom penthouse suites with the best views of the ocean and mountains.

“We all love this neighbourhood,” Jamie Linden says, looking north from what will be a third-floor balcony. “You can see Jeff’s house just over there. We didn’t want to do anything subpar. [When developers] pre-sell, they often build cheap, cheap, cheap and just get it done, make their money. We didn’t want do that.

“This is an investment you can see, something you can get excited about. It’s not like investing in a stock; you can’t go to someone and say, ‘Hey, look at my stock. Isn’t it great?’ This is different.”

The Lindens’ grandfather, Nick, started a construction company in Medicine Hat decades ago and their dad, Lane, took it over in 1979.

“I was in my dad’s shop when I was five years old,” Jamie says. “I remember welding when I was six. My dad bought us a car at auction once just so we could take it apart. We couldn’t drive and when we were done, every piece went in the scrap heap. But we got to take it apart and see how everything worked.”

Jamie scuffled around the professional minor leagues for five seasons before turning to construction seven years ago. His first big project was his own: he bought a century-old Point Grey house and completely renovated it.

“My dad came out to see it,” he says. “Nothing had been done to the house. He looked at it and said: ‘You paid $480,000 for this? What a piece of s—.’ That was in 2000. [ Trevor and I] were sort of brought up the same way and have the same outlook, although he’s more conservative.”

Trevor says the brothers don’t bicker because “I do whatever Jamie tells me.”

Airey says it’s easy to see in meetings that his partners, all intensity and enthusiasm and respectful of one another, have spent much of their lives on hockey teams.

Linden even spent one evening on Airey’s beer league team, the Formwerks Hornets.

“Trevor came out and ran one of our practices,” he says. “The guys didn’t know he was coming, so you could imagine their faces when he walked into the dressing room. We did offer him a contract this summer, but he wanted free parking. That was the deal-breaker.”

Front office with Canucks?

Linden, of course, eventually re-signed with the Canucks after a frustrating summer of waiting. It’s a one-year deal for $600,000 US, plus bonuses. Given Linden’s age and the ordeal of re-signing this time, it’s difficult to imagine he’ll play beyond next spring.

And apparently, the widely-held assumption that Linden will slide upon retirement into a front-office job with the Canucks is untrue.

The NHL lockout that scuttled the 2004-05 season forced Linden, the Players’ Association president who engineered the settlement that for this year calls for a staggering $50.3-million-US salary cap, to think about life beyond hockey.

“One of the things that I got from the lockout, grinding over revenue definitions for days and days and days, is I really enjoyed working with so many sharp business people on our side and some bright people on the other side,” Linden says. “And I felt I had a good grasp of things. That was eye-opening to me. It was like a door opening.

“I’ve been so lucky to be involved in the game. It’s been great for me. But I’ve always felt like doing something independent of the game. To do something creative would be neat, something other than just Trevor Linden, the Hockey Player. I admire the guys who have gone on and done something in other areas. Whatever avenue I take, it’s going to be something I feel passionate about.”

And as he said it, Linden’s passion for his contribution to Mayberry was obvious. Maybe they’ll sell ice cream from one of the ground-floor stores. Why wouldn’t Linden be passionate about building?

As Watchorn says: “Real estate is Vancouver‘s other sport.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Deep underground in one of Vancouver’s most renowned hotels bustles an army of employees serving the guests who stay for a meal, stay for a night — and each other

Denise Ryan
Sun

Enter the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, walk its luxurious carpeted hallways and you’ll get what you pay for — a deluxe stay in the style of what’s called, in the industry, “grand hotel.”

It’s probably as close as any of us will ever get to experiencing how the other half lives.

Polished surfaces. Triple-sheeted beds. Staff.

“Housekeepers” (they used to be called chambermaids) in black uniforms with crisp white aprons that discretely fold your discarded clothes, replace your towels and fluff your pillows.

Dinners that magically appear in your room on trolleys draped in white linen and served on plates covered in silver domes.

Every need and want discretely serviced.

But nothing is ever quite as it seems. Along with the famed ghost, the “lady in red” who is said to haunt a certain elevator, the hotel has its secrets.

In the elevator, you won’t run into a room service trolley or the huge carts that haul the sweaty bed linens, old newspapers and candy wrappers away from your room.

You won’t see the houseman delivering a baby’s crib to the suite where new parents have just checked in.

Staff come and go almost as invisibly as the ghostly lady in red.

