There aren’t many pieces of real estate in Vancouver that aren’t being developed these days, but sometimes a patch of land gets over-looked – as is the case with a small piece at Commercial Drive and Adanac Street.

The ‘orphaned’ real estate has made the news however, as some clever Urban Planning students have found a way to turn it into something useful – like art!

From the Vancouver Sun article:

For decades a tiny triangle at the corner of Commercial Drive and Adanac Street in Vancouver has been little more than an afterthought; a chunk of grass and sidewalk left over when the city curved the north end of Commercial to align with the south side and eliminate a T-intersection.

A sparse space visited by virtually no one except park board mowers and perhaps the odd indolent teen, it lacked focus and use even though it has a clear and unobstructed view of the North Shore mountains and the port that most residents would kill for.

But it has now come into sharp focus as a result of an innovative collaboration between the city and six public education institutions to teach students about creative urban planning.

Where patchy grass once grew a large elevated metal rectangle frames the mountain view. A park bench in front of the frame helps visitors to visualize the landscape like a television screen that always moves but never changes channels.

The makeover is a result of students with the Campus-City Collaborative (C-3) who identified so-called “orphan spaces” within the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood that could be put to better use.

Creating artistic community spaces for everyone to enjoy is a great idea! Not only does this add to the beauty and uniqueness of our fair city, it can potentially raise the value of nearby real estate.

If you’d like to know more about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

What’s one of the best things about owning real estate around Commercial Drive?

We think it’s being close to the Trout Lake Farmers Market, which opens this weekend!

As one of the biggest in the Vancouver Farmers Markets arsenal of fresh-local food extravaganzas, the Trout Lake Farmers Market is a feast for all the senses!

The market opens this Saturday May 12th and running every Saturday from 9am to 2pm on October 21st.

Here is is profiled in The Vancouver Sun:

This year, at this location, there will be once-a-month cooking demonstrations in a temporary kitchen. Chefs include The Sun’s Karen Barnaby, Ned Bell, Andrea Carlson, Angus An and Quang Dang.

Vancouver Farmers’ Market spokeswoman Roberta La Quaglia says there will be plenty of produce for sale this weekend. “Farmers have done a lot of greenhousing over the season,” she says. “There’ll be early carrots, plenty of salad greens, greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers as well as end-of-winter leeks.”

Some new vendors at various Vancouver farmers markets include Earnest Ice Cream, Batchworks Sorbet, Provenance Vegan Pate, she says.

Walking to the market for fresh local food on Saturdays in living the good life! If you’d like to know more about owning real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

If you’re planning to renovate your Commercial Drive real estate this Summer, you may want to attend a free seminar happening at the Croation Cultural Centre at 3250 Commercial Drive.

Presented by the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association, this free seminar will give you the inside scoop on renovating.

From The Province:

The association is presenting the seminar in partnership with BC Hydro, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and FortisBC on May 15 from 7: 30 to 9 p.m. at the Croatian Cultural Centre at 3250 Commercial Drive.

Seminar attendees will be guided through the stages of the renovation process, including design and planning, legal and contracts, selecting a renovator, municipal permits and inspections, and living through a renovation. Presenters include Vancouver-area renovators, a construction lawyer, a municipal building official, and a technical expert, who will discuss the latest in “green” renovations.

The homeowners will also learn about RenoMark, an industry-led national program designed to provide greater confidence to homeowners when hiring renovation contractors. To be accepted into the program, contractors are obliged to abide by a 10-condition code of conduct.

You will need to pre-register at www.gvhba.org or call 778-565-4288, and while admission is free, attendees are asked to bring a food item for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society.

If you’d like to know more about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

The Grandview Heritage Group is a wonderful blog we’ve just discovered that covers the history of the Commercial Drive neighbourhood.

If you’re currently looking for real estate here, you may be interested to learn more about the community’s past.

In their latest post, the real estate at the corner of Commercial & Gravely known as The Alvarado Block is profiled:

The Alvarado Block, which still dominates the corner at Commercial & Graveley, opened for business one hundred years ago in 1912.

Owners J.Y. Griffin and J.M. Brown received a building permit on the 7th April 1911 and they hired architects Townsend & Townsend to design a $16,000 three-storey brick edifice with stores and apartments. Townsend & Townsend are listed as architects for more than fifty buildings right across Vancouver before the First World War, including 1515-1517 Commercial across the street which they had finished the year before. Builder A.D. Abel completed the work on the Alvarado Block early in 1912.

The apartments were listed as 1715 Graveley Street and for a while there was an additional store front at 1719 Graveley which was taken up by Louis J. Ford who delivered milk in the newly-booming Grandview residential district.

You can read the entire post on the The Grandview Heritage Group website.

If you’re interested in learning more about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

A 1.2 acre plot of real estate close to Commercial Drive is being put to good use as a community orchard!

The partnership between the City of Vancouver, Commercial Drive Business Association and the Environmental Youth Alliance is culminating in an urban agriculture initiative known as the Copley Community Orchard. The orchard will be located at Vanness and Copley, just west of the Nanaimo skytrain.

In the early 1900s, this particular plot of land was an orchard owned by Richard Theophilus Copley and the project has thus adopted the name the “Copley Community Orchard”. EYA will collaborate with the Commercial Drive Business Society and the City of Vancouver to further engage neighbourhood businesses and residents in food and ecological projects that contribute to the sustainability of the area.

