Building façade improvements and awning replacements

Hastings Street Renaissance Project

The lack of economic investment and building maintenance in the DTES is most apparent along Hastings Street. While incentives have been available for heritage building façade improvements in the area, there has been little participation by building owners along Hastings Street. The Hastings Street Renaissance Program was developed as a pilot strategy to address the vacant storefront and deteriorating building stock issues in tangible, visible, and timely ways. This program improves the streetscape, daylights existing businesses and helps to establish new businesses, effectively re-uses existing (and otherwise deteriorating) building stock, and secures affordable spaces to foster community-based economic development.

The Program provides a façade improvement grant to a non-profit organization that will be the future tenant for the vacant storefront or that will be the project manager who liaises with future tenants. Tenants of the buildings were able to use the City’s
investment in façade upgrades as leverage to negotiate more favourable terms in their lease agreements with property owners.

The direct benefits of this project are six storefronts with upgraded facades and new
retail tenants. The majority of those support arts-based businesses: theatres, studios, or galleries, capitalizing on the momentum built by the local DTES arts and culture community over the years. These projects are serving a need that is pressing in the community for affordable spaces for artists to operate theatres, production studios, and storefront galleries. 

29 West Hastings Street before & after

The pilot façade renovation at 29 West Hastings Street has beencompleted. The UBC School of Architecture worked with the Central City Foundation (property owner) and the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective (tenant) on improvements to 29 West Hastings, a single room occupancy hotel, and brought back an active use to the ground floor. The project received grants for the proposed ‘daylighting’ (bringing in natural light) of the storefront.

DTES Awning Improvements

DTES businesses are upgrading ground floor storefront awnings to bring about a more positive retail environment.  As of 13 January 2010, 35 businesses have gone through the re-skinning program and about eight businesses are currently in the process. 

Chinatown business awning, before and after

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