Call it upstairs/downstairs, or front end/back end, there are two halves to this old-style hotel, and what you don’t see is, in some ways, more interesting that what you do.

Inside the hotel is another world — a maze of hidden hallways, rooms and elevators that is part command centre, part community centre. It’s a place employees call “the inner city.”

The inner city dips three levels below Burrard Street, houses, clothes and feeds up to 450 employees daily, and comes complete with its own private elevators, offices, change rooms, showers, lounges, kitchens — even a restaurant.

It is here, behind the scenes that the hotel really lives.

Its interior corridors hum with staff, and private service elevators lead to hidden doors that open discretely to the quiet halls of each floor.

The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver’s remarkable exterior face has been a fixture in the city since its completion in 1932 — a green roof made of oxidized copper, and carvings of griffins, flying horses and gargoyles adorn its walls. It was, until 1972, Vancouver‘s tallest building.

And, like its facade, the hotel’s massive city-within-a-hotel design is something — mostly due to the premium cost of space — newer hotels simply don’t have.

A full 35,100 square metres (390,000 sq. feet) are set aside for staff operations.

The hidden community

The way into this world is through a separate entrance close to the breezeway where the valets take guest car keys and usher them into the hotel’s “upstairs.”

At the bottom of the steps that lead to the “downstairs,” a huge billboard displays snapshots staff have taken of themselves celebrating holidays, birthdays and anniversaries.

In this subterranean world, the hallways are worn from the traffic of hundreds of feet. There is no plush carpeting. But there is something just as welcoming — a display of flags representing the 25-plus countries from which the staff hail.

Like domestic “downstairs” staff at an old manor, most of the workers, many of whom are immigrants, are more or less invisible. Guests only experience the comforts they provide. But in the colourful world behind the scenes, everyone has a role and no one is invisible.

Handpainted on the wall above the staff doorway is a sign that reads Through these doors the nicest people pass.

The day staff arrive each morning in two waves, one at 6 a.m., another at 11 a.m. For everyone on shift, the first stop is the uniform room.

Quyen Chaw, affectionately known as “Queenie,” presides over the large shop stocked with sewing machines, industrial presses and laundry.

Taped to the countertop is a friendly note asking staff to please not jump over the counter to grab their uniforms.

Rolling racks of crisp black dresses, white aprons, chef’s jackets, waiter’s black-and-whites and manager’s suits wait to be claimed, fitted or pressed.

In any given day Queenie, who immigrated from Saigon 20 years ago, will sew up a hem on a manager’s skirt, fix a stray button, even do a quick repair for a hotel client.

Queenie’s whole career has been conducted here, below ground and behind the scenes; she services those who service the guests, and she’s happy to do it.

“The people here are like family,” she says, her face splitting into a huge grin. “Better than my real family.”

That may be why, even after retirement, many employees return regularly to dine in the hidden interior restaurant, The Chattery, which is reserved just for staff.

The Chattery, run by its own full-time staff, serves up breakfast, snacks, coffee, hot and cold lunches, and dinners daily. At the Chattery, housekeepers, doormen, housemen, supervisors and managers break bread together.

There are monthly lunches themed to the staff’s different nationalities.

When there’s been a particularly good banquet upstairs, unfinished delicacies are brought down for staff.

Younger members of the 425-strong daily team chill out on leather sofas in a lounge beside the Chattery with a plasma TV and a couple of wired up computers for checking e-mail and surfing the Net.

There is even an internal daily newspaper listing events, VIP guests, weather, staff birthdays.

On the walls of the long hallways that snake maze-like through the subterranean city, a series of bright murals depict employees in all their aspects.

The murals were created by Peter Teo, who worked in the kitchen as a cook for 20 years, retired in 2005 and returned in 2006 to paint the walls.

Smiling broadly in the mural is executive chef Robert Le Crom.

Le Crom, who comes from France, is proud of all the kitchens he runs at the hotel — three main kitchens, plus prep areas — but the pastry kitchen where racks of cinnamon buns cool and a machine churns melted Callebout chocolate for the hand-dipped chocolates, is his pride and joy.

“Pastries are expensive to produce,” he explains, and his hotel is one of the only ones in the city that doesn’t outsource its cakes, croissants and chocolate.

“When you go outside, it all tastes the same, it’s mass production,” says Le Crom.

“Not only do we do it all ourselves, we do volume. Sometimes for a banquet, we do 800 creme brulee. It takes two people all afternoon to blowtorch the sugar on them.”

