PETE McMARTIN
Sun
GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN Interested parties view a model of the total Woodward’s condo project at the Shaw Tower at 1077 West Cordova.
VANCOUVER SUN FILES The once rotating neon ‘W’ atop the former department store will be incorporated into the development’s design
VANCOUVER SUN FILES In the early 1900s, the Woodward’s department store offered everything from oilskins to hardware and groceries to Vancouver shoppers.
GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN Realtor Bob Rennie stands in the kitchen of the 639-square-foot demonstration suite.
GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN There’s a Yaletown look and feel to the interior of the one-bedroom Woodward’s apartment.
CITY OF VANCOUVER ARCHIVES CVA 1184-2234 Like this 1946 display of bathing suits, Woodward’s department store windows were often dressed to kill.
As of Friday afternoon, they had 5,526 prospects: people so interested in buying a piece of the Woodward’s development they had registered their names, addresses and phone numbers in advance. Calls came from New York, Los Angeles, Seattle. Calls came from realtors acting on behalf of offshore buyers. Calls came from thousands of locals who — unthinkable a decade ago — now were intrigued by the idea of owning a piece of the Downtown Eastside. For sale: A total of 536 suites. Price: Anywhere from $200,000 to $600,000. Move-in date: Some time in 2009, or 16 years after Woodward’s closed its doors and the tortuous story of its redesign began. And today — Saturday, at noon — members of the public will get their first chance to preview what is being offered for sale.
A 639-square-foot one-bedroom demonstration suite has been constructed on the 17th floor of the Shaw Tower, at 1077 West Cordova.
It’s a sleek little thing with patterned oak floors, polished stone kitchen countertops, high-end stainless steel appliances, a tastefully appointed bathroom — the typical chi-chi finish you find in a Yaletown condo.
The thing differentiating a Woodward’s condo from a Yaletown condo, though?
It’s more than the address, or the local wildlife.
It’s the high-minded idea, or the pretension, take your pick, that buying into the Woodward’s project is to take part in a social experiment. It’s an experiment that ostensibly encourages egalitarianism, of having the well-off and the not-so-well-off living together.
At the same time, it’s a sly form of reverse marketing, of using the grittiness of the Downtown Eastside as a selling point.
Or to put it another way, living on the edge of the Downtown Eastside is cutting edge. You’re not just buying a condo; you’re buying texture, an arty urban toughness, a commitment. As its ad campaign states:
“This is an authentic area, not a sanitized environment. Neighbourhoods like this are rare and offer a creative mix of cutting-edge culture, heritage and character. That’s why the intelligent buyer will get in early. This is the future. This is your neighbourhood. Be bold or move to suburbia.”
“That’s why I like to call it an intellectual property,” said Bob Rennie, the condo king marketing the Woodward’s project.
“You have to think about what you want in living here and about being down here. It’s not like buying a condo in Yaletown, because the social housing is in place here and it’s not going anywhere. The buyers coming in
know this.”
Unlike much of Yaletown, the Woodward’s development has a high portion of social housing units set aside — 200 apartments situated on the development’s bottom 12 floors, to be managed by the Portland Hotel Society.
In addition to that, 100 of the 536 market units are also being offered to residents of the Downtown Eastside on a priority basis.
You might ask who in the Downtown Eastside could afford to buy a $300,000 or $400,000 condo, but the qualifying residence area covers two postal codes — all of V6A and half of V6B. Rennie believes there are more than enough single-family residences and home owners in the area to generate sales.
If the number of registered prospects is any indication, he could be right. Saturday’s preview, which as I wrote earlier, opens at noon today and is expected to attract about 1,500 viewers. Viewing will run until April 20.
What follows next has the air of a radio-show call-in contest.
On April 13, Rennie’s phone lines will open at exactly 9 a.m. and a bank of operators will take calls from interested buyers. It’s first-come first-served, and depending on the time they call in, buyers will be assigned a colour-coded wristband designating when they can come in and make an offer.
Those residents within the Downtown Eastside postal code areas will be given priority, and then, on April 22, buyers from outside the area will be able to come in and make offers.
“And they are eligible to buy only one unit,” Rennie said.
“My bet is that 90 per cent of the building will be sold on the 22nd,” he said.
A couple of years back, he said, he was not as sure.
“Two and a half years ago, [city planner] Larry Beasley and I both spoke at the Urban Development Institute, and we both said, ‘The city’s moving east,’ as if we were soothsayers. We said there was nowhere else to go, and at that time, it was considered pioneering.
“But that pioneering that existed 2 1 /2 years ago is not the same pioneering we are talking about now.”
The pioneering we’re talking about now, Rennie said, is the undiscovered territory into which the Woodward’s development is about to take the Downtown Eastside. The appetite for change down there is tempered by the fear of change, which he said he understands and with which he sympathizes. He hopes the Woodward’s development will be the critical mass needed to start urban renewal but not one that completely changes the neighbourhood’s character.
“The drug dealers? If they disappear, I could give a s—. They should have no place down there. But there should be room for a real mix of incomes and types of people.”
That’s the question of Woodward’s. How will the well-off and the not-so-well-off get along?
Will Woodward’s change the Downtown Eastside or not?
In perfect illustration of that, Rennie told a story.
“I got a call from a guy who was from L.A. and who had expressed interest in buying a unit, and he was in town walking around the [Woodward’s] building. While he was there, a woman on the sidewalk dropped her drawers in front of him. So he took a photo of her on his cellphone, sent it to me and asked:
“ ‘Should I be worried?’ ”
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