BURST
The historic Keefer Rooms building in Chinatown may finally be renovated.
Built in 1912, the four-storey building at 222 Keefer St. has been empty since it was hit by a fire in September 2022. The fire started in the Gain Wah restaurant, a longtime Chinatown fixture, and displaced 39 people who lived in single-room-occupancy rooms upstairs.
The provincial government’s B.C. Housing purchased the site for $8.2 million in October 2023, and recently submitted a development proposal for the site to the City of Vancouver.
The proposal would “alter (the) existing commercial and single room occupancy building by rehabilitating and upgrading floors one to four, reducing the number of rooms from 45 to 41.”
The city is looking for public feedback on the proposal through its Shape Your City website through March 30.
Merrick Architecture did the proposal for B.C. Housing, which could not say how much the renovations will cost by deadline. But it sounds as if the building will be stripped down to the studs and rebuilt inside.
“The scope consists of upgrades to the exiting system, full replacement and upgrade of the fire protection, life safety, mechanical, electrical, security systems and a seismic / structural upgrade,” said the proposal.
The main floor will be a restaurant and upper floors SRO units. The building will be managed by the Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust.
“We’re losing privately owned SROs, so we’re really grateful that (B.C. Housing) bought this SRO and took it out of the market and are going to reopen the rooms,” said Wendy Pedersen of the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative Society.
Pedersen said they have been keeping in touch with the former tenants and the hope is some will be move back in when the building is done. But some of the tenants have died.
She also said the plan is to bring back the Gain Wah restaurant on the main floor, a Chinatown staple that specialized in hearty Cantonese diner dishes, such as barbecue pork, curried beef brisket and soy sauce chicken on rice, that were under $10.
Pedersen said Gain Wah is missed because it provided “ food security for Chinese seniors and Downtown Eastside residents” at a low cost. The owner has retired but Pedersen said the new Gain Wah will be operated by the SRO Collaborative Society.
The building is looking somewhat weathered, with extensive graffiti on the west wall facing a lane. But it remains one of the most distinctive heritage structures in Chinatown, with a handsome brick facade, bay windows, and decorative sheet metal cornices. It also has an old school painted sign in both English and Chinese for Keefer Rooms.
The heritage elements are to be restored during the renovation, and the main floor facade will be brought back to its original 1912 look. The building was originally a Japanese rooming house, and had 74 hotel rooms upstairs; it was reduced to 45 when SRO bylaws were changed in 1975.
It’s built on a single 25-by-122-foot lot, and fills up the entire lot. The main floor is 3,004 square feet and the upper floors 2,989 square feet each. If you include the basement and the roof, the total square footage is 15,351.
The schedule for reopening the building is not known, but it may be by the end of 2027.
With files from Joanne Lee-Young.