Posted Feb 1, 2009, 6:05 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 41,699
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Ironically, the tunnel was bored by TBM next to the Obsessions store in Yaletown - but as has been discussed (in the context of a UBC Line under Broadway itself), station excavations - even on a bored tunnel segment - will have an impact (hence, the UBC Line should be under 10th Ave!):
Quote:
Canada Line construction wipes out Obsessions, dreams
Megaproject rolls over small businesses including popular gift store
Geoff Olson
Vancouver Courier
Friday, January 30, 2009
Mark Kenna is reclining on the carpet of the stylish English Bay condo he shares with his work and life partner, Alex Barker. Kenna pokes through photographic mementos of their business, as their two golden retrievers amble about in a pool of sunlight. Everything is soon to be history at Obsessions, their Vancouver-based gift store retail business. The couple are approaching bankruptcy; their two remaining stores are now up for sale. "This is everything we've worked toward for 10 years," Mark says of their dream home. "We've mortgaged it to the hilt to keep in business. And we may have to give it up pretty soon."
Kenna says he developed shingles over the holidays from stress. In October, Barker tried to take his own life.
You don't have to travel to Beijing or some Third World backwater to find a real-world parable of how the megaproject mentality can destroy the livelihoods of hard-working business people. It's right here in our own backyard.
In 1998, Kenna and Barker were two young entrepreneurs, newly arrived from England. "The FastCat guy [Glen Clark] had just been ousted," says Barker. "Gordon Campbell had just become premier and we thought he was brilliant ...we knew that the provincial Liberals were champions of small business, and that's why we started our business. Everything was fine until they started this urban infrastructure upgrade."
Barker is referring to the Canada Line transit project, which the couple still believe is an asset to Vancouver. "We think rapid transit to the airport is a wonderful thing, but it should have been bored tunnel and merchants should have been compensated," says Barker.
Kenna and Barker aren't black-hooded activists, dedicated to sticking it to the man or smashing the state. They aren't bad bets looking for a handout or a bailout, through want of a viable business plan. The couple are two well-spoken, sophisticated retailers who grew their business into four successful locations, and were hoping for an airport outlet and an expanded global presence. Obsessions was voted the Best Gift store consecutively for the past six years in both the Georgia Straight and the West Ender. But their business was in the path of the Canada Line transit construction, which cut through the lives of Vancouver merchants as surely as it punched holes in the streets.
Kenna shows me a photo of their now defunct Yaletown location. Obsessions is all but invisible behind hoarding and blue tarp. The construction on Davie created a maze for pedestrians, reducing the store's whereabouts to a Where's Waldo guessing game. Financial statements show that the only years the company had losses, other than operating costs, were during the first two years of the three-year transit construction. A document from their accountant estimates their loss from the Canada Line to be $184,433, not including legal or accounting fees.
The couple says they were first alerted to the Canada Line construction at a public meeting at the Opus Hotel, in Sept. 2005. By January 2006, preliminary work had begun outside their Yaletown location, with streets closed to traffic in April 2006. "Had we known the landlord would be compensated for losses we would have run from there," Barker says ruefully of a two-year lease they didn't break until the final month.
Sales dwindled from $1,700 a day down to at times a mere $100 at the Yaletown location, Kenna claims. "Our website business and corporate business was performing very well and increasing in sales each year and was based out of the head office we had at the rear of our Yaletown store. Of course all took a beating, and ultimately we lost the manpower and finances to continue to operate them as the effects of the construction took a firm grip on the company."
The local suppliers were more sympathetic to postponed payments, Kenna adds, but even those relationships became strained. Supplying them with photos of the Yaletown location, which looked like the set of a postnuclear film, didn't pay the bills. A cascade of negative feedback loops followed. The whole infrastructure started coming apart, says Kenna. They were trying to keep everyone's hopes up, including their own, while laying off employees. The Yaletown location closed in October 2007. The other stores will now follow, after a valiant fight to keep afloat.
Kenna and Barker are not alone in their megaproject-mediated distress, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which estimates the average Cambie store owner has lost approximately $200,000 to the Canada Line construction.
More next week.
www.geoffolson.com
© Vancouver Courier 2009
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