Simple home renovation costs $1 million and takes 8 years thanks to Vancouver standards

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When she began renovating a dilapidated heritage home at 320 Union St. in Strathcona in 2016, Sandra Botnen thought it might cost between $150,000 and $200,000.

Eight years later, he’s still working on it and has spent more than $1 million.

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What happened?

The project ran into several levels of rules and regulations set by the City of Vancouver.

Botnen’s plan now is to restore the 1895 house at the front of the property and turn it into affordable rental housing for seven artists. He is also building a three-bedroom house in the back.

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It sounds simple, but it is not.

The house had been empty for a decade when he bought it, in part because it had been classified as an SRO, like a single-room hotel or boarding house, in the Downtown Eastside.

It was not a hotel, it was the building of a Chinese society that rented seven rooms to its members. But city regulations state that to convert an SRO to a single-family residence, you would have had to pay $125,000 per room, or $875,000.

The City of Vancouver said in an email that the home had been designated SRO because “it was a boarding house owned by a corporation. However, it is not considered a social building like we see in Chinatown, which are typically tall masonry buildings.”

So Botnen decided to turn it into an SRO for artists.

He initially wanted to just fix up the house and build a house across the street later, but the city insisted he do it at the same time, so he did.

“When I bought the property, there was a risk, because it had a lot of intersecting limitations,” Botnen said by phone from New York, where he now lives.

“There was a heritage component, there was a social housing component, there was zoning. (But) I came up with a plan that I believed addressed all the hot-button issues Vancouver was trying to remedy: affordability and expanding the housing stock.

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“Well, even though my project was all the city was trying to work on, I feel like they didn’t give me the green light where I thought I would. At one point I even asked if the city wanted to buy the (property)… If they weren’t going to offer me some of the concessions, then the city would like to buy the property, so they could solve the problem themselves. “

The city refused to buy it, so she moved on.

“If I was doing this as a developer to make money, I would have left,” she said. “There was a point where I had to decide if I was going to do this for more personal reasons than business reasons.”

In this case, the former Cirque du Soleil dancer and performer wanted to build a legacy.

“The vision is to give back culturally to the city and provide affordable housing for artists,” he said.

“The people who make a city interesting make neighborhoods attractive. (The house is) designated Class A heritage, and I love the idea of ​​the house in the future having a legacy and becoming a cultural landmark, documenting the lives of artists and their careers.”

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The house is high profile because it is on the Union Street bike route. The first indication that something was finally happening was when 320 Union was lifted into the air and moved to the back of the property, so a new foundation could be poured.

“The contractor decided it would be best to rebuild the foundation,” the architect said. Tony Osbornewho has been working on the project since 2017.

“We thought they would just lift the house up, like they usually do, but they wanted to get it completely out of the way. So they put it on beams and slid it to the back of the lot, rebuilt the foundation and slid it back. “It was great to see him move.”

The most expensive part of the project is redoing the old house, which had to be dismantled and rebuilt to modern codes. Last week, the only original detail left was the top of the house, which retained its Victorian fish scale siding and diamond tiles. But this week they have been removed.

However, the house will be rebuilt to look as it did in 1895, using all the original material they could recover.

“Wherever possible, we’ve kept the wood siding, because it’s very difficult to replicate today,” Osborn said. “There are also some features inside, some wooden balustrades have been retained and will be brought up to code as well.”

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The restored home will feature a square bay window in the front, a small original arch over the front door and a second-floor balcony. The new house behind will be completely modern. The property is a lot and a half wide, so two buildings can easily fit on it.

“Our philosophy is that a new structure should not pretend to be a heritage structure,” Osborn said.

“When you read the built structure of Strathcona, you should be able to tell it was built in 2024 and (the house across the street) is obviously older. “It will have a different expression than the heritage house.”

If all goes according to plan, the project could be completed this year.

But that still depends on the city’s permitting process.

“Sandra wanted to do some good things here, creating affordable housing and adding additional housing with infill in the back, and the city was extremely difficult in every way,” Osborn said.

“Sometimes you have to submit a permit review because changes arise on the site. We submitted a review request a year ago and the city has not yet issued it. “They are getting better at other things, but in this application, it has just been a nightmare.”

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