Hundreds stormed the Army & Navy store in East Vancouver on April 22, 2009 for their annual shoe sale. The chain, which expanded to Alberta and Saskatchewan, was hugely popular.JOHN LEHMANN/The Globe and Mail
The team working to redevelop buildings that were home to one of Canada’s first discount department stores – the Army & Navy in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – is asking the city to approve a new development on the site, including towers with a mix of apartments, offices and retail.
The project is going to be presented to council without the support of the city’s planning department.
Jacqui Cohen, owner of the buildings and of the former store, said her family believes that the development will bring new life to the once-bustling commercial area, which has been the site of Vancouver’s most visible homeless camp for the last year.
“I and my family hope this is a legacy project. We want it to be a catalyst. We want to kick-start this area and bring it back to what it was,” said Ms. Cohen, who is working with developer Colin Bosa,
The planned redevelopment would preserve the historic façade of the original 19th-century building on the Cordova Street side, which is part of Gastown.
But it would replace the nondescript Hastings Street buildings on the south side with three towers that would include 155 rental apartments – 44 of them a mix of low and very low rents – along with 225,000 square feet of office space and a small amount of retail.
The below-market apartments, to be run by the B.C. Indigenous Housing Society, would be internally subsidized by the rest of the development, rather than requiring government subsidies. The society would also manage a 37-space daycare. There would be additional office space for non-profits.
Ms. Cohen closed her family’s Army & Navy stores in Vancouver, New Westminster and Alberta in 2020, shortly after the pandemic spurred massive changes.
Her grandfather, Sam, had started what became Canada’s first discount department store in 1919. The chain, which expanded to Alberta and, at one point, Saskatchewan, was hugely popular, with the enormous central Vancouver store thriving on what was then a busy shopping street.
Even in later years, after the area declined and other businesses left, it still attracted a wide range of shoppers, from workers looking for construction boots and safety vests to women attracted to its designer-shoe sales.
The province’s housing agency has been leasing the store’s main floor for the past year for one of its new-style shelters, where people get beds in a small lockable room, as part of its efforts to provide housing for homeless people who had camped in Strathcona Park.
Ms. Cohen and Mr. Bosa had proposed a redevelopment concept to the city’s planning department in October, 2021, under what was supposed to be a new pathway to speeding up development projects in Vancouver.
That pathway, an initiative from then-mayor Kennedy Stewart, was intended to encourage developers to bring forward projects to council that had been rejected by the planning department because they didn’t completely fit with current zoning, as long as those projects were delivering some needed resource for the city, such as affordable housing.
But the planning department declined to accept many of applications, repeating what everyone already knew – that they didn’t fit current zoning.
The Army & Navy proposal was declined last year. Now, says Mr. Bosa, the team is planning to move forward directly to council with a proposal that has “non-support from staff.”
His previous proposal had a tower that intruded into one of the city’s protected view cones. The highest tower, which was reduced from 33 floors, is now limited to 17 storeys on the Hastings side. The project also includes a stepped building, going from nine to 11 storeys, on the Cordova side.
Both Mr. Bosa and Ms. Cohen say they believe the building has the potential to bring new business and vitality to the area.
“It’s going to be a fantastic building,” said Mr. Bosa. “It will be finished six years from now and we think it will be a different economic climate.”
He said it’s possible that tech and creative companies, many of which already cluster in Gastown and Railtown nearby, will be interested in the office space, while there’s possibility for some interesting retail.
The project, as planned, would use a mass-timber structure, designed by the prominent firm of Michael Green Architecture.