London Drugs, Nesters open a new retail era in the Downtown Eastside
John Mackie
Sun
Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
HASTINGS STREET REVIVAL: The deli section in the Woodward’s Food Floor by Nesters Market. Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
HASTINGS STREET REVIVAL: In the atrium, a giant photographic mural by artist Stan Douglas depicts the 1971 Gastown riot. Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
HASTINGS STREET REVIVAL: The Woodward’s Project — which includes two condominium towers, stores and a campus of Simon Fraser University — is nearly complete at the corner of Hastings and Abbott streets in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The complex’s London Drugs store, owned by Vancouver’s Louie family, has a long history in the area. Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
The Downtown Eastside has been a retail no-man’s land for decades.
No more.
Last Tuesday, London Drugs quietly opened a new 27,000-square-foot store on Hastings near Abbott in the Woodward’s complex.
This coming Tuesday, Nesters Market opens a 15,000-sq.-ft. supermarket around the corner at Abbott and Cordova.
Almost 17 years after the Woodward’s Department Store closed, the long-awaited revitalization of the landmark site is finally taking shape.
Construction will continue for a few months, but bit by bit, what architect Gregory Henriquez calls “the most complicated mixed-use project in the history of Vancouver” is coming together.
The project’s two residential towers (43 and 32 storeys) are occupied. Workers are racing to put the finishing touches on Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, which will relocate there. A spectacular Stan Douglas photographic mural recreating the Gastown riot of 1971 — specially commissioned for the project — is already up, although it won’t be officially unveiled for a bit.
London Drugs and Nesters are open, TD Canada Trust will open in January, and several smaller retail outlets — including a JJ Bean coffee shop, a “gastro-pub,” a pizza place, a dental office and a cigar shop — will be unveiled over the next couple of months.
Developer Ian Gillespie stressed retail in his pitch to develop the Woodward’s site.
“We thought what that neighbourhood needed was really strong tenants that had the ability to survive, to last through the good times and the bad times, and had the ability to pull lots of people into the area,” Gillespie said.
“What that area needs more than anything is people with money in their pockets going to buy their toilet paper, milk or batteries, or whatever.”
Gillespie thought London Drugs would be an ideal tenant, and pursued the chain.
“By coincidence, the Louie family [which owns London Drugs] has a long history in that part of town,” he said.
“To them it was a natural fit, to come back and do something. [But] I think the London Drugs people, to be frank … saw it as an obligation. They saw it as important for Vancouver to be there. Brandt Louie is not just the owner of London Drugs, he’s also the chancellor of Simon Fraser [University]. I don’t think that’s coincidental.
“They struggled, when you look at the demographics, [with] making that store make sense. But they bought into the vision that Woodward’s was going to make a real substantial impact on the neighbourhood.”
London Drugs president Wynne Powell concurs.
“We knew this was going to be a very tough construction job, and a very tough issue to turn around into a positive icon for Vancouver,” Powell said.
“But we felt that it was a socially responsible decision to support this initiative. Because if people like us don’t support it, how can we sit on the sidelines, complaining that the area isn’t up to what it could be? If we want it to be what it should be, we should be willing to participate.”
The London Drugs outlet is a little smaller than the norm, but offers all the merchandise and services normally available.
“It’s two floors, similar to Georgia and Granville,” Powell said. “The first floor has general merchandise and cosmetics, and a pharmacy with private medical consultation booths. The second floor [has] the technical [departments], photographic, audio/video, the computers and the one-hour photo.”
With London Drugs onside, Gillespie went looking for a grocery store. Nesters signed on about three years ago, and has really got into the heritage of the site: It will be selling reproductions of Woodward’s peanut butter and cottage cheese.
For the opening, Nesters will be bringing back Woodward’s legendary “$1.49 Day” sale. It has even licensed the old $1.49 Day jingle (“Dollar forty-nine day, Tuesday!”) to promote it.
“It’s part of the fabric of this city,” said Laura Ballance, who is doing publicity for the Nesters opening. “It’s a tip of the hat to the history of this site, to start on a Tuesday and tie so much in on opening day.”
“We thought it would be a special touch for a special event,” said Sam Corea of Nesters.
Gillespie loves the way that Nesters has embraced the heritage of the old Woodward’s Food Floor, which may have been the most beloved department of the beloved store.
“The whole Pattison group [which owns Nesters] really took that project on,” Gillespie said.
“Jimmy [Pattison] took that project on very similar to Brandt, in that you probably couldn’t have had a pro-forma that you could have taken to the owner and said, this makes a lot of economic sense. You had to have a vision and say, ‘You know what, we really believe this is going to be a good long-term investment.’
“Jimmy had that same confidence in the project as us. We’ve done a lot of business together; he bought into it much the same way as Brandt did. This is a long-term deal.”
Nesters and London Drugs aren’t being entirely altruistic by locating at Woodward’s, of course. Several thousand people are expected to go through the site per day, once it’s all up and running.
“There will be 1,500 people living there,” Henriquez said.
“One thousand kids at the art school, 500 people working there, and about 2,000 people a day going to shop there.”
Henriquez said Woodward’s is a $300-million project. It includes three new buildings — the two residential towers on Cordova and a nine-storey building on Hastings — plus the restored six-storey heritage building at the corner of Hastings and Abbott, which dates to 1903.
There will be 736 housing units (536 condos and 200 non-market apartments), 60,000 sq. ft. of office space, and 54,000 sq. ft. of retail. Simon Fraser’s School for the Contemporary Arts will take up 120,000 sq. ft. of space, including five performance venues or theatres.
Gillespie said Woodward’s was a daunting project to do. “It probably amounts to 10 per cent of our company’s business, but probably 50 per cent of our company’s time.” But he thinks the end result is worth it.
“I think in the big picture, long-term, Woodward’s is going to turn out to be substantially better than we ever would have imagined it to be,” Gillespie said.
“The people that have moved into the building have really embraced what Woodward’s is all about. When we sold that project, we really tried to sell it to end users, not to investors and speculators. That turned out to be absolutely what that project and that neighbourhood needed. The people that bought into it knew that they were moving into an evolving neighbourhood, and an interesting neighbourhood.”
Indeed, he feels the Downtown Eastside is becoming the coolest area in town.
“The amount of cool new retail that is going into that area of town … if you’re a trendy restaurant looking for a new [location], you’re not looking anywhere else,” Gillespie said.
“If you’re a store selling interesting merchandise, that’s the area that you’re looking to. You’re not looking to anywhere else in Vancouver.”
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