@brilliant #48:

The Chinese Government has their fingers in schools in Canada. Look at what is playing out in Toronto and look at the money the Chinese Gov. has donated in order to have their ‘say’.

FYI – one of those schools exists in BC – Coquitlam.

Something about how immigrants are bringing values to our schools “enviroweenies” should hate despite the fact the original subject was how an attempt to do that utterly and definitively failed.

But you know, go figure.

@teririch // Jun 18, 2014 at 8:21 am #51

Did you scrape or stave the text?
Looking up the link brings a “grayed” page, and various other aggregators, such as Ian Young’s local Hongcouver SCMP blog http://www.scmp.com/author/ian-young-0 only show the first paragraph text and the same link.
Vancouver developer targets world’s wealthy with his ’52-storey sculpture’ – South China Morning Post

Vancouver developer targets world’s wealthy with his ’52-storey sculpture’
South China Morning Post

The luxury residential tower is being marketed around the world, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where Gillespie and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels are due to officially unveil the project today. Yet in a recent interview in his Vancouver …

You don’t suppose….?

@teririch // Jun 19, 2014 at 10:16 am #57

The page came up later that evening, and I scraped the text at that time. I wonder why it was blocked.
I see that Rennie’s talking notes on F*** Suzuki story [ Comment – Blogs >> Vancouver condo king Bob Rennie on race, real estate and ‘David f***ing Suzuki’ Last updated Wednesday, 18 June, 2014, 12:13pm , by Ian Young ] was top in the read-often column.

14ceb692fb58016053f95b50dbc5ad5.jpg
Picture of twisted tower

The ambitious design of Vancouver House, which is likened to a 52-storey sculpture, is a product of necessity. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Canadian developer Ian Gillespie was in full spate as he described his vision for Vancouver as an Asia-Pacific hub, attracting the best and brightest to what is routinely ranked as one of the world’s most liveable cities.

It is a vision that underpins his latest project: Vancouver House, a futuristic-looking high-rise that Gillespie predicted would become a landmark for the city when completed in 2018.

The luxury residential tower is being marketed around the world, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where Gillespie and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels are due to officially unveil the project today.

Yet in a recent interview in his Vancouver office, Gillespie admitted his home city was experiencing “growing pains” after a decade in which more than 40,000 rich immigrants, 80 per cent of them Chinese, moved to the city under a recently axed millionaire migration scheme.

In addition to being one of the world’s most liveable cities, Vancouver is now the second-most unaffordable housing market in the world behind Hong Kong, according to the Demographia consultancy.

With prices of detached homes now averaging more than C$1.2 million (HK$8.6 million), can Vancouverites afford any more internationalisation?

“I think it’s a good thing to aspire to because I just know myself that I learn more when I am around people from other cultures,” said Gillespie, greyhound lean with the hunted look of a former competitive runner (he almost made the Canadian Olympic team in his youth).

An artist’s impression of Vancouver House, which will dominate the city’s skyline. Photo: SCMP Pictures

“I know that my personal life is enriched from taking the best that different cultures can offer. I don’t think anyone has an argument with that unless they truly have their head in the sand.

“I think we’re past that conversation. I think the real issue is that when you have a city that’s growing like our city is, and that’s attracting all this talent, how do you try to buffer some of the negative consequences that come from that. Obviously, affordability is the primary one.”

Gillespie, president of his privately owned firm, Westbank Projects Corp, has been one of the key players in Vancouver’s transformation, with landmark projects scattered across the city.

But he has a particular passion for Vancouver House as the synthesis of his philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk, a German word for “total design” – encapsulating architecture, art, infrastructure and city building.

The ambitious design of the tower is a product of necessity. Planning requirements included setbacks from a nearby bridge that reduced the 100,000 square foot site to a miniature 6,000 sqft triangular plot on which to build the main tower.

To overcome this, Ingels had the floor plan expand as it ascended, resulting in a cantilevered 13,000 sqft rectangular floor plan on the upper levels.
It doesn’t have one building right now that takes your breath away
Ian Gillespie, developer

The result has been likened to a 52-storey sculpture, or a curtain being drawn back on the city.

Gillespie said the tower would be the most expensive ever built in Vancouver.

“Vancouver has lots of good buildings. It doesn’t have one building right now that takes your breath away,” he said. “You can’t have a whole bunch of buildings that take your breath away. It’s like putting on too much jewellery. You just need to have one really great piece … That’s what we went out to achieve.”

He likened Vancouver House’s potential buyers to art collectors.

Adding to the appeal for international buyers will be an “asset management” programme for absentee owners, with managers performing such tasks as running water through the taps and regularly switching on appliances should an apartment lie vacant for an extended period. It is a concept bound to raise eyebrows in a city where vacancy rates are frequently cited as a downside of foreign participation in the housing market.

As for whether Vancouver House would have more local or international buyers, Gillespie said he had “no idea”. “[But] what I can tell right now is that we’re receiving a lot of input from all over the world, which is not the norm. The norm for the last number of years is that you receive input from Vancouver and China … [but] people are being emotionally drawn to that sculpture.”

Gillespie said he was unconcerned by Canada’s decision in February to axe the 28-year-old millionaire migration scheme.

The scheme, under which migrants worth a minimum of C$1.6 million received permanent residency in exchange for loaning the government C$800,000 interest-free for five years, helped Vancouver become the world’s favourite destination for millionaire migrants.

