Province

The squeeze is being put on Coal Harbour floatplane operators due to pending development of the new waterfront convention centre in Vancouver.
   As a result, a temporary solution is required to maintain their valuable and efficient service from the downtown business district.
   Through no fault of their own, floatplane operators have been caught in a recent waterfront development controversy caused by our federal and provincial governments.
   As a tax-paying Vancouverite, I whole-heartedly support their position for temporary quarters in the Westin Bayshore> Hotel area and strongly urge city officials to approve their pending proposal for these temporary quarters.
   This industry is an asset to the city and requires our support. Harbour-to-harbour air service is essential, especially with our provincial political centre located in Victoria.
   I view the noise from residents near the temporary site to be NIMBY-ism at best, which is far more aggravating than the ambient noise of the nearby vibrant working harbour.
   GREG KENSICK, Vancouver
   Flyovers too noisy
   I have lived in the Kitsilano area for more than 30 years and have seen a marked increase in the number of floatplanes flying the north-south route from Coal Harbour to Vancouver International Airport.
   In talking to hundreds of residents about this, one of the biggest complaints has been the amount of noise generated by these floatplanes and the unwillingness of Transport Canada to do anything.
   Sixty flights a day over the same area, subjecting residents to an unwarranted amount of noise, is too much.
   I agree that moving next to a freeway and then complaining about the traffic is ridiculous, but this is about sustained noise that long-term residents of certain Vancouver neighbourhoods have had to put up with for too long.
   Should 18 hours of flights every day over the same area be considered an acceptable part of city living?
   BRIAN J. PRICE,
   Vancouver
I support temporary move
   As a regular user of Harbour Air, travelling to both Nanaimo and Victoria, I wish to indicate my support for the temporary move of the existing floatplane base during construction of Vancouver’s convention centre.
   For what seems to be a NIMBY reaction, it would not seem reasonable to further inconvenience the thousands of citizens a year who use these good services.
   We all live in a great urban setting which comes with some inconveniences.
   As far as I know, the floatplanes only fly during daylight hours. I can’t imagine the reaction if I, a resident of False Creek, were to complain about those helicopter flights that fly over my apartment on their way to Vancouver General Hospital at any time, night or day.
   KENNETH STEWART,
   Vancouver

Province

Not only does Vancouver‘s harbour house one of North America‘s largest international shipping ports, it’s also home to one of B.C.’s busiest airports where floatplane facilities handle up to 150 flights daily during peak seasons.

In fact, more than 300,000 passengers annually are carried through the Coal Harbour floatplane terminal which is served by operators Harbour Air, West Coast Air and Baxter Aviation.

Together, they play a vital role in B.C.’s economy by carrying business, resource and provincial government employees from Vancouver to points throughout the province as well as by providing tourist services.

But the floatplanes have hit turbulence. Their future is uncertain now that some nearby waterfront residents are raising concerns about a proposed temporary relocation of the terminal 260 metres west of the existing terminal for the next three years while the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project (VCCEP) is built.

The convention centre plan calls for the floatplane terminal to be part of the new facility. But even though the floatplanes must vacate the existing facility within weeks to enable construction to begin, they still haven’t received approval to relocate at the temporary facility.

That decision, which should have been made long ago, will be finalized tomorrow when the City of Vancouver‘s development permit board rules on the airlines’ request to relocate. The airlines fear the city will side with the small, vocal band of residents in the newly-built Coal Harbour apartments and condos who don’t want the floatplanes locating near their waterfront properties.

According to reports, those citizens are prepared to take a “guns blazing” approach to tomorrow’s meeting and are contemplating legal action to block the move.

We urge them to cool their jets and look at the bigger picture.

It’s in everyone’s interest for the centre expansion to take place and to include a new floatplane terminal. Both the VCCEP and the city have done the harbour’s floatplane sector a serious disservice by prolonging the uncertainty. It’s a temporary move, by the way, that will cost the three airlines about $1 million but the mid-harbour take-off and landings location will not change.

Residents must keep in mind that the Port of Vancouver is, and always has been, a working harbour — not a seaside resort.

If common sense prevails, residents and workers should be able to co-exist for mutual benefit.

