On the eve of the FIFA World Cup 2026, the bar owners of the Vancouver entertainment district called the city and the province to act immediately to respond to street disorders and public security problems.
The half-dozen veterans in the hotel industry who have put their lives and millions of dollars in rue Granville say that the emblematic band is in force.
“Seeing him collapse due to bad political decisions that do not defeat himself is frankly frustrating, sad and heartbreaking,” said Cabana Nightclub, Dave Kershaw.
With business down approximately 60%, the six operators in several nightclubs on or near the Granville band said it had nothing to lose.
“I have had a bar on Granville since 1996 and I have never seen it so bad,” Kershaw told Global News in an interview.
The street was already in difficulty during the Pandemic Covid-19 when the Howard Johnson hotel at 1176 Granville became an occupation hotel in a room, or SRO, in April 2020.
In June, the province bought the old hotel with 110 rooms for $ 55 million, to host people who lived in camps – including people with a consumption of serious substances and mental health challenges.
The building was initially used as an emergency refuge for the former residents of the Oppenheimer Park camp.
“In the meantime, the Howard Johnson site will operate as temporary support accommodation while long -term plans are developed,” a government press release on June 24, 2020 said on purchase.
ATIRA was hired to operate the “Luugat Hotel” accommodation, which was to include enveloping support and dottis 24/7 to ensure the safety of the residents of the building and the surrounding district.
“The provincial government which takes over the Howard Johnson hotel on Granville Street is somehow where it is really, really uncontrollable,” said Paul Stoilen with the MRG group.
“It was like a night switch,” said the owner of Twelve West Nightclub, Mike Morissette.
“The switch was returned where he went to a street that you no longer recognize,” said Bill Kerasiotis de Blueprint.
Once a destination for young people, Morissette said that the experience of a “big evening” was lost.
“It is supposed to be glamorous, we had our alignment where someone argued with a homeless and they threw their shit.”
Kershaw said individuals often camped outside his club when he arrives to open it while staff and customers regularly attend the consumption of open drugs and street disorders.
“Violent behavior and explosions of people who clearly need a higher level of care than provided,” said Kershaw.
Kershaw recalled a frightening meeting in 2023 where he said that a man and a woman living at Howard Johnson had tried to enter his club when the employees settled for the night.
“My staff is like” hey “, you cannot enter and then they lost their heads and ended up throwing stones on my staff.
Kershaw reported the incident to the VPD and submitted his surveillance video.
Vancouver police said that the file was still inquiry and had not yet been transmitted to Crown Counsel to assess the accusations.
“We had shots, we had knives that we had frightening things,” said Alan Goodall of aura Nightclub. “And people, once they are exposed to this, they will not come back.”
Goodall has, which is on the ground floor of Howard Johnson, for 16 years.
“I am an old cunning veteran, I experienced ups and downs,” Goodall told Global News in an interview. “But in recent years you know, they have been tough.”
Aura has been struck with more than 200 floods, mainly caused by TROs of Luugat sro systems, he said.
“I lost the account and some of them were important floods,” said Goodall. “The residents upstairs, they will trigger their heads and … When the heads of watering will trigger, it is a very different image – things are ruined.”
The Aura ceiling has sold several times while Goodall said that the whole tile floor was to be replaced because the sub-plan had been rotten.
Goodall, who said that several Luugat building managers told him that a working order had been submitted to the British Columbia housing, ended up waiting for more than a year for repairs to start and were forced to close his club for four weeks at the beginning of 2023 to facilitate work.
“The cost of replacing the sub-plan and about 1,500 square feet of tiles was $ 51,000,” Goodall told Global News.
While the owner of the nightclub continued to pay his full rent during the closure and could not win income, he said that the company had received no compensation from British Columbia.
The plumbers, said Goodall, had trouble understanding why will have known floods in his office and his basement regularly – until they discovered one of the SRO residents had tried to empty a wig in their toilet. The posthe was finally found deeply housed in one of the main building drainage pipes.
Goodall said that a flood occurred once in the club’s toilet just before opening its doors on a Saturday night
On other occasions, club customers have been sprayed on the dance floor.
“You know you are working, the water pours on your customers,” said Goodall, who claims that he is still waiting for the British Columbia housing to finish some of the repairs.
Residents of former Howard Johnson told Global News that heavy drug consumers had destroyed the building.
“Each fucking day, the nozzle system or the fire alarm is triggered,” said Eric Burman, who has moved to the support accommodation after years of life on the street. “A little smoking drugs or something triggers it on purpose.”
Douglas Ehret, who was hosted in the old hotel after leaving the Park Strathcona camp in 2021, said that he did not get all the supports he needed.
“I am supposed to have a support worker, I don’t even know who it is,” said Ehret to Global News. “More programming, no more professional skills,” Hi how are you, what are you going “?” You know, because if you are angry and frustrated and you have no one to talk to, you are just right.
“There are (no) advisers here, really nobody is doing even cum here that works here,” added Buurman.
Cabana is at the level of the ground of another SRO managed by Atira, of the St. Helen’s hotel, and Kershaw said that he had also suffered expensive damage.
“Flood is not a broken pipe, the flood is someone who smokes the crack, vanishes and triggers the winner,” said Kershaw in an interview. “The flood is someone who wants to drown the rats in their wall, kicking in the wall literally and throwing buckets of water in there.”
Kershaw said he had seen up to 100 water incidents per year in recent years, sometimes during club hours, while firefighters are also busy responding to hundreds of false alarms.
“Everything is now overflowing from Davie,” said Vince Marino.
Marino has had nightclubs since 1994 and currently operates Junction and Pumpjack ads.
“During the World Sevens, we had people in fact by e-mail to ask ourselves if he was sure to get into rue Davie,” said Marino in an interview. “We have never had this question that has asked us for 30 years that we are here.”
“Tourists come to Vancouver and come to Granville and are like WTF what happened in Vancouver,” said Kershaw.
“It’s more than losing a few nightclubs, you lose Vancouver,” said Morissette.
Bars owners require immediate action from the city of Vancouver and the province.
“We are going to entertain tens of thousands of people from around the world – it’s just not good enough,” Kerasiotis said.
“We are compatiating with people’s needs, but there must just be another way,” added Stoilen.
“They must have a better plan because the current plan does not work,” said Kershaw.
“We need help at the moment,” said Goodall, who fears other nightclubs – including hers – may have to close if the situation is getting worse.
Bar operators said that an immediate solution would be to extend the Skytrain service to bring more people to and from the entertainment area.
When asked if it would add the Skytrain service at the end of the evening or early in the morning between Surrey and downtown Vancouver on the weekend of soon, Translink said that he was still planning transit changes to and during FIFA.
If nothing changes, the group said that the center of a night economy employs 10,000 people and generates around $ 750 million in economic benefits for the city.
“We want to see Granville Street winning and we all care,” said Kershaw.