Applications by millionaires, most of them Chinese, to move to British Columbia under the scheme in recent years far exceeded those under similar wealth migration schemes to move to the United States, Australia and Britain combined.

The cancellation of the programme goes into effect this month, along with the formal rejection of visa applications by about 60,000 would-be migrants, two-thirds of them planning to move to British Columbia.

Gillespie said the move had likely triggered a brief decline in Vancouver sales already, although he believed it would amount to nothing more than “a blip”. Rich immigrants would continue to make their way to Vancouver regardless, he noted.

“The way to think of it is water running down the hill,” he said. “You put a boulder in the middle of the creek and the water heads around it. It always finds a way. People find a way.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Developer targets the wealthy with Vancouver House

@Bill #58

The link works fine. “Scraping the text” and then pasting it all here simply makes the comments harder to read. The result is we have to page through four plus screens on a tablet, all to get past something that Teri introduced as having nothing to do with the topic at hand. Maybe we could just let people click on the links if they want to?

“Scraping the text” and then pasting it all here simply makes the comments harder to read”

No kidding. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to show some semblance of online manners – providing a summary of the content and a link is more than adequate.

@rph #39

Small points (or perhaps bigger point).

You have little to no property rights in Mexico.

In the US, if you are a Snowbird (as opposed to a landed immigrant or a citizen YOU WILL pay higher taxes on sale of that property—and you may owe MORE to the government if you have sublet/rented that property out, too). And woe betide you if you stay a day longer than the legal limit allows—hello, IRS income tax division!.

And a citizen of Canada who owns another property in Canada is paying CDN income tax. This apparently was one of the shortcomings of the Immigrant Investor scheme. People were immigrating, buying (or vice versa), going back to the country where their work was located— and then not paying their income taxes here. That is a huge problem in itself.

If you are going to immigrate and/or become a citizen of Canada—positions that bestow full rights and priviliges of citizenship upon you, including ‘free’ education and substantially’ free’ medical services (as opposed to a visitor or foreign vacation owner status) then the paying of global income tax is a no brainer—it’s your duty. Perhaps that kind of income tax capture would help offset some of the burden of a too-hot real estate market?

But which level of government introduced restrictions in those countries?

And what happens if “Vancouver” does, but Burnaby, Richmond, WestVancouver, Surrey, etc do not.

Unless everyone goes in there won’t be much effect.

PS I don’t disagree: there needs to be a federal/provincial legal framework around this.

Curious…why do we think there isn’t one now?

@Silly Season #64

With respect to paying income taxes on the profit from the sale of a property, I understood that the capital gains exemption applied when a property was deemed to be a principle residence by CRA. If a foreign investor made a profit, wouldn’t it trigger the capital gains clause? Or are you saying that a non resident can have a principle residence? Not a tax or real estate lawyer here, but the foreign rules you cite sound a little like some of our existing rules.

I think we have to ask ourselves, why would the govt want to stop real estate speculation, especially in Vancouver?

It’s probably our number one industry. If we didn’t have buildings constantly going up, the City would be broke and a huge percentage of the population would be unemployed. In a city like Oshawa, maybe the govt would worry that high prices would hurt their auto industry, and their big bosses like Frank Stronach would make some phone calls. But in Vancouver, real estate is our main, local industry. All the big players and socialites in town are developers.

I’m trying not to laugh when I say this — trust me, I’m being serious. Families cost a lot in taxes/services like schools, libraries, community centres. If you can fill up the city with empty condos or single young people, traffic goes down. Public transit use goes up. Cycling goes up. Costs of services go down. Younger people are more progressive too. You don’t need Walmarts and can fill your shops with pubs and cafes too. It’s not a conspiracy, but it’s an added bonus.

So, it’s kind of a win-win for the City to keep pumping real estate. There’s no downside. If they can keep it going forever, why wouldn’t they? Perhaps, the federal govt is worried that it might pop and lead to a financial collapse, but that’s not a local govt concern.

@Kirk # 72 and rph#73

It is kinda sad that this is the best model of ‘industry’ this city (or any other for that matter) can come up with.

A bit of a sell out, actually.

@Kirk 72 and 74 – I agree that real estate redevelopment is the #1 industry in Vancouver. The problem is that the economic benefits are very unevenly distributed, as a few facts on income will illustrate.

The median family income in Vancouver is about 69,000 per year, it ranks 22nd in Canada. Price of real estate to income is 2nd on the planet next to Hong Kong. Rent is very costly on a working income.

The Vancouver economy is based on tourism/redevelopment with a strong emphasis on low skill, service sector jobs for far too many families.

The redevelopment industry consists of taking a given piece of land, upzoning the density and building more smaller units of housing than previously existed. The costs of increased density are externalised to the public at large, while the profits are nicely concentrated in the direction of the developer.

Highly paid local jobs? Income rank of 22nd in Canada says otherwise.

@Silly Season 77
Interesting statistics on the lack of tax paid, I hadn’t seen that before.

@Kirk #75:

The local construction jobs are not high paying. A friend’s partner is in the industry.

And, companies are bringing in foreign workers not unlike the food handling ‘green’ jobs being touted by the city.

@Silly Season # 81

This goes back to something I posted a short while ago after speaking with a work associate.

He is Canadian born of Iranian decent. And he point blankly told me, Vancouver is a beautiful city but you can’t make money here. So immigrants park their families here and go back to their ‘home’ countries to work.