Le Crom sticks his finger in a chocolate mousse that’s been set aside for him.

“I taste everything. You’ve got to love food,” he says.

Like the rest of the staff, you won’t see Le Crom when you stay here.

Le Crom gestures around the huge kitchen where a chef cracks fresh lobster claws. “You won’t find a back-of-the-house like this one anywhere in the city. Space is too costly now. Staff have barely anywhere to move in the newer hotels.”

Le Crom oversees the 2,500 meals that are served in the hotel each day — he needs the space.

From the downstairs hallways, a private bank of elevators runs the staff up to each floor.

Each staff lift bears a nameplate over the door, and two are named for former staff members.

Louie’s Express is named after Louie Barillaro, a room service captain who started with the hotel in 1947, and retired in 1992.

Over his 45 years, Barillaro delivered 30 room service orders a day, five days a week. He died in 2006.

The Lady Frances is named for Frances Katrina Kay, the licensed operator of the elevator for 32 years, back when it was a manual system.

During her time as the elevator operator, Kay made at least 118,800 trips up and down her elevator car.

These staff elevators truck up the housekeepers and housemen, the room service attendants and the banquet waiters, letting them off at the hidden passageways that connect to the main hallways on each floor.

Irma Bazan, the assistant housekeeper, has worked at the hotel for 19 years, and hails from Peru. Bazan rides the elevators and walks the hidden corridors every day as she supervises all 40 room attendants, ensuring each room is spotless.

It’s one of the hardest jobs in the hotel, and one in which workers are more prone to injury. A 2006 study commissioned by the University of California at San Francisco showed that 75 per cent of hotel room keepers experience work-related pain.

Repetitive stress injuries are an issue for all hotel workers, says Laura Moyes, organizing director for Unite Here, Local 40, which represents 5,000 hotel workers, though not the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver’s employees.

“Higher thread-count sheets can add a pound per sheet; multiply that by three sheets per bed and 15 rooms per shift,” says Moyes. “There are more injuries to hotel workers than coal miners.”

Moyes says that muscular-skeletal disorders are common, and “housekeepers knees” can leave workers with permanent, painful blackspots on their knees.

Strength in numbers

Janice Yuen has been turning down bedsheets as a housekeeper for nine years since coming to Vancouver from Hong Kong.

“It’s a good job,” she says, “but not an easy one. I lost 20 pounds my first six months.”

Burnout is a problem among housekeepers, who truck trolleys laden with fresh towels, linens, toilet paper and cleaning supplies down the down the hallways.

Three times per shift a strong-armed houseman empties the linens from their trolleys, but even so, it’s a hard job, made easier by the occasional dollar bill slipped under a pillow by a customer.

Tips are less than they used to be, at least among Americans since 9/11, but for Yuen, it’s not all about tips.

“When I finish the room nicely, I feel very satisfied,” she says.

In banquets, it’s not unusual to find servers like Helen Cranage setting up to 1,000 tables for a dinner. After 17 years, prepping for and serving a dinner for hundreds or thousands doesn’t faze her.

“I’ve served Bryan Adams, Diana Krall and her family, Bill Clinton.”

She blushes at Clinton‘s name.

“He was very, very charming, very charismatic,” she says.

Serving celebs is one of the perks, says Cranage, who never expected she’d stay so long with the hotel.

But there there seems to be something that keeps the “downstairs” staff of this hotel coming back to work year after year. It may be the ultimate irony that in a hotel, where the visitors upstairs are transitory, the staff is enduring.

The answer could well lie within the walls of the “inner city,” a secret of our city, a place where whole lives are conducted, while upstairs, the guests come and go and eat and sleep, blissfully unaware.

– – –

FAIRMONT HOTEL VANCOUVER BY THE NUMBERS

Hotel’s stars: 4

How many royals have stayed here: 15

Times the Queen has dined at the hotel: 3

Chefs/cooks on shift each day: 40

Meals served each day: 2,500

Meals served in the Chattery each day: 475

Dishes washed in a day: 7,000

Scones baked in a day: 20 dozen

Light bulbs changed in a week: 154

Staff uniformed by Queenie per day: 300

Bed sheets used in a day: 3,500

Longest serving employee: John Giannis, chef de partie, on staff since 1969.

Cumulative years of service hotel staff has at present time: 5,807

© The Vancouver Sun 2007