78 VANMAG.COM MAY 2017they were more than happy to do that. Steve has been nothing but
fantastic for us. He’s been really generous and helpful at the times
when we’ve needed it the most.” Oliver and Kaulback say they have
a long-term “10 and two 5s” lease (a 10-year lease, with two five-
year renewable terms), which has allowed them to lock in a good
rate. (“Some of the g uys coming in now are pay ing $8 or $9 a square
foot more than what we were pay ing when we star ted,” says Oliver.)
“When we star ted, ever y where on the block, w ith the exception
of Phnom Penh, was 6 p.m. shutters down—gone,” he says. “I
don’t even know if the streetlights came on.” Now w ith a flurr y
of new restaurants opening within blocks—including the most
ta lked-about addition from the past year, Kissa Tanto, due nor th
on East Pender—Chinatow n basks in the limelight as Vancouver’s
new foodie nexus. Like Gastow n, though, Chinatow n a lso risks
becoming a victim of its own success, says Oliver.F
rom their fourth-floor offices overlooking the 100 block of
Powell Street, Steven Lippman and Christian Willows are
flipping through a folder of old photos. The before-and-
after shots detail the transformation of the once-derelictstretch of West Hastings that now houses
Wildebeest, Catch 122 and Noodle Box.
“We did the equivalent of seven buildings
there,” says Willows. “At that point in time,
2008, Woodwards was three-quarters done
and there was a lot of uncertainty in what was
going to happen in the market.”
Adds Lippman, in his still-thick Queens
accent (he moved to Vancouver in the 1970s):
“And that building—it was really fucking
scary, all full of rats and garbage and shit.”
Lippman, 61, and Willows, 47, met 25 years
ago while working out at the same gym, Ron
Zalko, and quickly struck up a friendship.
Willows, a recent Kootenays émigré, went to
work for Lippman’s latest start-up, Polaris
Water, maker of the Whistler Water brand.
Lippman sold the business in 1999, and for the
past decade the men have paired up doing what
Willows calls “renovations”: Lippman scours
the city with real estate brokers for hot deals,
and then Willows goes in and fi xes them up.
More often than not, they put an ambitious
young restaurateur on street level to bring buzz
and excitement to the property. “Wildebeest
is where it a ll began,” says Willows. “Where we
started to get into heritage restorations.” Their
list of tenants, past and present, is a veritable
who’s who of Vancouver’s restaurant scene:
Wildebeest, Catch 122, Cuchillo, Kissa Tanto,
Torafuku, La Bodega and Mamie Taylor’s.
“There are a lot of landlords that have cool
buildings, but they don’t want to do the work,”
says Willows. “We put in the infrastructure,
get the change-of-use permits, redo the
duct work.” On average, he estimates, they
spend $400,000 to $450,000 to bring each
building up to snuff.
Lippman—whose early career includes his
own short-lived restaurant at Broadway and
Manitoba, Lippy’s Bar-B-Q, and stints as a
waiter, busboy and dishwasher at Kettle of
Fish, Victoria Station and Hy’s Mansion—has
a clear affinity for the restaurant trade. And as
much as he aims to make a profit (one of
the reasons he’s since sold the buildings
where Cuchillo and Catch 122 are located),
he a lso sees nur t uring young entrepreneurs
with favourable long-term leases and generousOliver and
Kaulback: “The
next thing, if
there is a next
thing—well,
the likelihood
of it being in
Chinatown is
getting slimmer
by the year.”THE OTHER CULPRIT? TAXES!
For Ian Tostenson, president and CEO of the B .C. Food and Restaurant Ser vices Association, the main culprit in this real estate squeeze is city hall. “The
major thing has been the increased proper t y taxes. It ’s staggering,” he says. He cites an example of a restaurant in South Granville that recently closed:
“Their property taxes—for maybe an 80-seat restaurant—were $120,000 a year. The property taxes were more than the business owner was earning—about
three times as much.” And in an industr y where a six- or seven-percent profit is considered healthy, that ’s a burden fewer and fewer can bear. “There’s too
lit tle margin in this business to manage that incredible commitment—the taxation—while still fighting to find staff to run your business,” says Tostenson. “I
think there’s an awareness that Vancouver is becoming so bloody expensive that there’s going to be a revolt from taxpayers saying, enough’s enough.”