Business in Vancouver November 20-26, 2007; issue 943
Landmark city pharmacy packs bags for Kerrisdale
Kripps Pharmacy is vacating its Granville location, renewing debates over rent, parking and transportation
Curt Cherewayko
Kripps Pharmacy is leaving its 60-year location on Granville Street, fleeing the area’s increasing rent and decreasing accessibility, say its owners, not to mention flying beer bottles.
Established by the Kripps family in 1947, the pharmacy will vacate Granville at the corner of Nelson at the end of the month, for the cheaper, safer and more vehicle-friendly streets of Kerrisdale.
Dr. Edward Thorpe has run the pharmacy since 1979 with his wife Bonnie Kripps Thorpe, a daughter of its original owners.
A couple of months ago, a beer bottle was thrown through the pharmacy storefront sign, which for many Vancouverites has for years been an immediately recognizable part of the Granville street façade. Thorpe had already decided before then that there was no room for a pharmacy, in what has become known as Vancouver’s “entertainment district.”
Thorpe said that many of his customers live in Vancouver’s outlying areas and beyond, and in particular in Kerrisdale. “My demographic is people that drive, they own their own houses, they own their own cars,” he said.
He added that parking meter prices continue to increase as the number of parking spots decrease. “There’s no place else to park, because now there are highrises going up in the parking lots; they’re being cannibalized by highrises.”
The move will involve a downsize. Its Granville location occupies roughly 5,500 square feet, while its new location at 5413 West Blvd. is 1,500 square feet.
Kripps has never required all the space it has on Granville, said Thorpe, but the rent was always cheap enough that there was no reason to move. And although the building has had no major renovations in 30 years, Thorpe said the price of the lease has gone “through the roof.”
Transit service, which at one time had a stop in front of Kripps, has been rerouted to accommodate Canada Line construction. “There’s not much you can do here, you’re at the mercy of accessibility and the accessibility has been going down markedly over the last 10 years.”
Henry Lee, president of Tom Lee Music, has also noticed the changing retail landscape of the downtown core, although his store – another downtown landmark – still does very brisk business. “There is more specialty retailers now that make use of the more trendy downtown core image.”
From its original location across the street, Tom Lee moved to its current location at 929 Granville in 1989. As chair of the Vancouver Board of Trade and a director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, Lee has lobbied the city on planning issues.
“I think you need all types of business to make a vibrant downtown,” he said. “A lot of this parking and public transit – they are the services that support these businesses.” There are 53,000 off-street commercial parking spaces in the downtown peninsula, and there are between 5,000 and 6,000 on-street spaces that are regulated for shorter term use.
Bob MacDonald, senior parking policy engineer with the City of Vancouver, said that the downtown has lost about 12,000 surface parking spaces since 1990, but has gained back those spaces in buildings and parkades.
“We’ve had long-standing policies that buildings should be more self-sufficient, and each new [commercial] building that goes up downtown is required to have a certain level of parking,” he said.
Some businesses depend more on the vehicle traffic, said MacDonald, while other businesses depend chiefly on pedestrians.
“The ones that depend on a lot of people being around are thriving, because you got a lot more employment downtown and a lot more residents.”
The downtown peninsula is able to accommodate another 25,000 workers. To encourage other forms of transportation into the core, the city is adding new sky trains to the existing line, as well as building the Canada Line. The city would have to increase the capacity of the area streets before it could encourage more vehicle traffic downtown, said MacDonald.
“In the context of Vancouver, that’s probably a non-starter. How are we going to put another arterial road downtown? That’s highly unlikely,” he said.
Mel McKinney, general manager of EasyPark Vancouver, the corporation that manages the city-owned parking spaces in downtown Vancouver, said that the city at this time has no plans to redevelop or replace any lost spaces.
“A loss of public parking stalls with no plans to replace those could create some hardships on the businesses in the downtown core.” •
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