BCBusiness

17 B C B U S I N E S S . C A A P R I L / M AY 2 0 2 5 THE LANE GAME AM Café's owners hope to make their alleyway an essential scenic route stop for Vancouverites Vancouver's business associ- ations have devoted a consid- erable amount of energy to spiffing up some laneways in Gastown and near Granville as a way of adding new life. And, of course, Vancouver is famous for the number of little homes that now exist along its lane- ways. But there haven't been too many efforts at putting small commercial operations in the alleys. When I asked City of Van- couver staff for examples of other projects like the Habitat building, they came up with a couple. First, the new building at Broadway and Arbutus that has some commercial units facing the Arbutus Greenway. The second, a condo plus social housing plus commercial build- ing in Strathcona that—who could have guessed—is also a Fabric Living project. The styl- ish black structure, near Casa Gelato, has four commercial units on the alley, one of which will be home soon to Rooden- burg, a hip brand-development company that works with many Indigenous groups. Surely there will be more of these popping up in other alleys? Surely the city is very excited about this urban- design experiment? Hmm. The emailed statement from the city said this: "The Broadway Plan policies ensure commer- cial space is included in new developments in key areas to support anticipated popu- lation growth. Commercial retail units with access off the laneway are supportable as part of mixed used buildings, depending on site conditions." "Supportable" isn't exactly the most gung-ho statement I've heard about trying new things, but not at all a surprise to the laneway aficionados in town who are trying to make better use of these interesting city spaces. Joe Fry at Hapa Collabora- tive, a landscape-architecture practice in Vancouver, is one of those. "What people love about their city is when they discover it through serendipity—they find places off the beaten track," says Fry. "It's what makes cities delightful. When you combine that with gritti- ness, there's a kind of authen- ticity that is retained by paying attention to these spaces." And he's baffled by how resistant the city—specifically the city's engineering depart- ment—is to many efforts. He's working with several companies in the Mount Pleas- ant industrial area, a place where Vancouver's decade-old community plan (now roadkill, it appears, with the newer Broadway Plan superseding it) envisioned making much more use out of laneways. But efforts to change materials like pav- ing, planting and lighting in the alleys to encourage visitors and commercial operations to hang out there have hit the wall of the engineering department's terror of having to maintain any of those. "I can't tell you how diffi- cult the engineering operations department continue to be with any treatment of the as- phalt," he says mournfully, sit- ting at a table in his company's Mount Pleasant industrial-area office. "They come up with all sorts of reasons: slipperiness, visibility, tripping hazard. These materials are the same materials used for crosswalks. The culture of 'no' that is prev- alent in certain places at the city is frankly perplexing." In Gastown, where he is also doing work, the local business association is enthusiastic about, for instance, using the alleys to provide spaces for small incubator businesses. The idea is to create small, hidden gems. "I'm much more optimistic that our work in Gastown—with the right people at the city and with the support of business and residents—will move beyond the entrenched attitudes and artificial barriers that derail good civic placemak- ing," says Fry. The Powell Street neigh- bourhood that was home to Vancouver's significant Japanese community before the Second World War (and where Fry's Japanese grandfa- ther printed the historic New Canadian newspaper) and Chinatown would also be great candidates, but would need a lot of investment and steward- ship for them to work. (And, by the way, alley-life fandom is not just an "only in the old core of central Vancouver" thing. There are other cities in the region that have tried to leverage the lan- eway experience. The City of North Vancouver has Streetcar Brewing and Cream Pony, a fried chicken and doughnut outpost, in one of the alleys just above the Shipyards District. The City of Langley is prettifying some side streets and lanes around its little core downtown. And, in Burnaby, Anthem Properties, when it developed Station Square, created a small, alley-like street called Silver Drive as part of the overall project.) MacDonald is also hoping that the city develops more visible enthusiasm for the idea of seeing alleys as a vital part of the new Vancouver, the way Melbourne and Tokyo have, to name a few. He too faced some resistance from the city's engineering department to introducing different kinds of paving and landscaping to his alley storefronts. In the cautious language of those who have to deal with city staff on a regular basis, MacDonald pleads for some collaboration in making Vancouver an interesting place—collaboration that would encourage others to add similar spaces to the ones he has done. "There is an opportunity to work with the city and engi- neering so we can have more of a win. If they are onboard, if they were wanting to lean into it, there would be a lot of opportunities to work with the developer," he says. "And we wouldn't be wasting so much space in the city."

• Cover