Slideshow:Railtown

The bistro is buzzing. Not a table is free. A large group lunches around Two Chefs and a Table's signature central oak slab. Two smartly dressed women visit in a corner over a bottle of red. Next to the window, a professionally dressed man and his companion share a romantic lunch.

Across the street, on the southeast corner of Alexander and Gore, a drawn, threadbare man chats with three others who look equally down and out in front of a derelict brown stucco building that sprouts moss.

Both scenes mark the western entrance to an area increasingly known as Railtown. Starting one block east of Main Street and two blocks north of Oppenheimer Park, the cluster of six or so blocks next to the port is known as such to bargain-hunting fashionistas who flock to sample sales, and proprietors of businesses who've recently moved in.

Little activity animates Railway Street on a chilly, wet day, but old warehouses hum with energy behind enigmatic facades and unfriendly fences.

In the past year, Railtown has become home to Two Chefs, a stylish bistro and catering business, a JJ Bean's bakery and coffee shop and Goldtooth Creative, a company known for videogame promotions and visual effects.

These small business owners are enthusiastic about their chosen locations, excited to see their ventures grow. But as new media companies move in, artists worry about being displaced, with 339 Railway St. the only rough-hewn workspace that remains.

As the area gentrifies, Downtown Eastside activist Wendy Pederson wants to make sure new businesses don't alienate the area's low-income residents.

And nobody--except, perhaps, landlords and developers--wants Railtown to become the next Yaletown.

Despite being four blocks from Main and Hastings, Railtown attracts fewer addicted, mentally ill and homeless people than one might expect.

"We actually have a few of that subculture who come here, but they're great," says John Neate Jr., "JJ," of JJ Bean. "Our Powell Street store, we have a lot. It's good. It's really good for the suit-type people to see that everybody can all get along."

Neate originally hoped to locate his bakery caf? near Second Avenue between Cambie and Main streets, but the city wanted light industry, not another coffee shop, in the area.

So Neate happily settled on the bright building at 460 Railway St. with its "amazing" kitchen, central location and ample parking. JJ Bean's seventh site opened last August. Neate initially worried his staff would be unsafe. Many of them bus to work and would have to walk from Main and Hastings. But they've encountered no problems.

Easygoing in manner, Neate demonstrates community spirit and an appreciation for interior design when he encourages the Courier to check out nearby businesses that specialize in high-end furnishings, including William Switzer, The Carriage House and Suquet.

An unexpected gleaming cream-coloured art deco-style building, the old American Can, frames the east end of curving Railway Street at 611 Alexander. "It's one of the most beautiful restored factories," Neate says, "definitely one of the nicest in Vancouver."

The American Can, now Alexander Centre, is Vancouver's interior design hub.

The old tin can manufacturing site houses the headquarters for trendy Aritzia clothing stores, studios for visual arts students of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts, architecture firm Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden, which designed JJ Bean's curved, glass and wood Main Street shop, and William Switzer, a company that crafts fine reproductions of antique furniture in Europe and completes all the finishing, including staining, gilding, chinoiserie painting and upholstery in Vancouver.

Back a couple of blocks, up Dunlevy, Georgina Masana operates Suquet Interiors Inc., which sells, among other things, massive stone fireplaces. She and her late husband, both architects in Mexico, bought the old machinery shop on Dunlevy and used its crane to sandblast the institutional white paint off all the two-by-eight hand-nailed lengths of wood on the lofty ceiling with its 40-foot fir beams.

A gargantuan sliding door off Suquet reveals an indoor parking lot, an entrance to a coffee roasting business and Burnkit, a creative company that redesigned Playstation.com.

While Burnkit's employees have shiny red tool chests next to their stations, staff at Goldtooth Creative, at 329 Railway St., park their Harleys alongside their steel desks.

Co-owner Tyler Weiss can't believe Goldtooth Creative's good fortune. The year-old company, which has become known for its cinematic approach to developing videogame trailers, teasers and commercials, was growing out of its sterile Gastown space when a realtor helped Weiss and co-owner Kody Sabourin find their Railtown digs. They transformed three separate units into a large open space with concrete floors, brick walls, rusting, but solid, joists and thick fir beams. They moved in last July.

Weiss says the rent is much cheaper than Yaletown, and the 29-year-old who sports a plaid trilby hat and a swirling tattoo, likes working in a building with a rich history. He says the site was a cold storage place with a blast freezer to freeze salmon as quickly as possible for shipment to East Asia in the 1920s.

But tenancies by businesses that can afford renovations and don't necessarily require warehouse spaces for their work get on Janna Hurtzig's nerves.

"These spaces are being lost to office space which could really go anywhere," says the 32-year-old designer of colourful handcrafted vinyl bag.

"The fewer crappy buildings that there are, the fewer people who are working in the arts can really develop their techniques and their careers and be able to do what they're passionate about," Hurtzig says. "You need to have the studio spaces in order to allow people to be creative and make a mess. Because if you're working from home, you can't fling paint around, you may not be able to use the equipment necessary to your trade."

Hurtzig moved into 339 Railway St., where the cornice on the brick building reads Imperial Rice Milling Co., in 2005. The relative newcomer has noticed a big change in the neighbourhood with more wholesale fashion reps, hipsters and little dogs. (Modern Dog magazine has an office on Railway Street.)

