Vancouver mega-developer Peter Wall stands outside a restaurant in Vancouver. His One Wall Centre, a dark-glass tower that stood on the highest point of the downtown peninsula, was the hotel and condo complex of his dreams.Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail
After Vancouver developer Peter Wall managed to build the hotel and condo complex of his dreams, a dark-glass tower that stood on the highest point of the downtown peninsula, it wasn’t just a place that had his name on it.
One Wall Centre was his clubhouse, a place where he liked to share French fries at the hotel restaurant with favoured guests and where he revelled in bringing together people assembled to donate to his preferred politician du jour or to listen to a special musician or choir he had flown in or to attend his legendary Christmas parties.
Mr. Wall, who died on March 2 in Vancouver at the age of 87, would never say much at those productions. He satisfied himself by looking around at the power elite he had gathered or the spectacle he had created by bringing Holstein cows – a nod to his early life in the rural Fraser Valley east of Vancouver – to the lavishly decorated hotel ballroom. Or ostriches. Or a Mennonite choir from Winnipeg. Or a contingent of musicians from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
That reserved bonhomie was a contrast to the persona he projected via the media to sometimes entertained, sometimes appalled Vancouver residents. There, Mr. Wall was brash and irascible, given to Donald Trump-like pronouncements about the incompetence of people around him or how things could be done better in the city. (When controversy erupted in Vancouver over the Trump Hotel opening, in 2017, Mr. Wall opined that Mr. Trump, then in his first term as U.S. President, was a “breath of fresh air” and “amazing.”)
The photos that ran in local media emphasized his flamboyant image: big black sunglasses, expensive cars from his collection, his black-glass tower in the background.
Peter Wall looks over at the half-finished 3rd tower of the three Wall buildings in downtown Vancouver.Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail
To the larger public, Mr. Wall was most famous for his showdown with the city in 2000, when it was discovered that he had put a darker glass on his 48-storey tower than had been approved by planners. Construction was halted and there was a titanic showdown. Mr. Wall was forced to put lighter glass on the top floor. Thirteen years later, he was able to finally replace it with the dark glass he loved when his team made the case that it would help conserve energy by preventing over-heating.
Besides One Wall Centre, his most notable development project was at Shannon Mews, a historic mansion on a full block of land on south Granville Street that he bought in 1967 for $750,000. He restored the mansion and, in 2011, got council approval to put in more than 400 sale and rental apartments on the site, which stands out to passersby on the street for the white ceramic “trees” that line the property.
The majority of his other buildings were what urban planners call “background buildings” – well-executed, solid apartment towers that did not stand out architecturally.
Mr. Wall was also a master strategist who would acquire or invest in properties, get city approvals that would vastly increase their value, and then sell them. He did that with the Hastings Racecourse, where he bought an interest for $5.4-million in 2004, waited until a newbie council approved 600 slot machines for it shortly after, then sold his share for a profit of $17-million. He did something similar in 2015, buying two old apartment buildings on Nelson Street near Burrard Street for almost $17-million, getting them rezoned, and then selling them soon after for $60-million.
To a select circle in the city, he was considered a genius – a poor kid who had come to Canada after the war and then discovered the pleasure of making money. That Horatio Alger narrative is too simplistic for Mr. Wall’s early life. though. He was born on Oct. 15, 1937, in Ukraine, one of five children in a German Mennonite family whose father was sent to Siberia by the Russians and never seen again. His mother, Maria, moved the family around Eastern Europe for years to try to find work, leaving young Peter often to be taken care of by an older sister. He was in frequent pain from the time he was a baby, urinating blood. When the family came to Canada, he was diagnosed with kidney stones. After they were removed, he became a far more energetic child.
He eventually graduated from a Mennonite high school in the Fraser Valley and headed to the University of British Columbia for a chemistry degree. But he struggled there, so turned to building a house for his mother. When she decided she didn’t want it after all and Mr. Wall sold it for a healthy profit, he became entranced by real estate.
After starting with houses, Mr. Wall moved on to constructing rental apartments in the 1960s, then condos from the 1970s on, ultimately building a powerhouse real-estate empire, Wall Financial Corp., that now has assets of almost a billion dollars.
