Vancouver’s Chinatown is a place where developers don’t always get their way

Plans for a new development in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown had all the hallmarks of progress. The 12-storey, mixed-use building at 105 Keefer Street would comprise ground-floor shops, with 25 social housing units and 106 luxury condominiums above.

Not everyone found it progressive, however. The application, by developer Beedie Group, drew so much opposition that the city council voted it down eight against three after a lengthy public hearing on June 12.

The dissenters had already seen the creeping signs of gentrification when, two years ago, Starbucks opened a café in Chinatown – shocking many residents. A Western oyster bar, supper club and even a few bars have also popped up in the area, which is cheaper than Vancouver’s downtown core.

The parties that voted against Beedie Group’s plan were concerned that it wasn’t culturally sensitive and didn’t guarantee elderly occupiers a permanent social space. Yet the objections didn’t only come from old-timers; they were aired largely by grass-roots groups led by Chinese-Canadian women in their 20s and 30s. While not opposing development in Chinatown, they feel it should be culturally sensitive and complement the area’s character and history.

“Young people are reaching out … They know how to organise through technology and are bringing people together,” says Andy Yan, a third-generation Chinese Canadian and director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University, who was at the hearing.

For more than 130 years, Vancouver’s Chinatown has been a ghetto for immigrants from southern China who built Canada’s national railway, hence its location close to the former railway terminus. The government denied the immigrants citizenship and limited their number through the Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinese Head Tax.