Taken March 30, 2014 by Alex Wren

Developer Ian Gillespie: “This is going to sound arrogant but no one else is willing to do what I’m doing”

By Frances Bula

Developer Ian Gillespie is much in the news these days, as he launched his Gesamtkunstwerk exhibit a week ago as part of the build-up to Vancouver House, the Bjarke Ingels-designed tower that with be blooming flower-like (thin stalk, showy bee-attracting thing on top) next to the Granville Bridge.

Here’s a recent feature I did on him in Vancouver magazine. In advance of your column, I notice Gillespie seems to draw a lot more negative comments than any other developer I write about. I’ve done profiles of Peter Wall and the Malek brothers at Millennium, mentioned people like Terry Hui at Concord and Andrew Grant at PCI and Michael Audain at Polygon in stories any number of times, and never seen as much vitriol directed at them as at Gillespie. (Interestingly, others in the development community seem to be at least as annoyed by him as many resident groups.)

I’m guessing it’s because he tends to wade in to contentious parts of town, attracting more attention. (Some development companies I report on simply never ask for rezonings — they just don’t want to deal with the hassle. They stick strictly to land that’s already zoned for what they want to …read more

Source: Frances Bula

By ChangingCity

Here’s another of the projects that are being developed to help solve the very limited housing opportunities for the homeless and hard to house in Vancouver. We haven’t featured the building before on the blog, in part because the render that was available showed a rather unexciting project (and a dematerializing vehicle).

Fortunately the reality is far more attractive. Designed by DYS Architecture, it’s a 16-storey 141 unit building that will be run by The Kettle Friendship Society in conjunction with Family Services of Greater Vancouver. The main floor will house the Directions Youth Services Centre that was on the City-owned site before the redevelopment. BC Housing provided the majority of construction funds, but the project was also financially supported by Streetohome Foundation with contributions from both CIBC and Canadian Western Bank.

Directions provides health, mental health and addiction services, counseling, employment and training opportunities, peer support services, access to community and business partnerships and practicum programs, literacy and life skills training, and recreational, interactive, and artistic (music and art) programs. It will also include a Vancouver School Board Learning Centre. 30 of the units will be committed to youth under the age of 25.

 …read more

Source: Changing City