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The American Hotel: Vancouver’s latest Main Street transformation converts gang hangout to artsy bar

May 26th, 2011 · 12 Comments

Hard to mourn the American Hotel and its bar that died in 2006, unless you were into super-cheap blocks of stolen cheese, cocaine, motorcycle gangs, grunge or all of the above.

Its replacement — a cleaned-up hotel with a new izakaya-themed bar below, the Electric Owl — is definitely a step up without going all the way to hyper-gentrification in this rapidly changing Chinatown/Downtown Eastside corridor. Some will still see it as the thin edge, I’m sure.

The Owl opens this week. Not sure when the hotel’s 49 rooms will be rented out. But definitely a big change for this spot on Main, opposite the Cobalt that used to be the epicentre of punk and leather.

 

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  • Tiktaalik

    The venue hasn’t even opened yet and it’s already gotten enough complaints that it is struggling to get what it wanted from its liquor license application. (No patio?!)

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/dani-vachon/please-help-electric-owl/10150189749399406

    It is really frustrating and bizarre how many barriers there are in Vancouver to entrepreneurs that try to make something work outside of Granville Street.

  • Max

    @Tiktaalki #1

    I understand Manitoba is opening liquor sales into their grocery stores – a progressive move.

    It always amazes me when I head over the boarder how much easier and cheaper things are – including liquor.

    I was over this past weekend – bought a 24 pack (bottles) of craft beer at Costco for $18.99.

    The laws in BC are archaic, and Lord knows we are taxed to death on alcohol.

  • Joseph Jones

    See also:

    City’s Fake Policy Hides Disappearing Housing at the Colonial and Seaview Hotels

  • Megaphone

    While it’s good riddance to gangs/drugs, the DTES does not need another “happening” restaurant/bar/pub.

  • Tristan

    Crompton promptly issues a critique of Bula’s Globe article on the American Hotel:

    http://themainlander.com/2011/05/26/editorial-evicting-history-at-the-american-hotel/

  • Brenton

    I loved this:

    “because we sort of represent gentrification”

  • Gavin

    This sort of gentrification could force people in the DTES to actually move to a different part of town. The horror. Since when did the DTES become a native reserve anyways? Don’t take away our ghetto!

  • MB

    Gentrification, elite artiste cuisine in the DTES, taxes and craft beer aside, I think someone should commission an honest street art piece from a dozen chopped Harleys and park it permanently outside of the old American Hotel.

    They were, you know, part of the cultural history of that block for decades, just as affordable and honest blues were part of the Yale.

  • Max

    I am trying to remember when ‘gentrification’ became a bad word.

  • Tiktaalik

    The renovictions were shameful. There are a number of other bars that renovated and accommodated the same sort of crowd (which are still largely neighbourhood locals) while not disturbing the original low income occupants that live above.

    Was the American Hotel in such poor shape that it was impossible to pay for renovations and continue being an SRO? If so this is another reason why the status quo isn’t working. We need to ensure that maintaining a low income building is viable.

  • mezzanine

    Someone correct me if i’m wrong, but I am unsure if the old American Hotel had a government mandate to provide ultra low rental rates, and that they charged ultra low rates due to the concurrent drug-dealing, stolen-property-fencing and adjacent-room torturing.

    I am not sure the other SROs in the neighbourhood, like the cobalt, are examples to follow.

    “Marjorie Piironen was beaten to death in Room 301. Small-time cocaine dealer Ronald Scholfield was shot in the face and killed while sitting in a vehicle in the hotel parking lot. Emergency services get called to the notorious rooming house hundreds of times a year.
    ….
    The[inspector] contractor agrees the rooms in the Cobalt are disgusting but says they are no worse in than other places such as the nearby Main Rooms, where a woman was cut to death last month.”

    http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=94b65fc9-cb39-47b5-896f-3a6f6ae83b4c

    IIRC, the CoV is also opening new social housing sites at first and main and abbot and pender.

  • Max

    @mezzanine:

    The social housing units have been open at Abbot and Pender for several months. Nice looking units both inside and out.