The London Hotel was built in phases from 1903 to 1911 and was once known as the Pacific
The once-notorious London Hotel in Chinatown is about to enter a new phase as a “Road To Recovery” treatment facility.
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The building at 208 East Georgia St. at Main is being renovated and may open in late 2025 or early 2026 with rooms for patients in the St. Paul’s Hospital Road To Recovery program, which treats people with addiction issues.
Jordan Eng of the Chinatown BIA is “cautiously optimistic” about the new facility, which will take over a brick heritage building with a popular bar on the main floor.
The developer Beedie purchased the site for $21 million in 2024. One of the big funders of the Road To Recovery program is the Diamond Foundation, which gave a $20 million donation to the program in 2023.
Eng described Beedie and the Diamond Foundation as “top tier in terms of their community involvement” and hopes it will clean up problems at the London, which has been closed for a couple of years.
A man was shot and killed outside the hotel in July, 2021, the culmination of a period when the controversial social housing agency Atira ran an SRO facility in the hotel.
The building had been renovated in 2009 as part of the Ginger condo development at 718 Main St. The development received $1.37 million in incentives from the city to retain the building, including $825,960 in bonus density, $448,141 in property tax exemptions and $100,000 in facade grants.
But problems arose when Atira ran the SROs, with tenants complaining about washrooms and showers not working, and a room not having a door.
“I can’t say for sure what happened, but we got a lot of complaints at the BIA about the activities of the occupants,” said Eng. “It seemed like there was a lot of criminal activity going on in there, and it didn’t look like there was a lot of management happening.”
The London closed in 2022 for renovations. According to a May 2022 City of Vancouver report, Atira renamed the London SRO rooms Aayin, which means “to heal” in Nisga’a. Atira received a $720,000 grant from the city, as part of a proposed $2.8 million renovation.
Staff noted that “over the last decade, as the building condition deteriorated, only those who could not get housing elsewhere would accept a room at Aayin, which created a tenant population that was difficult to manage and adequately support.”
Atira said it would fix up the building to house “a mix of tenants, with priority given to Indigenous and Black residents who are interested in reducing and/or stopping substance use.”
But Atira management changed following a controversy, the building was sold, and the renovation is going forward for the Road To Recovery program, not Atira, which didn’t actually receive the $720,000 city grant.
“The grant was never paid as Atira did not meet the grant conditions approved by Council,” said the city in an email.
The building has had several uses since it was built at the southeast corner Georgia and Main streets in stages between 1903 and 1910.
In his blog, Changing Vancouver, heritage expert John Atkin said a one-storey building was probably built at the corner of Main (then called Westminster) and East Georgia (then called Harris) in 1903.
It started off as an “entirely modern, fireproof” tourist hotel, with rooms rented on the “European plan” for $1 and up. It had an “up to date” café with a “first class cook” and “exquisite cuisine.”
Over the years, it became a single-room occupancy hotel, the café turned into a beer parlour, and it was renamed the Pacific Hotel.
When it was renovated in 2008-2009, the name was changed back to the London Hotel. The main floor pub was also renovated and became one of Chinatown’s most popular bars.