IN BRIEF

Computers are now a form of electronic fast food. There is little to feed the imagination or challenge the intellect. They’re not about substance or involvement.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

The problem is there is no master list of when the first houses built in the city

John Mackie
Sun

Driving down Alexander Street just east of Gastown, you come across an unusual sight: two old houses in the middle of a fairly bleak, semi-industrial zone.

The house at 412 Alexander is quite striking, with an elegant arched balcony on the second floor. It’s got a bit of a Wild West Victorian look, and may be the only house with this design in the Lower Mainland, if not the province.

At first sight, the house next door at 414 Alexander isn’t nearly as impressive. The roof lines and bay window hint that it may be quite old, but most of its original features have been hidden under drab green asbestos shingles.

Finding vintage photos of old houses is a daunting task — they’re incredibly rare, and even if they do exist, can be hard to locate. But the Vancouver Archives has a photo of 414 Alexander, and it’s mind-blowing.

The house is incredibly ornate, with gingerbread, fretwork and finials galore. It has a very nifty second storey balcony, stylish arches over the second-storey windows and a square lookout tower at its peak. If it was still intact, it would arguably be the nicest Victorian house left in the city of Vancouver.

But that’s only part of its appeal. Water records show 414 Alexander was water application number 10 — the 10th building in the city of Vancouver to be hooked up to the city’s water system.

By contrast, the two 1888 houses thought to be the oldest in the city — 1380 Hornby and 1160 Comox — were water applications number 2912 and 2317, respectively. Which means that 414 Alexander just might be the Holy Grail of local heritage buffs — the oldest house in the city of Vancouver.

Then again, it might not. In the 1880s and 1890s, houses were often built before they were hooked up to the water supply. Moreover, every time someone makes a claim that a certain house is the oldest, someone seems to unearth another one.

For years, everyone thought the 1888 Leslie House at 1380 Hornby (now Umberto’s restaurant) was the city’s oldest house.

Then Blair Petrie of the Mole Hill Housing Society found that 1160 Comox (which is in Mole Hill) was also built in 1888. Writer Bruce McDonald found another 1888 cottage at 243 East Fifth, although it has now been moved.

The problem is there is no master list of when houses were built in Vancouver. Many records have also disappeared, either tossed out or destroyed in a fire. There are some property tax records for 1887 to 1889, for example, but after that all of Vancouver‘s property tax rolls up to the 1920s have been lost. City directories can also be kind of fuzzy: addresses appear and disappear, and listings can be quite odd (an 1893 listing for 810 Oppenheimer street reads “Old Joe”).

Finding out how old a house is involves a bit of detective work, and imagination. You have to cross-reference all sorts of things, from directories to water records to fire insurance and “bird’s eye view” maps that theoretically document all the houses in the city.

Heritage enthusiasts even rummage in walls and behind pocket doors for newspapers that may have been stashed away when a house was built.

This actually works. Directory listings for a house at 1150 Haro don’t start until 1903, but water records show it was hooked up to the water supply in 1889. Behind the pocket doors the owner found some 1889 and 1890 newspapers, one of which had an ad for a house at 50 Haro — the house’s first address.

One of the best sources is a photo.

Heritage expert John Atkin has another contender for oldest house honours – the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement mission at 385 East Cordova. The house has been covered in stucco and expanded, but if you look at the top of the house and the roof line, it’s definitely an old Victorian: it still has its original fish scale and geometric pattern shingles.

Atkin bases his argument on an 1887 photo taken from Jackson Avenue near Hastings street, looking west towards Gastown. The photo is so old that Hastings Street is still unpaved, because it’s just been cleared.

Just off the corner of Cordova and Dunlevy is a house that looks like 385 East Cordova. Unfortunately, another house partly obscures the structure.

The water records show that 385 East Cordova was application number 415, which means it was hooked up in 1889. This is the same year 414 Alexander was connected. (412 Alexander dates to 1898.)

The water supply seems to have started on Alexander and then moved south into the city: The first 10 houses hooked up were all on Alexander, beginning with Hastings Mill manager Richard Alexander’s house at 300 Alexander (he’s the Alexander in Alexander Street).

