What I could do with $23.5 million…
That’s the amount of tax money the city chose to exempt from 18 Vancouver heritage properties between 2003 and 2013.
Why?
In 2003, council established what it called the Heritage Building Rehabilitation Program to encourage the full upgrading of heritage buildings and stimulate economic revitalization within the Downtown Eastside historic areas.
That includes Chinatown, Gastown, Victory Square and the Hastings Street corridor.
The program was initially set up to run five years but council extended it twice. To date, council approved 21 properties under the program and only three failed to proceed with the upgrades.
Properties under the program included the Burns Block at 18 West Hastings St. (now so-called micro-lofts), the Wing Sang building at 51 East Pender St. (now offices to condo king Bob Rennie and his private art gallery) and the Pennsylvania Hotel at 412 Carrall St. (a renovated single-room occupancy).
The Burns Block exemption was worth $144,492, Rennie’s was $500,395 and the Pennsylvania almost topped $1 million at $947,502. The biggest exemption — at $8.1 million — went to the Woodward’s Building at 101 West Hastings St.
But it’s not only heritage buildings that are eligible for tax exemptions.
According to the Vancouver Charter, other properties include:
• Crown lands, or property owned and occupied by the federal, provincial or regional governments, or a Crown corporation.
• City of Vancouver property.
• Charities.
• Education facilities.
• Hospitals.
• Churches.
• Simon Fraser University at the Sears Harbour Centre.
• Emergency shelters for people and domestic animals.
• Property for pollution control.
• Former Vancouver courthouse occupied by the Vancouver Art Gallery.
• B.C. Cancer Agency branch in the 600-block of West 10th Avenue.
Yep, that’s a lot of properties.
In fact, in 2013, $30.3 billion of properties (12.7 per cent of the assessment roll) were exempt. City properties generated the bulk of the exemptions at $15.8 million.
While the tax exemptions save property owners money, a report that went before city council Tuesday spelled out the good/bad news for tenants: The city does not have jurisdiction over how property owners share these costs with their tenants.
•••
Attended the Green Party’s press conference Monday on the back steps of city hall.
As I wrote in a story, the party has chosen Pete Fry, Tracey Moir, Cleta Brown and Coun. Adriane Carr as their council nominees to run in this fall’s civic election.
One nugget I didn’t have room to mention in the print story was that Carr has a history with Fry — not Pete, the chairperson of the Strathcona Residents Association, but his mother Hedy Fry, the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Centre.
Carr lost to Fry in the May 2011 federal election.
“It’s ironic,” she said, laughing as she went on to praise Pete for his activism in Strathcona. “We don’t talk about his mom much.”
Another irony: Much of what Carr and her pro-environment team had to say was difficult to hear over the snarling of chainsaws coming from a nearby work crew.
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