Appropriately, Changing Vancouver begins 2015 with a 30-year anniversary: a comparison of North False Creek in 1985 and today:
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Almost everything you can see today was built by Concord Pacific, who have developed a series of residential neighbourhoods, often around a park (where the contaminated soils from the former industrial use of the site are stored). The seawall promenade wasn’t in place in 1985; that has also been built as the Concord projects have been built.
There are earlier views across False Creek that illustrate the dramatic change in the city, but this is in some ways more remarkable as our ‘before’ shot was taken in 1985 (before Expo ’86, but after the stadium was built), and the ‘after’ under 26 years later in 2011 (just before we started this blog, but after the new stadium roof had been built).
I believe the 1985 pix were taken by Trish French, no?
Vancouver might have been a very different city or, at least, have a very different downtown, had it not been for a series of political battles and ultimate outcomes within the provincial government over the sale of the former Expo lands. I worked in the Premier’s Office between 1986 and 1988, when the decision was made to sell the lands to Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa Company of Hong Kong.
That decision was a VERY controversial one within the VanderZalm government. Few will remember that the Premier was very much in favour of selling the lands to a local group– primarily led by the late Peter Toigo and backed by a few financiers, including the late Jack Poole. Their plan for the site was much less ambitous than what we see there today and they included a permanent amusement park on a large portion of the site. They claimed to have had initial discussions with the Disney Corp at the time. BCDC was responsible for the site post-Expo and I believe David Podmore was working there with the President Kevin Murphy. Peter Brown chaired BCDC’s board. Grace McCarthy was the Minister responsible for BCDC.
Most at BCDC were skeptical of the ability of the Toigo consortium’s abilty to excute a development and strongly resisted the Premier’s intervention. Minister McCarthy had been approached by one of Li’s North American representatives about Hutchison Whampoa bidding. She travelled to Hong Kong to meet with Li’s group and returned and instructed the BCDC board to begin talks with them, without letting the Premier know this. Toigo learned of this and went to the Premier and encouraged him to stop the sale.
I remember a particular morning in the Premier’s Office when the Premier, his Chief of Staff David Poole and I were taking a conference call on a speaker phone from one of the BCDC directors immediately following a Board meeting where David Poole had been barred from attending. I don’t recall who the director was, but they advised that the Board has just decided to reject the Toigo bid. The Premier was not a happy man. That’s when an internal political war was launched, eventually leading to Mrs. McCarthy and AG Brian Smith both resigning from Cabinet. That began the slow demise of VanderZalm’s government.
To her credit, Mrs. McCarthy persisted in her efforts to have Li’s bid accepted. She believed he had an international focus, a vision for the site and an ability to turn that vision into a reality.
So began False Creek North and the Yaletown of today and the first wave of late 20th century Asian immigration to Vancouver, as Li’s group launched residential pre-sales in Hong Kong as fear around the turnover to China was first setting in.
There are more clouds now than back then. ;p
Bob – nonetheless, the city and province got shafted on the sales price that Grace negotiated. $50 million = the cost remediation borne by the taxpayers. It was worth many times that. Personally I would have preferred selling different chunks to local developers, within an overall master plan. The fact that in early days the developments were first offered to offshore buyers before Canadians had a chance still sticks in many people’s craw.
Another interesting bit is that the first 2 buildings built as part of “BC Place” (the name for the north False Creek development, not the stadium (the stadium was “The Stadium at BC Place”)) are on leasehold land.
Those two buildings are at 1625 and 1675 Hornby Street – part of the site unaffected by Expo 86.
Frank, I understand that sentiment. You are correct about the financial outcome. It seemed at the time that getting too dollar wasn’t as important as getting a developer that could do a large scale development that would build on the local excitement in urbanism that Expo created.
Nice to be reminded that we once had mountains.