This makes sense, because the main industry in Vancouver‘s pre-1886 history was the Hastings Mill, which was founded on the waterfront at the foot of Dunlevy in 1865. Alexander is the first street south from the old mill site, and many prominent early business and civic leaders lived there, including Henry Bell-Irving.

Alexander’s house cost $6,000 to build in 1888, a fortune in those days. But the bluebloods moved to the West End in a few years. Alexander became a major residential street for Japantown around 1909 (most of the directory listings simply read “Japanese”), and enjoyed a brief bit of infamy as a red light district around 1912.

The 500 block was the centre of the action. The 1914 directory lists names like Dollie Darlington, Ruth Richards, Rona Graham, Mildred Hill, Louise Brown, Margaret Earl, Doris Miller, Pearl Gray, Eva Richards and Anna Hill, all in a row.

The handsome two-storey brick rooming house that still exists at 500 Alexander/120 Jackson seems to have been built as a brothel by Dollie Darlington in 1912. Things cooled down by 1916, when the ladies’ names disappear (although several addresses were listed as “sailors home,” which could be a code name for another type of business).

In any event, trying to ascertain whether 385 East Cordova or 414 Alexander is the oldest house requires a bit of guesswork, because the addresses on both East Cordova and Alexander seem to have changed. Even the street names have changed: until 1897, East Cordova was called Oppenheimer street, after Vancouver‘s second mayor, David Oppenheimer.

Cross-referencing the directories and the water records, it looks like 385 East Cordova was originally 333 Oppenheimer. The first occupant was Richard Plunkett Cooke, along with his “domestic,” Miss Polly Belmont. The address 385 East Cordova shows up in the 1902 directory, when 333 East Cordova disappears.

It looks like 414 Alexander was originally 430 Alexander, and the first occupants were carpenter Thomas John Dales, Miss Florence Dales and Murdock McDonald. The first mention of 414 Alexander is in1892, when builder George Cary lived there. The 430 Alexander address disappeared at this time.

But while the address changed, the legal description of the lots didn’t. Thankfully some property tax records from 1887 to 1889 exist, although they were written in longhand, and some names are indecipherable.

Using this method, we find that 385 Oppenheimer had improvements of $1,500 in 1888, which means it had a fairly substantial building — the house in the 1887 photo. But there were no improvements at 414 Alexander, which means it probably wasn’t built until 1889.

There were also no improvements on the 1888 property tax rolls to the lot at 1380 Hornby where Umberto’s restaurant now sits, which means it isn’t as old as 385 Oppenheimer, either. The same goes for 1160 Comox, and 243 East 5th.

They all probably date to 1888 or 1889, but 385 Oppenheimer (385 East Cordova) was there in 1887, maybe even earlier. The Great Fire of June 13, 1886 was supposed to have burned itself out just before Dunlevy Street, and 385 East Oppenheimer/Cordova is on the corner of Oppenheimer and Dunlevy.

Glancing over the old property records, though, I made a startling discovery: the name J.B. Henderson turned up, with $600 in improvements to his property in 1888.

Looking back at the old directories, I found Henderson listed at 502 Alexander street in 1888. A small turquoise house still bears that address, although it’s hard to spot from the street because it’s hidden behind some trees and sandwiched in-between rooming houses at 500 and 508 Alexander.

The two-storey house is very bare bones, with none of the elaborate features or detailing on the houses in the 400 block Alexander. It’s more of a worker’s special, almost a cottage — the kind of place a millworker at Hastings Mill would have lived in.

Alas, the 1887 property tax records for both 385 East Cordova and 502 Alexander have been lost, and there are no 1887 directory listings for either Richard Cooke or J.B. Henderson. But heritage consultant Don Luxton does have a story from the Dec. 31, 1888 Vancouver World newspaper that says Henderson has just finished building his house on Alexander that year.

Given the evidence of the 1887 photo, this means 385 East Cordova is probably the oldest house in the city of Vancouver.

Oddly, 385 East Cordova isn’t on Vancouver‘s heritage registry, probably because the people who compiled the registry in the mid-1980s didn’t realize how old it was. Heritage activists have said for years that the registry needs updating, because many significant buildings like this were missed.

