Fredrik Orling did everything you`re supposed to when he

 Fredrik Orling did everything you’re supposed to when he went looking for a place to start up a
business with his wife.
From his British base in London, he scoped out all of Vancouver’s shopping districts, talked to
commercial real estate agents, did his due diligence through and through.
Robson Street, they said. Maybe Yaletown.
Then he ignored all the advice and opened up shop in Gastown in 2009.
“It was a gut feeling for us,” Orling said, speaking for himself and his wife Julie Wu inside their
Water Street interior-design store, Orling and Wu.
“All the advice we got was against locating in Gastown. But when we got to Vancouver, it was
Day 2 and Julie and I were walking on Water Street as tourists, just exploring.
“We saw the facade, it’s beautiful, it was available.
“We didn’t know what type of store we’d open, but we knew this would be our space.”
Orling and Wu are a microcosm of what’s going on in Vancouver’s original neighbourhood.
They’re part of what the city’s assistant director of planning, Kevin McNaney, calls the creation of
a diverse and creative local economy.
It’s booming and it’s attracting, across the spectrum, people who, basically, love their jobs and
their workplace.
“We have a dynamic company of young and creative people,” said Alvaro Prol, co-founder of
Blueprint, which stages music events and owns a dozen restaurants and pubs. “We find
Gastown a more creative environment, more vibrant, more neat little restaurants and coffee
shops.
“It’s old, it’s got way more character than, say, Yaletown or Robson.
“And we can tell the staff love it, too. They come to work early, they stay late.”
Blueprint, like a lot of other cutting-edge companies, has just moved to Gastown, occupying the
address that comes together at a point on Water and Cordova streets.
Thirty-five people staff the office (400 more work at the company’s pubs and eateries). The
popular Shine nightclub at street level will close on Sept. 27 and a renovated, and renamed club
is scheduled to reopen in a few months.
It’s part of the balance between heritage and vision seen all along Gastown’s streets, full of
mirthfully-named businesses like Parliament: House of Uncommons; One of a Few; Cork and Fin;
Meat and Bread.
Inform Interiors on Water Street is so hip it doesn’t even bother with a storefront sign on Water, its
avant-garde furnishings doing its talking for it.
Pigs make frequent appearances: The Flying Pig on Water Street (more room than its older
sibling in Yaletown), The Greedy Pig on Cordova (offering up seasonal menus, music and
bourbon in a century-old haunt); the super-hero-like neon pig that welcomes one and all to SaveOn Meats on Hastings (a deli everyone should try at least once).
Street artists like Sam Logan, a Danish oil painter, line Water Street with their works. The old
buildings, Logan says, reminding him of home.
There are boutique hotels, boutique restaurants, boutique boutiques.
The point being, there are no Earls, Kegs or Milestones. Nothing wrong with those eateries —
you know what you’re getting with the chains.
But Gastown feels like Gastown, not just because of the old, in Vancouver years, buildings and
architecture, but because you find places you won’t find elsewhere (yes, Commercial Drive and
Main Street are like that, too, but those one-street stretches can’t brag of the history Gastown
can).
Fluevog, Versace, George Lucas’s Industrial, Light & Magic, all call Gastown their Vancouver
home.
Complex, a pop-culture magazine and website, named Gastown the fourth most-stylish
neighbourhood in the world two years ago, behind only Soho, Tokyos’ Harajuku and the 1st
Arrondissement in Paris.
Global Relay Communications, which also has offices in New York, Chicago, London and
Singapore, just renewed its lease on Cambie Street, having grown from 2,500 square feet in 2005
to 62,000 square feet today, making it Gastown’s largest tenant.
Century Group is rebuilding the Ormidale Block, keeping the facade at 151 West Hastings, almost
40,000 square feet of new commercial space.
Gastown is so hot, according to Colliers International, a global commercial real estate firm, that
vacancy rates in the rest of Metro Vancouver are the highest they’ve been since 2005 partly
because of firms fleeing to Gassy Jack’s ’hood.
The former home of hippies and tacky tourist shops has, according to Craig Parkes of Parliament
Interiors, “a fiercely local vibe.”
Then there is what many euphemistically call the offbeat factor, and there’s no hiding the fact it
can be unsettling to be confronted by sidewalks full of homeless and mentally ill people, or folks
smoking crack and offering themselves for sale.
It is the heart of the Downtown Eastside.
“Gastown definitely has a bit of a gritty edge to it, for sure,” said Laura Ballance, who moved her
PR firm to a brick-and-beam building with huge windows and great views of Burrard Inlet and the
North Shore on Abbot Street four years ago.
“I don’t think there’s a city in the world that has found a silver bullet for homelessness. Probably
the Gastown area will always be an area in transition, being in the heart of the city like it is.”
Her office is walking distance from clients who stay in downtown hotels. Her staff loves the space
and views, and also the architecture.
People from the likes of Gucci and Ferrari, part of an Italian delegation during the 2010 Olympics,
were blown away by Gastown’s vistas, Ballance said.
“I like the fact it has some history, a bit of grit,” she said. “It’s a bit edgy with a bit of avant-garde
design.
“It’s certainly gone beyond being just a destination for cruise-ship tourists.”
Back at Orling and Wu, where a couple of tourists originally from Sweden and Taiwan put down
roots five years ago, business has tripled in that time and the most recent fiscal year was the best
yet, Orling said.
“I could talk you to death about how good Gastown and Water Street has been to us.”
gordmcintyre@theprovince.com
twitter.com/gord_mcintyre
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