VANCOUVER – The developer of Vancouver‘s two tallest towers and an award-winning architect have been recommended to transform the long-vacant Woodward’s store into a landmark complex aimed at rehabilitating the troubled Downtown Eastside.

That’s even though the proposal by Ian Gillespie’s Westbank Projects for the $149-million commercial and resident complex offers the city less money than it would have received from either of the other two bidders.

But the city’s steering committee said in its report that “money alone could not buy a favourable decision.”

Instead, the committee said, the Westbank project, designed by architect Gregory Henriquez, who has won awards for his social-housing projects, provides more “social goods.”

The committee said the design, which followed intensive consultation in the neighbourhood, provides spaces closely tailored to local needs, including a large daycare and spaces for seniors, aboriginals and other groups.

The committee used as its consultant the Portland Hotel Society, a dynamic non-profit group in the Downtown Eastside that houses some of the area’s most difficult residents, manages the city’s safe-injection site, runs a local credit union and operates an art gallery for locals.

Its design also allowed for the inclusion of as many as 237 social-housing units, if the money becomes available. The provincial government has agreed to pay for 100 units as part of its sale agreement with the city.

Finally, the team said, Westbank’s financial proposal does not create any risk for the city, even though it asks for a 10-year break on property taxes.

Westbank’s Gillespie has been involved in developing the under-construction Shaw Tower at the north foot of Burrard Street and the 600-foot Shangri-La tower at Georgia and Thurlow that is about to begin construction.

Gillespie, like everyone else connected with the three bids, did not want to comment before council makes a final decision next week.

The Westbank project, which proposed a 335-foot flatiron tower that would echo the nearby Dominion Building and an indoor courtyard, barely edged out a popular proposal from Concert Properties.

Concert, the union-pension-fund development powerhouse, and Ron Yuen, the architect who has spent 10 years working on Woodward’s, came in second on the team’s rating system by only a couple of points.

“Any of the three bidders would have been Concert was just a breath away,” said Coun. Jim Green, who has fought for more than a decade to see Woodward’s developed as a community-oriented project and who worked with Yuen for many of those years. “I’m heartbroken that they didn’t make it. But I believe this is the best choice.”

He emphasized that council still has to decide whether to approve the staff recommendation next week and that the city still has 180 days to work out a deal with whoever is chosen.

“So it’s not over until it’s over.”

The recommendation was made by a five-member evaluation committee at city hall that included the city’s influential central-area planning director, Larry Beasley, the city’s housing director, Cameron Gray, and the director of real-estate services, Bruce Maitland.

The recommendation was then unanimously approved by a larger steering committee that included Green and city manager Judy Rogers, among others.

Concert’s proposal, with a lower tower, more preservation of the heritage and a large open public square, got the most support from the community, a high rating from the urban-design panel, and the most favourable assessment on its preservation of Woodward’s heritage. But the team said the terms of its deal created too much risk for the city.

Concert, which worked together with Simon Lin of the Holborn Group, which owns property next to Woodward’s, proposed that about $40 million worth of the buildable space allowed on the site be transferred to another piece of property it owns at 1133 West Georgia, where the profits from that site would help pay for the cost of Woodward’s. As well, part of its payment to the city was based on the city sharing in profits from the sales of the market condominiums in Woodward’s. And lastly, the Concert proposal gave the city 57,000 square feet of space for its own uses, but would have required the city to take on the heritage and upgrade costs.

All of that was just too dicey, the team said.

The third bidder in the competition, Millennium, offered the city the most money for the land, but it rated the lowest in other important areas. As well, some of that money would have come from being allowed to build a much taller tower — 535 feet — than the other two.

That would have given the project about 150,000 to 200,000 square feet more than is currently permitted. View space on the top floors of downtown city towers currently sells for between $400 and $800 a square foot.

Millennium’s design, by architect Stuart Lyon, was the most talked about because it was so unusual, with a tower that looked like three buildings — one of them a glass cube — stacked on top of each other.

It also proposed to build a 17,000-square-foot native healing centre, a component that was strongly supported by Squamish Chief Gibby Jacob.

The competition has generated fierce rivalry among the proponents, with each of them lining up different casts of supporters and being quick to phone city hall if they thought one bidder was being favoured over others.

There were some complaints that the Concert Properties bid was allowed to include a design that went beyond the Woodward’s site to include the Holburn Group site next door. That space allowed it to create the large public plaza, one of the features that attracted many observers.

The project will be presented to councillors next week and they are supposed to make a decision on whether to accept a staff recommendation on Wednesday, Sept. 29, after hearing from the public.

The future of Woodward’s has been debated since even before the department store finally shut down in the early 1980s. Its closure accelerated the already noticeable deterioration of Hastings Street and the Downtown Eastside, and it was always seen as key to any attempt to bring the area back to life.

Under the NDP, then-premier Mike Harcourt tried to work out a deal to put 400 units of social housing in partnership with a private developer. That developer, Kassem Aghtai, walked away from working with the government and finally sold the building to the province for $20 million. The province tried to find a private buyer, but gave up and sold it to the city for only $5 million in 2003, shortly after the Coalition of Progressive Electors swept into power.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004