The small house at 502 Alexander is on the registry, but it’s a heritage C, the lowest of the city’s three rankings. It shares a lot with 500 Alexander, which is rated a heritage B. Neither 414 Alexander or 412 Alexander are on the heritage registry.

IRVING HOUSE IN NEW WESTMINSTER IS THE OLDEST HOUSE IN THE REGION:

The oldest house in Vancouver is not the oldest house in the Lower Mainland. That honour belongs to Irving House in New Westminster, which dates to 1865.

To put this in perspective, Irving House was built two years before Canada became a country, and six years before British Columbia joined Confederation. It was occupied during the last year of the American Civil War. It is also 22 years older than the oldest house in the city of Vancouver.

New Westminster, of course, is much older than Vancouver. It was founded in 1859, when the B.C. mainland was in the throes of the Fraser River Gold Rush. Vancouver wasn’t officially incorporated until 1886.

Capt. William Irving was born in Scotland and worked on river boats in California and Oregon before moving to B.C. in 1858.

New Westminster historian Archie Miller says Irving and his partner Alexander Murray built the first two steamboats in B.C., which he named the Governor Douglas and the Colonel Moody after two of colonial B.C.’s most prominent citizens, James Douglas and Richard Moody.

Irving‘s house was built in the “San Francisco Gothic” style, and made extensive use of California redwood. It was built at the top of a hill overlooking the Fraser River and New West’s downtown.

Houses of similar vintage were torn down over the years, but Irving House survived because Irving‘s descendants lived in the house until 1950, when they sold it to the city of New Westminster.

New West turned Irving House into a museum. Because Irving‘s family had remained in the house, a lot of Irving‘s original furniture remains in the house. Miller says the front parlours actually have their original wallpaper.

Miller ran Irving House for 26 years. It is set up exactly the way William Irving and his family would have lived in the 1860s. “The comments we used to get [from visitors] were that it looked as if the family had just gotten up and walked out, which is what we tried to do,” he says.

Irving says New Westminster still has a couple of other buildings from the 1860s, the 1863 St. Andrews Presbyterian Church and the 1865 St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church.

The oldest building in the Lower Mainland is the old Hudson Bay storehouse in Fort Langley, which dates to 1840. The oldest building in Vancouver — the old Hastings Mills store — was built in 1865 and moved to a park at Alma and Point Grey Road in the 1930s.

Heritage consultant Don Luxton has done heritage inventories for numerous municipalities in the Lower Mainland, and just finished a heritage list for Gastown. He says the oldest buildings in Gastown date to 1886, and are both on the south side of Carrall and Water: 200 Carrall (which houses the Loft Six nightclub) and 203 Carrall, which is right beside the Gassy Jack statue in Maple Tree Square. Luxton says there are are also some houses from the 1870s scattered here and there, including the 1873 “Navvy Jack” house at 1768 Argyle Ave. in West Vancouver. But it’s been so altered it’s hard to see the original house.

Out in Langley, the descendants of a man named Henry Benson still occupy the farmhouse he built at 3610-72nd St. in 1874. Benson’s farmhouse was expanded in 1889 and has been covered in vinyl siding, but aside from that it looks pretty much the same as it would have looked in the 19th century.

Source: John Mackie

Ran with fact box “Irving House in New Westminster Is the Oldest House in the Region”, which has been appended to the end of the story.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Charlie Anderson
Province

Opponents of a temporary westward move of Coal Harbour‘s float planes are vowing to bury the permit process under a mountain of lawsuits, appeals and injunctions.

West Coast Air, Baxter Air and Harbour Air appear before city council on Sept. 21 seeking permission to move their operations 260 metres westwards, pending the building of the new Vancouver Convention Centre.

The move is supposed to be temporary, but opponents fear that, in the absence of any concrete future plan for the float planes from the convention centre, that move may be permanent.

Doug McClelland of the Coal Harbour Resident’s Association says the temporary float-plane home should be on the east side of Canada Place. Residents, marina and water users have collected a large war chest and McClelland promises the permit process will be tied up with appeals, injunctions and lawsuits until the float-plane operators move there.

“They’re being told by the convention centre that they have to be out by Thanksgiving. Well, there’s no way,” said McClelland. “It’s not over until we win.”