“As a person, he was brilliant. He was very shrewd. I love the guy – he was one of the most amazing people I’ve met in my career,” said one of closest friends, developer Rob Macdonald, speaking from Scottsdale, Ariz., where he has many projects on the go in his own real-estate empire. Mr. Macdonald last saw his friend around Christmas at Mr. Wall’s long-time home on Kits Point near the ocean, where he was confined to his chair because of the serious respiratory condition he had. “But his mind did not work like a normal person’s. He had deep insights about the world. But if you weren’t listening carefully, you wouldn’t get what he was saying.”
And, Mr. Macdonald added with fondness, “he was an egocentric kind of guy” – an observation that no one who had dealt with him would dispute.
That combination of ego, smarts, idiosyncratic passions, generosity and desire to do more than just be another developer led him into many ventures. He was a fan of and sometime contributor to the arts, to science research, to a range of political parties, to policing, and to efforts at improving the Downtown Eastside. Oh, and he loved horse-racing.
Although Mr. Wall never got the degree in chemistry that he started at the University of British Columbia in his early years, he became a major supporter, making what was, in 1991, the largest donation by one individual in the institution’s history. That $15-million gift created the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.
“A first of its kind in Canada, the Institute gave leading scholars from UBC and around the world a place to engage beyond conventional boundaries in pursuit of new knowledge and discoveries,” said the statement last week from UBC president Benoit-Antoine Bacon. Mr. Bacon added that, in 2022, UBC created the Wall Fellowships and Wall Research Awards that give $4-million a year to support faculty and students researching environmental sustainability in multiple areas.
Mr. Wall was also a dedicated music fan, frequently arranging to bring in international opera stars for private concerts or special public performances with the local symphony.
And he supported the refurbishment or creation of four theatre spaces in Vancouver, including the Stanley Theatre on the west side and the York Theatre on the east side, as part of various development negotiations.
Politics was another passion, although he once observed mournfully that “I have been 100 per cent unsuccessful in politics. Because politicians do not understand. They get into power and then they are scared to make a decision.”
In spite of that, he never stopped trying. He organized $10,000-a-plate fundraisers for former federal Liberal Party leader Paul Martin in the early 2000s and raised $600,000 last year for federal Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre. He gave heavily to the centre-right civic party that ruled Vancouver for decades, the Non-Partisan Association, then started donating to the centre-left party that took over, Vision Vancouver, after his falling out with the NPA over the black-glass issue.
In one of his more legendary public capers, he admitted – after huge speculation about mystery billboards that appeared around Vancouver for one council candidate in a 2017 by-election – that he was the one who had paid the $80,000 for them.
In 2021, he gave $1-million to the Vancouver Police Foundation to be used for community policing centres and mental-health issues.
The same year, he came up with the idea to build a giant facility in the Downtown Eastside named Vancouver Together that would provide not just a place to live for homeless people, but would also incorporate treatment for drug users, a gym, a lounge, and a community policing office. (It never went anywhere because he didn’t actually own the land where he thought it should go. He wanted the mayor of the day, Kennedy Stewart, to mount a campaign to pull it all together and was disappointed when that didn’t happen.)
Former mayor Sam Sullivan said he found Mr. Wall to be a fascinating character, someone who broke new ground in development, loved opera, and developed a keen interest in Vancouver’s drug-addiction and social problems.
“He was larger than life. We lost a real public figure, a real personality.”
A statement from Wall Financial Corp. issued shortly after his death said that Mr. Wall loved Vancouver passionately. “It was the city that captured his heart and inspired his soul. So profound was his connection that he composed a song in its honour, a heartfelt tribute to the place he cherished most. Through its lyrics, he celebrated the beauty, spirit, and essence of the city he so passionately called home.”
The corporation said that Mr. Wall’s 54-per-cent share of the company’s common shares will go into a Peter Wall Legacy Trust. “In honour of his extraordinary contributions, Wall Financial Corporation remains committed to carrying forward his passion, vision, and dedication. Building a stronger, more vibrant Vancouver for generations to come,” the statement said.
He leaves his wife, Aliaksandra Varslavan; ex-wife, Charlotte; daughter, Sonya; son, Stephen; nephew, Bruno; and grandson, Colin.
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