By David Carrigg
Staff writer

It’s easy to tell developer Stephen Hynes is a man of his word.

Eating lunch outside his first major project, at 1529 West 6th Ave., the intense but affable 37-year-old explains how he tries to create as much opportunity for social interaction as possible in his buildings.

"As a developer I try to blow away the shell of anonymity we have around us in our daily lives. The shell is not something we choose—we are just conditioned to accept it," says Hynes, as a little girl walks up to his table, smiles and says, "Hi Steve." A working man passing by who knows someone who knows Hynes shakes his hand. A blonde woman walking her dog gives him a friendly smile and another passerby gushes about Hynes’ latest development—The Waterfalls Building at 1540 West Second Ave.

Tricks Hynes has used to evoke social interaction in the 49-unit live-work complex include narrow walkways that encourage people to bump into each other and two elevators with glass ceilings and floors, designed to spark conversation.

The development includes five buildings organized around an open atrium, with a bridged opening on the north face, 65 feet wide and 20 feet high.

The jewel of the project is the "Gastrodome" at the centre of the atrium, a large, self-contained restaurant building with a 30-foot sloped glass ceiling over which water cascades into a surrounding moat. Stairs rise up both sides of the Gastrodome—which has yet to be leased to a tenant—to public space at the top, where rainwater will be collected from roof areas and directed into a specially lighted sculpture, visible only when it rains.

The $15.5-million building, co-designed with renowned local architect Arthur Erickson, also features rooftop decks accessed by cantilevered steel staircases.

But getting these unique features approved by city planners has been a nightmare, says Hynes, who despises the rows of upscale condos mushrooming throughout the city. "Bureaucracies don’t deal well with original ideas; they deal well with conforming and standard developments. That’s why there are so many conforming, standard developments in Vancouver.

"There’s good planners in the City of Vancouver, very deeply frustrated planners who are trying with their life’s blood to make a difference. Then there’s people in the city who were good planners but have become utter conformists because they are in this environment that very much forces people into cubbyholes and whacks at them if they do something considered wrong."

Hynes, who hopes to inspire other developers to break the conventional condo mould—no pun intended, says he had to wrangle with planners to keep the ground floor of the Waterfalls project as open as possible. "We spent a year fighting over how open the ground floor could be and eventually won after going to the Board of Variance. The Board of Variance applauded us and wished there was at least one other developer in the city that did what we did," says Hynes, who also won permission for the property to go 10 feet above the regulated height. "There have been so many arguments I don’t remember them all."

He says the cost of fighting city hall has added to the bottom line of The Waterfalls Building, with unit prices starting at $269,000. "The substantial array of fees is only the beginning. Complex and changing rules, hidden internal policies of interpretation and a bureaucracy that is so stunningly complex that it is incapable of meaningful consistency cost far more."

Larry Beasley, the city’s co-director of planning, said the city’s planning department has a reputation across North America for openly receiving innovative ideas.

"Our process is one of the most agile in North America," said Beasley, adding Hynes view on the planning department is the exception to the rule.

"There are zoning parameters and building bylaws and input from the public and the Urban Design Panel that can intrude on what the developer or architect wants. But most apprecitate the input."

Undeterred, Hynes is already working on his next project, just west of his West 6th development, with demolition of the Morris Building on the site expected by the end of this year.