McClelland insists he’s not against float planes in Coal Harbour or at the new convention centre. But he says the temporary location will be in front of condo owners and will congest already narrow waterways in western Coal Harbour.

Meanwhile the float-plane operators feel they’ve been pushed to the sidelines in the planning of the new convention centre, scheduled to open the summer of 2008.

“Instead of being part of the development, we’re kind of an add-on,” said Greg McDougall of Harbour Air.

The operators say independent studies show the move wouldn’t impact the area negatively and that provisions can be made to handle increased traffic in the area.

“We see ourselves as being so vital to the transportation of business and government in this province that there will be an accommodation for us,” McDougall said.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

Matthew Ramsey
Sun

A contentious plan to widen Highway 1 between Vancouver and Langley and to twin the Port Mann Bridge will be accelerated, Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon says.

Falcon told The Province that consultation on the estimated $800-million project will begin this fall with the hope it will be finished by 2010.

Highway 1 would become an eight-lane freeway between 1st Avenue in Vancouver and 200th Street in Langley under the plan.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Falcon said.

He pointed to a federal study that showed the Port Mann Bridge will be clogged by rush-hour intensity traffic for 18 hours a day within the next five years.

“We’ve got to think about what the reality of population growth will mean to traffic congestion,” Falcon said.

He said traffic congestion costs the B.C. economy about $1.5 billion each year.

When the plan was first announced in June it was blasted by environmental groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation as one that does nothing to reduce air pollution.

In late July, the Greater Vancouver Regional District voted to ask the government to ease back on the plan until a full environmental assessment was done.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan noted that the GVRD’s Livable Region Strategy runs contrary to the highway expansion plan by calling for a reduction in the amount of development in the Fraser Valley and an increase in development in areas, or “nodes,” served by public transit.

Those two measures would better address burgeoning traffic issues from the Fraser Valley to Vancouver than building a bigger Highway 1, he said.

“I’m disappointed,” said Corrigan. “I think we should be working together. This is likely going to bring a lot more traffic into the cities . . . these decisions should not be made on the back of a matchbox cover.”

Falcon admitted “you cannot build your way out of congestion completely,” but said the government’s support of the RAV line and other public-transit expansions indicates the provincial commitment to a multi-pronged approach to reducing congestion.

As for the objections of mayors such as Corrigan, New Westminster Mayor Wayne Wright and Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who has called the plan “ludicrous,” Falcon said the provincial government will hear all of their concerns as consultation gets under way later this fall.

“I will certainly work as hard as I can to build as much consensus as I can,” he said.

Local government supporters of the proposal include Langley Township Mayor Kurt Alberts.

[email protected]

HIGHWAY 1 NUMBERS

– Traffic on Highway 1 at 200th Street in Langley increased by 13 per cent between 1996 and 2003 to 85,000 vehicles a day.

– 127,000 vehicles a day crossed the Port Mann Bridge in 2003, up from 77,000 in 1985.

– 32 per cent of westbound vehicles exit at Cape Horn, 19 per cent go into Vancouver, and 6.5 per cent go over the Ironworker’s Memorial (Second Narrows) Bridge.

Source: Greater Vancouver

Transportation Authority

© The Vancouver Province 2004

Province

Plan to move float planes
I am writing in response to the plan to move the float planes in Coal Harbour.
First of all, when the people complaining about the float planes bought in Coal Harbour, did they not realize there was floatplane traffic in the harbour? Did they assume the planes would just stop once they bought there?
It is reminiscent of the people complaining about the air traffic out at the airport when the airport had been there for decades before these people moved into the neighbourhood.
Also, there are the people complaining about noise at the ferry terminal. It has been there for 40 years, and some of these people have only lived in the area for a short period.
When people buy property, are they not aware of the goings on in the area or are they oblivious to what happens?
I know that, when I am looking at moving into a new neighbourhood, I become very aware of the surroundings — is there a freeway beside my house, dumpster divers, planes or ferries blowing their horns?
It amazes me that in this day and age people are still trying to change the neighbourhood they move into after they have moved when the float planes or airports or ferry terminals have been there for many decades.
CAL FROST, Horseshoe Bay
Those high-rises were not there when those float planes were landing there many years ago.
I grew up in Vancouver and downtown has always had float planes. You always heard them flying over. That’s part of living in the big city.
Those people knew that when they bought those condos. If they don’t like the noise, move far away from anything. Then, they can complain about the birds squawking.
It seems people have nothing better to do than move in and want to change everything.

