Outside will retain its heritage character but inside, it’s beyond sleek
Jeani Read
Province
Shebeen is in a good spot. Photograph by : Wayne Leidenfrost, The Province
Parts of Goaler’s Mews will be retained Photograph by : Wayne Leidenfrost, The Province
In the kitchen everything but the smooth-top range and oven is built-in. Photograph by : Wayne Leidenfrost, The Province
These places are beyond sleek — they’re supernaturally Euro.
Everything’s built-in, including the bathrooms. A Phillippe Starke soaker tub and rain shower are pocketed behind translucent-glass sliding doors that also conceal Starke-designed powder-room pieces right next door.
In the kitchen, the only major appliance visible is the smooth glass-top range and built-in oven — the dishwasher and high-end fridge are disguised behind cupboard doors.
And built-in cabinetry makes up the hallway walls.
“It’s the principle of borrowed space,” says developer Robert Fung of The Salient Group. “It’s extremely tailored. Everything disappears when you want it to.”
The borrowed-space principle means all the rooms are bigger than — well, bigger than they are, if that’s possible. That bed on the floor plan that looks like it’s right up against the hall? When you’re tucked in, looking across that hall to your beautiful built-in cabinets, it will FEEL like a big bedroom.
Everything overlaps. Rooms and halls use each other’s space to make more space. Staggered and vaulted ceilings and recessed lighting also contribute to the airy “Terminus experience,” as the designers call it. “People live in volume, they don’t live in floor plans,” says Fung.
And the best part of this amazingly contemporary design work by Salient, the architects at Acton Ostry and the hot design firm Evoke is that it’s sitting smack in the heart of old Gastown, on Water Street, halfway down the block from Maple Tree Square. In a way, the location’s age dictated the fresh new design take.
Each floorplan (of 46 homes, 619 sq. ft. to 1,619 sq. ft, $350,000 to $1,500,000) had to be so linear because the site was so long and narrow. Salient was limited to the shell of the historic Terminus Hotel plus the wrecked, next-door Grand Hotel.
Restoring the facades and building the Terminus condos is part of three major projects that are going to restore the block up to The Alhambra on the corner, the first building to go up after Vancouver’s big fire of 1896.
And that’s only part of what’s happening in Gastown, which is at a “big turning point,” says Scott Hawthorn, a board member of the Gastown Business Improvement Society (GBIS) and personally involved in two buildings.
The long-awaited Woodward’s redevelopment is expected to bring a stability to the area and more and more developments are in the works to bring the neglected neighbourhood to life.
The idea is, really, that new residents will support more businesses and edgy, one-of-a-kind retailers like Richard Kidd, Modern Kid and Livestock will once again make Gastown a destination spot for Vancouverites.
Why now? “The big reality in the city is the downtown is built-out and Gastown is next,” says Hawthorne. “The economy is pushing east and we’re on the radar.”
Jon Stovell, past president of the GBIS, has been converting warehouses into live-work spaces since the mid-1990s. The turn of the millennium was a low point, he says, but things have turned around big-time. Three elements — the Vancouver Agreement to improve the streetscape, the rise in the real-estate market and new heritage incentives — created the positive push.
“Now there are 25 heritage projects in the queue,” he says. “People used to say, ‘Eeeuw, Gastown.’ Now they say, ‘Wow. How can I get in? What can I buy?”
Turns out, not much any more.
Sean Heather, owner of four Gastown businesses, including Irish Heather and Shebeen Whiskey Bar, says he moved here nine years ago because it was all he could afford.
“I toughed it out and now it’s very competitive. There’s nothing left to buy and, when something comes up, the prices are through the roof. I like to say it’s the new Main Street but the buildings look better.”
“The dynamic is different from Yaleown, which was all warehouses and then synthesized in 10 years,” says Salient’s Fung. “Here you can feel the evolution.”
Terminus starts selling April 13. For reservations or more info, go to www.thesalientgroup.com.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
