‘Hanging by a thread’: The push to save Vancouver’s heritage businesses

Like all Vancouverites, RJ Aquino is accustomed to seeing the big blue signboards that pop up around town signifying a property may soon be going through a major redevelopment. The day he saw the sign on the 5100-block of Joyce Street, his “heart just dropped.”

Immediately north of St. Mary’s Parish, which offers regular Tagalog-language masses, and just south of the Joyce-Collingwood SkyTrain station, this block in Vancouver’s southeast corner attracts customers who live and work in several combinations of different Metro municipalities. Its regulars are largely, but not exclusively, Filipino.

A variety store and a greengrocer sell jackfruit, sweet spaghetti, milkfish, and other products that Filipino immigrants miss from their home country, and also provide services for them to send money to relatives there.

A trio of Filipino restaurants — Kumare’s, Pampanga’s and Plato Filipino — draw lineups of hungry customers seeking adobo, beef bulalo soup, and deep fried rabbitfish.

Pampanga’s owner Edith Malang recalls the fear and uncertainty that accompanied the appearance of the rezoning sign, about five years ago, promising a new condo tower where the old, unglamorous two-storey building housing her restaurant stands.

“You know who was more worried than I am? My customers,” Malang said. “They complained: ‘What will happen to us? We pick up food and travel back to New Westminster or Surrey on the SkyTrain. Where are we going to buy our favourite food?’”

That development has stalled and the city now considers the project “dormant.” The blue rezoning sign has been taken down, but the wooden frame that supported it is still there.

That condo project may be on hold, but it’s unlikely redevelopment will spare this block — surrounded by towers in one of the city’s densest neighbourhoods — forever. And the saga speaks to the impact a single redevelopment can have on these small neighbourhood businesses — often run by immigrant families — and the tremendous value they have for communities.

Malang says she’s not opposed to development. But if the property is redeveloped into a mixed-use project, with commercial space on the ground floor and homes in a tower above, she would love to return and operate in the new building. Of course, that’s if she can afford the rent in the new building, she said, but she would at least like the chance before a generic, massive chain retailer takes over the storefront.

City hall has spent several years studying how to help these so-called “legacy businesses” or “heritage businesses,” with much of the focus on one of Vancouver’s most historic neighbourhoods, Chinatown.

Legacy and heritage

Businesses that had operated in the city for 30 years or longer and “contributed to San Francisco’s history and identity” were invited to apply for inclusion in the city’s legacy business registry, which meant they could apply for grants and receive educational and promotional support.

Inspired by San Francisco, Vancouver launched a study investigating measures to protect Chinatown’s “legacy businesses.”

After researching San Francisco’s program, the group decided it wouldn’t work for Vancouver to “wholesale adopt their model,” Robinson said. “But one thing I did like about San Francisco, to be honest, is they just sort of shot first, and aimed later. ‘Let’s get something underway, and we’ll figure out how to make it perfect later.’”

Vancouver, on the other hand, has produced several studies and reports over the years, in Chinatown and other neighbourhoods, but has not yet implemented a citywide program like San Francisco’s aimed at supporting culturally significant businesses.

Instead of handing grant money directly to businesses as the city does to support non-profits and community groups, the enterprise program has the city provide “capacity-building supports” such as digital and traditional marketing, ecommerce, planning and assistance for physical improvements to commercial spaces. So far, nine small Chinatown businesses have received such support, including Bamboo Village, the Chinese Tea Shop and Kam Wai Dim Sum.

It’s not simple.

Coming up with a definition was an important piece of the Chinatown legacy business study group’s work back in 2017, said Heritage Vancouver executive director Bill Yuen, who also worked on the project. The group ended up choosing to use “heritage business” instead of “legacy business” to reflect the value of more than just age.

The 2017 study defined a heritage business not by age, but as one “shaped by values from a shared past that is recognized and deemed important by the communities of people who value that heritage, frequent the business and/or the area.”

Vancouver has some good examples of businesses that have opened in just the past few years that could meet such a definition, such as

and

.

These establishments need not be tied to specific ethnicities or neighbourhoods, either. There are non-Chinese heritage businesses in Chinatown, and many Chinese heritage businesses elsewhere.

By later that year, Pronto had roasted its last porchetta and mixed its final negroni. The property remains an open excavation site five years later, leaving a literal hole in the neighbourhood.

“It’s this question of living heritage,” Yuen said. “It’s thinking differently about heritage so that it’s not just old stuff. You can have new stuff that speaks to the culture and responds to community needs.”

Outside a store in the Punjabi Market on Main Street and 51st, circa 1984.