The Copley Community Orchard project will have a unique approach. Rather than the typical allotments of a community garden, larger communal tree and shrub plantings will be tended by groups of neighbours, community organizations, and school groups.

Approximately 200 new trees and over 150 fruiting shrubs will be planted on the site, which will be comprised of a youth education/production area, collective orchard, community celebration and gathering space, accessible garden beds, native garden, pollinator pasture, apiary, and heritage fruit tree area (the site already has 9 apple trees dating back to the early 1900s).

This is an exciting project that we hope will catch on around the city! You can find out more about it on TheDrive.Ca and on the Copley Community Orchard website.

If you’d like to find out more about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

It’s that time of year again! The weather is finally warming up and you may be thinking about creating a garden or landscaping around your Commercial Drive real estate.

Landscaping your real estate can raise the value of your property, and if you’re thinking about selling your Commercial Drive home this year, it’s time to get started.

If you’re not sure exactly where to begin, here’s a link and excerpt from a West Coast Home and Design article about Landscaping:

How do I find a reliable, competent landscaper? How should I go about getting a garden properly designed and built? What are the major pitfalls I should avoid?

These are three of the most common questions asked by home-owners looking to hire a professional landscaper, either to design and build a total garden or to do specific one-off landscape projects, such as installing a patio, deck, walls, irrigation system, lighting or a water feature.

“Even the installation of a good hedge can raise the value of your property by 2.5 per cent.”

Lesley Tannen,
executive director, BCLNA

The first step is to have a clear idea of the look and style of landscape you want. For instance, you may want an English-style flower garden or a minimalist, low-maintenance Japanese-style garden or perhaps a jungle-like subtropical garden. This involves looking through books and magazines and perhaps taking a local garden tour or picking up ideas from a garden show.

Once you have shaped and settled your thoughts over the style of landscape you have in mind, you can start looking for the right people to make it happen for you. Finding a qualified, competent landscaper is not difficult. There are many of them, but there are also people posing as qualified landscapers. You need to sift the wheat from the chaff.

If you are thinking about selling your Commercial Drive real estate this year, contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

If you’re thinking about buying condo real estate around Commercial Drive either as an investment property or to live in yourself, there are several new options available.

Here’s a recap of recent Commercial Drive real estate either in the pre-sale, or selling phase:

885 Off The Drive is a new Commercial Drive real estate project currently in the pre-registration phase.
There are only 18 one and two bedroom homes in this new real estate development, and because they will be located just off of Commercial Drive, they will go fast!

Latitude is a new real estate development coming to Trout Lake and the Commercial Drive neighbourhood.
These luxury park-side townhomes definitely won’t last long because there’s only 8 of them!

Journey is a small development of 5 townhomes, ranging in size from 1273 to 1741 sqft., and starting at $623,800.

Fusion is one of a kind living in Vancouver’s most eclectic, outgoing and historic neighbourhood – Commercial Drive.

Revolution is an exciting new development off Commercial Drive in East Vancouver featuring 10 unique walk-up 2 bedroom and 2 bedroom + study townhomes.

Sesame Condos is a new condo real estate project by Jameson Development Corp. and Marcon, located just twelve blocks from Commercial Drive.

The View is a new real estate development by Thind Properties Ltd., located near Commercial Drive at Hastings St., near Nanaimo.

If you’d like to know more about these or any other real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

Do you own real estate around Commercial Drive?

Are you and your better half considering either selling or renovating your house?

‘Love It or List It’ is an HGTV real estate reality show that’s looking for couples, or families to showcase their Commercial Drive homes.

Participant Criteria:

If you’d like to know more about this, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh @ 604-780-3457.

885 Off The Drive is a new Commercial Drive real estate project currently in the pre-registration phase.

There are only 18 one and two bedroom homes in this new real estate development, and because they will be located just off of Commercial Drive, they will go fast!

Living near The Drive means being able to walk to restaurants, organic grocery stores and specialty shops, cafes and boutiques.

Commercial Drive is also very artistic and diverse, with a great community spirit.

While this East Vancouver neighbourhood is completely self-sustainable, you can easily be downtown Vancouver in less than twenty minutes via the Skytrain.

The views of the North Shore mountains and the city are spectacular on clear days.

If you’d like to know more about purchasing a home at 885 Off The Drive, or about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

Are you a Commercial Drive resident or real estate owner that is curious about the neighbourhood’s history?

We discovered a great interview with Commercial Drive Historian Jak King through Spacing Vancouver:

Jak King knows a lot about the history of Commercial Drive.

In his recently released The Drive: A Retail, Social and Political History of Commercial Drive he does a great job of outlining a detailed history of the Drive — focusing on the area from Venables to 7th Avenue in the period between the early 1920′s to 1956.

Having read every issue of the Highland Echo — Commercial Drive’s weekly newspaper (which ran from 1936 to 1969) — Jak has documented change through a detailed construction of the people, stores, buildings and curiosities that shaped the ‘backdoor’ of Vancouver. His book also highlights changes in technology, the important creation of a transportation hub, as well as the formative people and interesting events that saw Commercial drive through the beginning of the 20th century. These early events truly cultivated this unique and often autonomous Vancouver community.

This is a fascinating resource about Commercial Drive’s diverse past. If you’re thinking about buying real estate here, check out the entire interview or grab a copy of the book!

If you’d like to know more about buying or selling real estate around Commercial Drive, please contact Vancouver Realtor Justin Leigh.

Photo: East side of Commercial Drive – 1700-block – in 1936 (VPL 23168 part)