BC Business
Real estate developers have been collaborating with Indigenous nations for many years. The difference today is the companies that are embedding Indigenous knowledge and approaches into what they do
Developers working with Indigenous groups is nothing new to Vancouver.
The Aquilinis partnered with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, through their Takaya Developments arm, a decade ago, building out subdivisions on their land along Deep Cove Road on Metro Vancouver’s North Shore.
The Aquilini family is now in line to do much of the construction for Vancouver projects that are connected to the MST Development Corporation, the entity created by the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to work together on building out their jointly held land. That includes the massive development of the Jericho Lands on the west side of Vancouver, the Heather Lands in central Vancouver, and the new Kʷasən development about to start at Willingdon and Canada Way in Burnaby.
Ian Gillespie’s Westbank emerged as the high-profile partner to develop the Squamish Nation’s Sen̓áḵw in Kitsilano.
And Polygon has been working with the Musqueam Capital Corp. to develop its housing projects at UBC.
These partnerships all make a point of placing the Indigenous Nations in the lead, and working assiduously to incorporate whatever designs, planning approaches or housing goals they envision, for obvious reasons.
What you don’t hear much about is developers who are fostering a strong pro-Indigenous approach in their companies without any kind of financial partnership to spur them on.
The one outfit I’ve found doing that (a.k.a. I stumbled across it while researching something else) is Vancouver-based PCI Developments, whose president, founder Andrew Grant’s son Tim, has created an Indigenous advisory committee and is quietly working to incorporate their advice into the company’s planning.
That commitment to a different approach showed up when PCI, along with Chip Wilson’s Low Tide Properties, began looking at its developments in the vicinity of Vancouver’s Great Northern Way—that strip of road along the border of the booming south edge of False Creek Flats, which is due to boom even more once the new Broadway subway stop opens there in a couple of years.
As the companies looked at how to create an interesting industrial/commercial/residential district around there, Grant in particular pushed for Indigenous involvement. The company ran a design charrette for the area, led by former City of Vancouver chief planner Larry Beasley, but with Indigenous consultants Ginger Gosnell- Myers, Cory Douglas and Aaron Aubin as part of the Indigenous Advisory Committee that PCI instituted.
The stated goal of the committee: “To rethink processes that would integrate Coast Salish and Indigenous knowledge” and “help to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and practices into their work.” It’s meant to go beyond just plopping a piece of Indigenous art at the entrance of a building and calling it a day.
That was a bold move from a private developer, says Gosnell-Myers, previously the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous relations manager.
“PCI was the first private developer that bought into the idea of incorporating Indigenous cultural knowledge, procuring from Indigenous companies, hiring Indigenous artists,” she says. “Tim’s really invested in innovation. They’ve been working the last couple of years to decolonize their planning and design process.”
The result of the workshop that PCI and Low Tide sponsored was the concept of a “cultural ribbon” along Great Northern Way that would incorporate Indigenous history and art into the defined “creative district.” (Vancouver Community College has also thrown itself into the project, thanks to the enthusiasm for it from college president Ajay Patel.)
The concept was so attractive that Vancouver planners adopted it as an integral element of the Creative District in the big Broadway Plan.
“Prior to colonization, the Creative District was a critical estuary that was home to sturgeon, oolichan, flounder, salmon, crab, mussels and clams,” the official Broadway Plan says. “The area was known as Skwácháy̓s to the Squamish Nation, the site of a water spring that held deep spiritual connection and Indigenous knowledge. The process of reclaiming Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh knowledge and sharing it throughout the Creative District including the Cultural Ribbon is key.”
Gosnell-Myers says that “if Tim hadn’t held that charrette, none of this would be happening.”
Artist and art consultant Cory Douglas says the ideas coming from the charrette are influencing the design of buildings being planned along the road. The architects for the new Centre for Clean Energy and Automotive Innovation at Vancouver Community College are incorporating elements of Coast Salish history and practices into it: the roofline replicates the edge of an adze, a tool that is used to shape canoes. The base of the building reflects the historic foreshore that existed before False Creek was filled in at the eastern end.
Grant, who prefers to stay in the background on these kinds of efforts, downplays what he’s doing, saying that the company is simply “trying to be very community-minded.”
But he acknowledges he’s developed a deeper understanding of what it means to incorporate Indigenous perspectives since PCI commissioned an art piece—Salish Gifts, giant “welcome baskets” in concrete—a decade ago from Coast Salish artist Susan Point for the company’s Marine Gateway project.
Everyone involved in the cultural-ribbon project has had training in the details of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the framework that the province and city have adopted as reconciliation efforts.
So, these days, Grant can talk more knowledgeably than he might have been able to a decade ago about Coast Salish concepts the group would like to see incorporated in the Great Northern Way district. One is the Skwácháy̓s concept, which includes the idea of a supernatural portal into another world. The other theme is about feasts, because the area was so rich in seafood.
He acknowledges he’s still learning. “For a huge proportion of our history, we have not had any engagement at all in this space.”