‘Every time a big building goes in, it’s almost exclusively chains’

The intersection of 49th and Main is the centre of Vancouver’s Punjabi Market, recognized as North America’s oldest South Asian community market. On the southwest corner, the one-time landmark All India Sweets and Restaurant, a banquet hall, and two sari and fabric shops were replaced, in a redevelopment completed a few years ago, by Tim Hortons, a Royal Bank, an international chain business and two national fast food chains.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the new building: The needed new rental homes upstairs brought new residents to the neighbourhood, and the ground-floor businesses seem to be popular.

Directly across 49th from the new Tim Hortons, the intersection’s northwest corner, a former gas station has been a vacant lot for more than 15 years. Unlike the south corner, its development will not displace any existing businesses.

But the landmark corner will be closely watched.

But the language in the city’s letter to the developer, Hudson Projects, around recognizing the Punjabi Market’s heritage when designing the building and choosing commercial tenants, sound more like suggestions than requirements. — “consider” opportunities, “explore” incorporating.

When developers apply for a rezoning — seeking to build more height and density than would normally be allowed on a property — city hall has more power to negotiate about what goes in there, including public amenities.

“That’s where the magic happens, on a rezoning,” Fry said. “We can say: ‘Hey, we’d like you to do a little bit more with that site.”

But the developer of the 49th and Main vacant lot, Hudson Projects, is not seeking a rezoning, but instead seeking to build what’s already allowed under current zoning.

That means the city’s directions for the developer are less “binding,” Fry said, but he has had conversations with Hudson and believes “they are the kind of boutique developers that would want to do right by this direction.”

Hudson’s representatives have also been in talks with the Punjabi Market Collective, a non-profit community group.

The collective’s co-chair, Jag Nagra, says those conversations have been positive, and her group has talked with the developer about the neighbourhood’s history, encouraging them to consider the area’s significance for B.C.’s South Asian community when tenanting the commercial space.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the future commercial tenants in the Hudson development need to be South Asian, Nagra said. But she would prefer to see interesting, independent businesses that add to the Market’s vibrancy and speak to its history, rather than chains. She would love to see entrepreneurs, especially young South Asian ones, contact Hudson about future leasing opportunities there.

But it’s tricky, Nagra said. After all, it is private property.

“It is something we talked about, but at the end of the day, it isn’t something he has to do,” she said. “We can’t force him to do anything.”

Hudson Projects did not reply to a request for comment.

Many of the longest-running beloved businesses in Vancouver and other cities are in old one- and two-storey buildings along major arterials, which are often prime sites for redevelopment. And, Robinson, the LOCO B.C. director, observed, “It seems like every time a big building goes in, it’s almost exclusively chains” occupying that new street-level commercial space.

When developers negotiate with city hall around major projects, they discuss public benefits the development could provide, such as child care spaces, public plazas, below-market housing. Robinson would like to see the city seek below-market rents for the ground-floor commercial space for whatever kinds of independent businesses are deemed worthy of that support.

Robinson pointed to Austin, Texas, which has developed city-owned blocks with commercial leases structured to begin at below-market rents for locally owned businesses, which gradually increased over the years to market rates, giving local merchants an opportunity to establish a customer base.

“Things can be done differently,” Robinson said.

Boyle’s motion was bolstered by research of the approaches in other jurisdictions, including Toronto, the U.K., and Australia. Boyle said she expects a report from staff later this year, as part of Vancouver plan work, but the timing is not clear.

“My strong hope is we do that soon,” Boyle said. “What I hear from all those neighbourhoods is that time is of the essence, we’re losing culturally important businesses and developments are getting approved … that have no specific requirements to respond to the intangible cultural heritage of the neighbourhoods they’re being built in.”

“Businesses are hanging on by a thread and need this support now, not after another strategy and another study.”

Harinder Singh Toor said he’s “seen the ups and downs in the Punjabi Market” in the four decades since he opened Punjab Food Center.

The 1980s were very busy, before many South Asian businesses, and more of their customers, moved to Surrey, Toor said. For years, his stretch of South Main was plagued by vacant storefronts, he said, but today, the street is livelier.

Redevelopment has brought new residents to the neighbourhood, and his customers today are more diverse than the 1980s, when it was almost only South Asians, he said. Today, there are more Filipino and Mexican immigrants in the neighbourhood, and more Canadian-born customers in the Market.

It’s not easy, but Toor is optimistic.

Toor is glad to see the group of younger community advocates behind the Punjabi Market Collective, like Nagra, picking up the torch.

“We need the young generation … they have lots of energy,” Toor said. “They help us and we help them. We work together.”

In pictures: Archival photos of Vancouver businesses