CASEY BRAMHOFF,
Burnaby

©The Vancouver Province 2004

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Golden Ears affects land values on both sides of the Fraser

Michael McCullough
Sun

It won’t be finished for another four years, but the planned Golden Ears Bridge is already affecting land development on both sides of the Fraser River.

In heavily industrialized north Langley, it’s forcing some companies to relocate to make way for the bridge’s approach.

But the biggest changes are expected in relatively pastoral Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, where the market for industrial land is already heating up.

“On both sides of that bridge you have industrial land,” explained Malcolm Earle, an industrial sales and leasing agent with Colliers International in Vancouver. But there the similarities end.

The south side is essentially built out, Earle said. Occasionally a parcel here or there comes up for sale, at prices averaging $575,000 an acre. But a very large manufacturer or distribution centre has nowhere to go. The vacancy rate stands at about one per cent.

On the north side, by contrast, prices average $300,000-$400,000 an acre and there is raw land for the taking, already zoned for industrial use. In the year before TransLink committed itself to the bridge project this spring, vacancies rose to 8.1 per cent.

It’s not difficult to imagine what’s going to happen, Earle said. With the bridge, suddenly Maple Ridge becomes a viable option for industrial users seeking large plots of land. It becomes easier to move materials in and out of the area, as well as attract employees from other parts of the Lower Mainland.

Colliers is marketing a vacant 90,000-square-foot waterfront building in the municipality.

“There has been a heightened amount of interest because of the bridge,” Earle said. “We all know it’s a reality now.”

The Golden Ears Bridge will cross the Fraser at the 200th Street north-south alignment. It is expected to have six lanes and feature tolls of $2 to $3 for passenger cars. TransLink plans to announce a winning bid in November from among three consortia vying for the $600-million contract. The builder will also operate and maintain the bridge for a period of 20 years.

An economic impact study commissioned by TransLink from Hudema Consulting Ltd. and TyPlan Consulting Ltd. last year suggested that the crossing would boost the rate of population growth in Maple Ridge to 2.9 per cent per year, from 2.2 per cent currently. That will in turn increase residential property values by $332 million.

The crossing will also result in the creation of an additional 800 businesses on either side of the river by 2021 — 370 in Maple Ridge, 172 in Surrey, 155 in the township of Langley, and 44 in Pitt Meadows, the report predicted. Commercial building space will expand by an estimated 1.1 million square feet more than it would without the road link, with half of that growth concentrated in Maple Ridge.

Rainer Weininger, owner-manager of Re/Max Ridge-Meadows Realty, said TransLink’s commitment to the bridge has generated both interest from investors and calls from homeowners worried that it will obstruct their views.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” he said.

Overall, however, he has no doubt the bridge will accelerate the rise in property values.

While some lament possible loss of Maple Ridge’s small-town character, Weininger said that would happen regardless as suburbia spreads east of Vancouver.

“On our side of the river, there is nowhere to go except Maple Ridge,” he said.

He is confident there will continue to be rural acreage available in the community, although growth nodes such as Albion and Silver Valley will gradually be transformed from rural to residential areas.

The district of Maple Ridge is in the midst of reviewing its official community plan with the certainty of the bridge looming large over potential changes to land use, said director of public works and development Frank Quinn.

Planners will also have to consider surveys that suggest residents strongly value the rural character of much of the municipality, Quinn said.

WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU CROSS THE FRASER:

Development-related impacts of the $600-million Golden Ears Bridge

Number of new businesses 800

Number of new homes 7,100

Residential property value increase $332 million

Added commercial space (by 2021) 1.1 million sq. feet

Bridge construction related employment (person years) 6,600

Source: TransLink

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Like a bad fashion trend, dust and other irritants that come with renovating just never seem to go away

Karen Gram
Sun

Eighth in a series about Karen Gram’s kitchen renovation. She’s in the zone — the construction zone. Last week, she watched the carpenters demolish everything recognizable in the room. Now, acting as her own contractor, she’s coordinating the reconstruction.

