When VAG director Kathleen Bartels made her pitch in late January to an international and local panel assessing whether the City of Vancouver should give the gallery the right to build on the last open block in downtown — a piece of city land — I was there. Sort of. (No, not right in the [...]

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The Globe asked me to bring together architect Peter Busby and condo marketer Bob Rennie to talk about building green. Although the two have worked together on more than one project, Peter is a passionate crusader for green buildings and he keeps pushing forward with new strategies all the time, while Bob has come to [...]

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One of the stranger news items that popped up earlier this year was the report that Arthur Erickson’s brother and executor had filed suit against the woman who was Arthur’s steadfast promoter and champion in his later years. The lawsuit was just the latest chapter in all kinds of messy tussling that had preceded his [...]

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Lots of fascinating debate swirling around the Vancouver Art Gallery, as it officially puts an end to the idea of moving to False Creek but continues to look at moving to the old bus depot site on Georgia. Marsha Lederman and I have a story today in the Globe on the decision and what gallery [...]

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Oh, surely with all these wonderful pictures of Vancouver being beamed around the world 24/7, we can rest assured that those Olympic village condos will sell for top prices and ensure that the Malek brothers/Millennium Developments will pay back all the money the city loaned them. Don’t be celebrating too quickly. Even the city’s chief [...]

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As I mentioned in my previous post, there are lots of simmering undercurrents in the city’s attempts to plan Northeast False Creek. One of the biggest is what is happening with the Vancouver Art Gallery. If you’ll recall, Premier Gordon Campbell made the strangest announcement of all time last May when he said the gallery [...]

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Influential city shaper Bob Rennie, who masquerades as a condo marketer, will be giving his annual address to the Urban Development Institute today where he analyzes the market and sales based on statistical research that he gets done for this talk every year. The speech will have lots of facts and figures, along with Bob’s [...]

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Unbeknownst to most of you, there have been a number of workshops and open houses in what’s called Vancouver’s historic areas over the last few weeks to talk about potential height increases for those areas. City staff have asked the public to consider a few options, which they’ve graphically illustrated in a kind of cool [...]

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It was quite the scene at the stunning new Celebration Hall in Mountain View cemetery Saturday — I definitely want to be buried there now with the great views and lovely, modernist new hall for all my friends to party at when they send me on my way — as developers, architects, and housing advocates [...]

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Here’s my latest column in Vancouver magazine, where I got to spend some time with Peter and Shahram Malek of Millennium Developments — the developers at ground zero in the current financial/housing/Olympics twister. Everyone in town has been playing backseat driver to these two and speculation continues to be rampant about the end cost of [...]

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