Instead of making bags to order and having boxes of them cramping her and her boyfriend's apartment living room, Hurtzig now works with six industrial sewing machines, has the space to produce and store bags and can host the occasional sale.

Paul Slipper, a stone sculptor, has rented space at 339 Railway for 21 years. He says the only remaining area business that existed when he moved in is the Placer Dome mining company across the street.

When Slipper first fired up his grinders, generators and exhaust systems, the area was more industrial, much rougher. "You didn't see any pretty women," he says with a hint of the wit that infuses his large-scale works.

The increasing use of containers in shipping eliminated much of the need for warehouses, and in the early 1980s, if not earlier, the storehouses along Railway became flophouses and artist studios. They offered cheap rent in an area that operated under the radar of city officials.

In 1986, fire officials evicted artists living and working in warehouse studios at 339 Railway and 560 Cambie St. A group called Artists for a Creative Environment, or ACE, subsequently lobbied the city to permit artists to live in warehouse studios under certain restrictions.

The bylaw was the first of its kind in a major North American city, says local historian John Atkin.

The mayhem at 339 Railway continued until 2004, Slipper says.

He'd often stumble upon people slumped over in the hallways and "ladies of the night." One perpetually drunk man used to urinate out the window, rigged up a sprinkler on the roof of the building to cool it down, and, on one occasion, got his penis stuck in his fly and shuffled frantically from door to door, searching for someone who would lend him a helping hand.

"For 20 years, people built lofts, did all sorts of illegal activities, nothing was built to code," Slipper says while minimal heat drifts into one of his dusty, cold work areas from the nearby turquoise stove. "And one year, on a cultural crawl where people were opening their studios up, one of them had a barbecue, a propane stove, in her suite and a fire inspector, whose wife was an artist, came by and blew up."

Ron Fisher and Geoff McLeod bought 339 Railway in 2004. Slipper says they've taken a shine to the artists but plan to develop the building by adding two floors and completing electrical and seismic upgrades.

Hurtzig trusts the artists will get plenty of warning before they have to move, but she wonders where they'll go.

Of the three buildings McLeod and Fisher have bought in the area since 1999, 339 Railway is the last to be renovated. McLeod says tenants like the location because it's close to downtown and their lease costs are one-third of those in Yaletown.

He says they've got an architect drafting plans for 339 Railway. He'll find an alternate space for the artists, he says, because he's "just that kind of guy." He doesn't know where he'll find it.

Back at Two Chefs and a Table, co-owner Karl Gregg is beat. Two days after the Junos ended he's still recovering from catering the event. A big guy, dressed casually in a printed T and hoodie, downplays anything vaguely noteworthy about opening a modestly elegant bistro on the edge of a downtrodden locale.

"I didn't come here because of low rent," he insists. But the free parking is a bonus.

Gregg, formerly of The Red Door on South Granville, and Allan Bosomworth, formerly of Feenie's, says they hadn't been conspiring to open their own place until they spotted the old building at the intersection of Alexander, Gore and Railway that could be renovated to have a chic and unfussy look and feel.

The 27-seat bistro opened last June and subsequently increased its lunch hours after appreciative customers, including artists, designers, videogame developers and metal workers, appeared.

Patrick Service, an employee of the B.C. Maritime Employers' Association, was happy to have a new lunch option, he says over Two Chefs' bacon and brie-smothered burger and skinny fries. "Six years ago the best meal you could get was at the No. 5 Orange," he says. "And the No. 5 Orange wasn't known for its food."

But Downtown Eastside activist Wendy Pederson of the Carnegie Community Action Project wants new establishments to provide an opportunity for a genuine mixing of income groups. While $9 for a gourmet burger and fries may seem like a deal to some, she says many of the low income folks in the area live on $8 a day.

"I'd like to see some more restaurants like the Rhizome Caf? [on East Broadway near Kingsway]," she says. "The Rhizome actually has a homeless soup, every day. It has a lentil and rice dish that's in a little hot pot so you can just go and help yourself. It's pay as you can."

Hurtzig won't complain if more well-heeled workers in Railtown buy her bags, and Weiss would like to see a neighbourhood pub spring up to serve the area's creative types who work over weekends and into nights. JJ Bean closes weekends and the Alibi Room feels a smidge too far away. But the business owner with a three-year lease hopes the area's unique vibe will be slow to be exploited.

Slipper hopes social services on Alexander, the next street up, and opportunities for mixing between people of different socioeconomic levels won't get erased.

While he says change is inevitable and he's surprised that gentrification hasn't arrived sooner, Slipper doesn't believe "Railtown," (a name he hadn't heard before) will become the next Yaletown. He says too many social service organizations call the area home and have nowhere else to go.

Trains continue to rattle windows and his assistant notes the nearby fish plant, in the summer, makes the area stink. But sculptor Slipper notes it's processing less and less.

Still, the area's zoned industrial. The Strathcona Business Improvement Association, which covers Railway Street, wants to develop Vancouver's first sustainable business community in Strathcona. The city's studying production, distribution and repair light industrial uses for the area.

"It works really well with artist studios," city planner Jessica Chen says. But she adds industrial land policy will be subject to future review.

crossi@vancourier.com