– – –

I hate the chaos, the dust and the realization that I can’t expect the subtrades to be mind-readers, able to do my bidding without clear instructions.

Nuclear annihilation is worse, I am told, but living in a construction zone is way up there in terms of stress. And in ground zero, also known as our kitchen, I’ve already identified a couple of enemy agents.

We have it better than many, however. We have a kitchen in the basement and don’t have to wash the dishes in the bathtub or cook everything on the barbecue. We even managed to move the portable dishwasher downstairs.

But like the evil organization that constantly bested Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 in the 1960s TV classic Get Smart, chaos is getting the better of me. Nothing is where it belongs.

Although we have put some things away in the cupboards downstairs, very little is in a place that makes sense. I can never find anything. And worse, it’s a small kitchen, no match for all the stuff we had crammed in upstairs. It’s far more cluttered than what we had upstairs and that was too much for me. I feel antsy just entering the room.

I also feel great sympathy for our former tenants, who had to live with the terrible lighting system we provided, a sink and faucet that is totally dysfunctional and a stove top that works only half the time. We actually thought it was a pretty good rental space. Now, in their shoes, our feet hurt.

Then there is the dust — ubiquitous hardly describes it. It’s like a bad fashion trend. You can’t believe how ugly it looks, you think it won’t last long and you try to ignore it. But then you start to wear it!

It didn’t take long before I was wearing it in my hair, on my shoes, on big hand prints on my jeans. “This is bad,” I thought to myself. Especially since I wasn’t the only one wearing that dust. We all were leaving our mark wherever we went.

I figured getting away would help, so I packed up the kids and took off for the islands for a week. We had a marvelous time, kibitzing with my siblings, their spouses and kids, my dad and stepmom. We barely mentioned the kitchen, so laid-back were we. My husband Brian was supposed to come, but since we are the contractors, one of us had to wait for the electrician and come three days later.

It was on our return that I realized that, like trucker hats (a fashion trend my daughter Yette has just adopted), ignoring the dust doesn’t work. Sooner or later, it’s going to be in your face.

I became a veritable clean bee, mopping, wiping and vacuuming like mad. I felt super-virtuous, but also defeated. This was an enemy I doubted I could beat. It would always be lurking in the corners waiting for me.

In my hurried rounds before all the holiday gear came back into the house, all I could manage was to clean our regular pathways. So I insisted we stop traipsing through the construction dust on our way to other rooms. The kitchen is out of bounds unless you are a worker or are showing a worker around.

Now we have new pathways, complicated ones that go downstairs just to go upstairs, but it has made a huge difference. Except that the drywaller comes this week. We’ll be washing the walls so the tape holding up the plastic dust barrier holds this time. We will be vigilant. But we will be defeated, I just know it.

Being the general contractor has been interesting. It’s all about keeping the subtrades happy. For example, the electrician — or “Sparky,” as our Kiwi carpenter calls him — doesn’t want to have to cut through any drywall. He doesn’t want to have to go digging for wires and he wants to know exactly where his boxes are supposed to go. The more prepared we are for him, the quicker (and cheaper) he can do his job and the happier both parties are. Nothing ticks off a subtrade more than showing up for a job that isn’t ready for him.

Always ask the subtrade what he or she needs, advised Gerry (our behind-the-scenes contracting expert) before he went on vacation. Then make sure you do it.

General contracting takes a lot of phone calls — bringing in the subtrades to look at the job, hiring them, giving them advance warning that they are soon to be needed, talking to them afterwards, calling back for any missed jobs or repairs. Most seem to want a couple of days’ notice, but I am learning to ask. And I am still in the early stages. I’ve still got the flooring guy, the painter, the tiler and the glazier to work with. I sure hope I can hold up my end.

Brian has been working up a sweat correcting our small and medium-sized miscalculations. So far, he has saved us a bundle and kept us on schedule.

We’re still due to be done, or almost done, by Aug. 27, just five weeks from demolition day. It could be worse.

I am having fun with the interior decoration, thanks to Rachel Brown of Simple, a Main Street interior design shop.

