Vancouver’s Sam Kee Building had two kinds of extra space: a basement beneath the city sidewalk and bay windows above it. In November 1996, councillors reduced the charge for the first. The windows still carried an annual fee of about $260. [1]
Those extensions enlarged a remarkably thin building. Chang Toy’s Sam Kee Company built it in 1913 on land left after the city widened the street. A later city heritage report describes a structure about six feet deep, with ground-floor shops and social and residential uses upstairs. The projecting windows gained room overhead; the basement spread beneath pedestrians’ feet. [2]
Where is this place?
Sam Kee Building, 8 West Pender Street, Vancouver. This map locates the town or region, not a verified exact historic event site.
During the 1986 renovation, the owner paid to rebuild the sidewalk with modern glass panels, recalling the old prisms that had admitted daylight below. The pavement itself was not the expensive part of the subsequent dispute. A 1996 engineering report explained that the glass blocks attracted no annual charge, while fees for the underground space and its access stairs had risen from roughly $226 to $2,400. [3]
Rod and Reg Chow argued for special treatment. At the November hearing, they described rehabilitation paid for at their own expense, including climate control and sprinklers in the basement. Engineering staff argued that private space under public streets should be charged consistently. Councillors chose a retroactive reduction to a nominal basement fee, but left the bay-window charge in place. [1][3]
Two years later, Rod Chow returned to support a wider reduction. On 10 December 1998, Councillor Don Lee moved that the annual fee for all the building’s encroachments be set at one dollar. Council approved it, with Councillors George Puil and Sam Sullivan and Mayor Philip Owen opposed. [4]
The resolution included a condition: the one-dollar rate would take effect once all outstanding encroachment fees and payments had been paid. The decision covered both the space beneath the sidewalk and the windows hanging over it. [4]