Hogan’s Alley Society buys Brickhouse development site in Vancouver’s Chinatown

The non-profit organization looking to build a contemporary Hogan’s Alley community in Vancouver’s Strathcona area recently –and quietly — acquired an adjacent major property.

Records retrieved by Daily Hive Urbanized early this year show Hogan’s Alley Society now owns 796 Main Street — a 12,800 sq ft lot located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Union Street and Main Street on the Chinatown side of Union Street.

This property is largely vacant, but it does contain several structures of historic value, namely the 1910-built two-storey building fronting Main Street that contains the Brickhouse Late Night Bistro and Dive Bar and a 1925-built single-storey building fronting Union Street that previously housed the Jimi Hendrix shrine.

Hogan’s Alley Society’s deal with Bonnis Properties to acquire the site closed in November 2023, with the non-profit organization paying the developer $20 million. On the same day the deal was finalized, the federal government’s Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) provided Hogan’s Alley Society with a $25.2 million mortgage.

A year prior, in 2022, CMHC also provided the non-profit organization with $350,000 in grant funding to research the “current state of rental housing experiences through data and lived experiences” in the context of addressing the “systemic displacement of Black communities from Vancouver’s historically Black neighbourhood, once known as Hogan’s Alley.” This grant funding will also design “prototyping and creating a clear roadmap of interventions.”

In February 2021, after a long delay, the previous makeup of Vancouver City Council approved Bonnis Properties’ rezoning application to redevelop 796 Main Street into an 11-storey building with 94 homes, including 75 market strata condominium units and 19 social housing units, as well as over 6,000 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses.

The century-old bricks of both the Brickhouse and Jimi Hendrix shrine buildings would be salvaged and reused for the new building’s ground-level facades to commemorate the Brickhouse and Hogan’s Alley.

The project’s design of a taller and wider building was permitted by City Council’s decision to grandfather the application under the 2011-enacted policies for revitalizing Chinatown through development.

Such a design would not be permitted today, as the Vision Vancouver-led City Council in 2018 rescinded the previous allowances for taller and wider buildings in Chinatown — a direct response to an outcry at the time by activists against recently completed building developments perceived to be “gentrification.”

In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized last week, Kerry Bonnis, whose family owns and operates Bonnis Properties, says he started planning the proposal for 796 Main Street when he was in his late 40s. He sold it just before he turned 60 years old.

The developer made the formal rezoning application submission in May 2017. The application was subsequently reviewed by the City’s Urban Design Panel twice and the City’s Chinatown Historic Area Planning Committee twice, with the secondary reviews made for a 2019 revised design that downsized the building from 15 storeys to 11 storeys.

It took nearly four years for the project to reach public hearing with City Council, and after years of consternation, it was the one and only project permitted to be grandfathered under the previous policies that were abolished three years prior.

“It’s a real testament to how terrible the City of Vancouver has been, when it takes about 15 years or possibly more to see a project started and finished. And I think that’s the best reflection on how City staff have performed in the last decade,” Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“I just think it’s really unfortunate that the official community plans that were laid out in consultation with all the original stakeholders in Chinatown were not respected… Thank God we now have a new mayor and City Council and new leaders at the helm of City management, and the incoming general manager of planning.”

Bonnis said his team worked with the then-new Hogan’s Alley Society, founded in 2017, on planning aspects of the rezoning application’s design that honour the area’s past Black community.

For this reason, he says, “We’re really happy and content that the project ended up going to the Hogan’s Alley Society. They will do great things with that property, and I think it’s great that Vancouver, a young city, will see some continuity and reestablish that property for some African Canadian businesses once the new building is done, which was something we had intended to do.”

“I’m sure they’ll follow through with some of the ideas we had to put on the building side that faced Hogan’s Alley, which was to activate some of the back alley with some art or animation. And really, it’s with a lot of enthusiasm we look forward to seeing how they’re going to realize all that, and I look forward to being there for the opening ceremony.”

Daily Hive Urbanized reached out to Hogan’s Alley Society for comment on their intentions for their newly acquired property, but they did not provide a response in time for publication.

The non-profit organization’s primary interest lies on the south side of Union Street — immediately south of 796 Main Street — where Hogan’s Alley was previously located. This city block is currently the footprint of the easternmost end of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts and the location of a temporary modular housing building. The block is owned by the municipal government, which intends to redevelop the site into a high-density, mixed-use development with residential, commercial, and cultural uses that honour the Black community — all in accordance with the City’s Northeast False Creek Plan.

In September 2022, Vancouver City Council approved a memorandum of understanding with the Hogan’s Alley Society to eventually provide the non-profit organization with a long-term lease of this block, which is framed by Union Street to the north, Main Street to the west, Prior Street to the south, and Gore Avenue to the east.

In turn, after a long-term lease is secured in the future, Hogan’s Alley Society would be responsible for all design, construction, programming, operation, maintenance, and other capital costs related to redeveloping the block.

However, the entire scheme for the block is completely contingent on the demolition of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts to free up the land for development.

When the City approved the Northeast False Creek Plan in 2018, it was originally expected that the viaduct demolition process would begin in 2020, and only after a replacement ground-level arterial road network is built for the more than 40,000 vehicles that use the bypass route daily. None of this work has occurred as planned.

Due to growing costs, the demolition of the viaducts and the full implementation of the Northeast False Creek Plan appear increasingly unlikely with each passing year.

In 2018, based on a demolition/construction start in 2020, it was expected the viaducts removal would cost $360 million. Construction costs have only skyrocketed ever since, and the Northeast False Creek Plan’s primary source of revenue — market condominiums from the area’s developments, which have stalled — for covering the area plan’s previously estimated $1.7 billion public benefits package has hit a wall due to a range of marketplace conditions.

In April 2022, City staff stated the demolition of the viaducts could begin no earlier than 2027. Separately, the City’s draft capital budget at the time for the forthcoming years also suggested reinvestments to retain and structurally improve the viaducts would be required by 2032 if demolition is not undertaken.

Just to the south of Chinatown and the former Hogan’s Alley site is the major construction site of the new expanded and relocated St. Paul’s Hospital, which is expected to reach completion and open in 2027 at a cost of $2.2 billion.

In 2025, construction will begin on the second phase of the St. Paul’s Hospital campus — a 12-storey building with 370,000 sq ft of research office and medical clinic space. The $638 million building will reach completion in 2028.

After other remaining hospital, medical research/clinic office, hotel, and rental housing phases reach completion beyond 2028, the overall St. Paul’s Hospital campus, upon full buildout, is expected to provide on-site employment for 10,000 people, which will provide the businesses of the neighbouring Chinatown with a much-needed boost.

The future hospital campus has catalyzed various other private sector-driven developments in the area to complement and support the major concentration of healthcare and research activities.

Immediately northwest of the hospital campus, Keltic Development is currently building a 10-storey tower at 220 Prior Street with 100,000 sq ft of medical research office space for US medical tech firm Masimo.

To the northeast, just across from the future hospital’s emergency department entrance, Strand Development will turn 456-496 Prior Street into a new large mixed-use complex with two towers up to 19 storeys, containing over 300 secured purpose-built market rental homes, 228,000 sq ft of general office and healthcare office uses, and 33,000 sq ft of retail, restaurant, and cultural spaces. Strand’s name for this project is Prior Place.

In the mid-2030s, another major redevelopment opportunity will open up within Chinatown, when BC Hydro is expected to decommission the 3.5-acre Murrin substation on Main Street — located immediately west of Hogan Alley Society’s acquisition of 796 Main Street.

Source