I am a novice when it comes to using the services of an interior designer. Now I know that more than just having good taste, interior designers are great shoppers. They know where the good stuff is and where it costs less. Sometimes they get discounts and sometimes, like at Simple, they pass them on to us.

Brown knew where to go for tiles (we wanted a bit of irregularity, so she got samples of handmade ones from Bullnose Tile and Stone on West Tenth) and lights (Light The Store is a great store with a great name on Cambie, where they have Canadian-made designer lights).

She had good advice about faucets and drawer handles and she had a knack for putting everything together to make it work. But she never imposed a style or a design. She just helped us figure out our own.

Now if I could just get out of this war — I mean, construction — zone so I could concentrate on all those pretty things.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004

Each move generates about $20,000 in related economic activity, a study has found

Michael McCullough
Sun

When a realtor friend told Jack Herrity that every home sale generated around $30,000 in economic activity, the Ottawa banker scoffed. So you move house — you pay your lawyer, you pay your taxes, the agents get their commissions. What’s the big deal?

Since then, Herrity and his wife Sandra bought and moved into a luxury townhouse in south Surrey to begin their retirement.

“We spent a little north of $70,000” on renovations, appliances, taxes and professional fees, he figures. “It’s incredible how these things add up. I was running back and forth to Home Depot almost every day.”

The Herritys are not alone. Last year, the Canadian Real Estate Association commissioned a study by Toronto‘s Clayton Research Associates to gauge the economic impact of the buying and selling of existing homes. On average, each sale generated just under $20,000 in spinoffs over the period 2000-2002, the study concluded.

Nationwide, that amounts to $7.5 billion a year.

“The purchase and sale of homes generates fees to professionals such as lawyers, appraisers, real estate agents, surveyors, etc., as well as taxes and fees to government. And when Canadians move house, they typically purchase new appliances or furnishings as well as undertaking renovations that tailor the new home to specific household requirements,” the report said.

On average, buyers spent $9,485 on professional services, $3,550 on renovations, $3,385 on furniture and appliances, $1,315 on general household purchases, and $490 on moving costs.

Although they represented the largest item on the list, fees to agents, lawyers and other professionals have actually declined since 1991-92, the study found.

Not so the other categories. The greatest increase in expenditures came in furniture and appliances, where buyers of resale homes spent 85 per cent more (adjusted for inflation) than they did a decade earlier. Canadians spent 49 per cent more on household items such as bedding, towels, light fixtures and window coverings.

All those spinoffs sustain 101,600 jobs across the country, the survey estimated — about two-thirds directly (realtors, trades, furniture makers and so on) and one third indirectly (workers in the primary, wholesale trade and financial services industries, for example).

“The finance, insurance and real estate industry accounts for almost 35 per cent of the total direct and indirect employment generated by home sales,” the study said.

In the Herritys‘ case, Jack’s former employer, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, paid for the cost of moving back to Canada from his last posting in Barbados. And the couple had more than enough furniture stored away from their old house in Ottawa to furnish their new five-bedroom townhouse in the Morgan Creek neighbourhood.

But other items cost more than the couple anticipated.

“The taxes were quite significant,” Jack Herrity remembers after buying the home in the fall of 2002. And by the time they moved in the next spring, the costs of making the townhouse their home were piling up.

First they ripped out the carpets and laid down a kars (Brazilian red cherry wood) floor, then they installed granite counter tops in the kitchen. They replaced the curtains with blinds, which proved to be expensive in the exact shade approved by the community’s strata bylaws. Though the unit was just four years old, they replaced several appliances too.

“Of course my wife wanted the best in all these things,” Herrity laughs.

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MOVING EXPERIENCE:

So you’ve bought a new home and feel you’ve got a good deal. Brace yourself and hope you’ve got some cash left over. All those extra costs add up and they’ve risen sharply over the last decade.

1990/1992 2000/2002 Change

Moving costs: $385 $490 +27%

General household purchases: $880 $1,315 +49%

Furniture/appliances: $1,830 $3,385 +85%

Renovations: $2,575 $3,550 +38%

Professional services: $9,765 $9,485 -3%

Total: $16,200 $19,760 +22%

© The Vancouver Sun 2004