Stanley Kwok was a central figure in 1980s and 1990s Vancouver: a developer, architect and planner who oversaw the redevelopment of the Expo 86 lands, and who helped lay the foundation for an urban planning approach that came to be known as “Vancouverism.”
The hugely successful plan he helped create combined dense residential and commercial space, parks and amenities near transit, with open public spaces, light, views and enough breathing space to ensure a high standard of livability.
The redevelopment of the Expo 86 lands is widely believed to have set the city on course to become a major draw for foreign investment, making it one of the world’s most expensive cities for real estate.
Stanley Kwok, shown in this undated photo, was central to the redevelopment of the Expo 86 lands.Tim Pelling/The Globe and Mail
“A good theory is that following the Expo publicity,” developer John D’Eathe said, “the interest shown by Li Ka-shing – one of Asia’s wealthiest persons – induced the surge of investment in property here in Vancouver from that part of the world.”
Mr. Kwok died in his sleep on Dec. 7, after a cancer diagnosis. He was 98 years old. His friends and family say he was lucid until the end.
Stanley Tun-Li Kwok was born on Jan. 2, 1927, in Shanghai, at a violent and politically tumultuous time in China, marked by civil war and, a decade later, the Second Sino-Japanese War. Mr. Kwok would go on to study architecture at Shanghai’s English-speaking St. John’s University, which would be shuttered by the Communist government in 1952. He eventually moved to London to further his studies at the Architectural Association school. After returning to Hong Kong, he designed more than 200 buildings, became president of the Hong Kong Society of Architects and a teacher at the University of Hong Kong, according to the family death notice.
Mr. D’Eathe was living in Hong Kong when he first met Mr. Kwok in 1959, and they became close, lifelong friends. Mr. Kwok was in partnership with a major Hong Kong architecture firm at the time and had made a name for himself as one of the city’s leading architects. Although he and his young family were “well set up” in Hong Kong, Mr. D’Eathe says, Mr. Kwok made the decision to move to Canada in 1968. Mr. D’Eathe had already moved to Vancouver a year earlier to work as director for U.K.-based developer Grosvenor, and Mr. Kwok followed, soon becoming the company’s vice-president. By 1970, in partnership with chemical company Canadian Industries Limited, the two were running their own company, called Canadian Freehold Properties, and for a decade they developed property in Asia and North America, including Victoria’s Laurel Point Inn.
They sold the company in 1979, just before interest rates soared and the market collapsed. But Expo 86 came along, and it was the salve that everyone was looking for, seen as a way to restart the economy.
In 1984, Mr. Kwok became president of Crown corporation BC Place Ltd., which oversaw the future plans for the Expo 86 site. Mr. Kwok also joined the board of the Expo 86 Corporation, which planned and operated the world’s fair.
He had expected that, after the fair, its 70-hectare (170-acre) site along the north shore of False Creek would be serviced and subdivided, and sold in parcels to local developers, not sold as one large site, Mr. D’Eathe said. To the dismay of Mr. Kwok – and local developers who might have bid on those subdivided properties – the Social Credit government chose to sell the site as one parcel instead.
The recognizable building housing Vancouver's Science World was constructed for Expo 86.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
“He did not agree this was the right thing to do and made the big personal decision on principle to leave BC Place Ltd.,” Mr. D’Eathe said. “He believed the government should service the land and sell it off progressively at far more profit, which eventually happened, but in private hands.”
Mr. Kwok returned to working with Mr. D’Eathe, until he got the call to meet with Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who wanted Mr. Kwok to help him come up with a bid for the Expo site.
“He came back excitedly with the story that he had been asked to help put together a competitive bid to buy and develop the entire Expo site.”
Their bid was accepted, and Mr. Kwok embraced the opportunity.
“He got the project planned, approved and underway,” Mr. D’Eathe said.
Mike Harcourt, who was mayor of Vancouver from 1980 to 1986 and B.C. premier from 1991 to 1996, recalled those early days of Expo, working with Mr. Kwok. He said the city was “just starting to come into its own,” and Mr. Kwok was a key part of that.
“When I was mayor, we started to talk about hosting Expo and what it could be developed into, and we got together for lunch, Stanley and I, and talked about what we thought could be there, what the city would want,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Instead of a separate development, we thought it should be integrated into the city’s street patterns, and there should be a large public walkway and seawall and significant open space, and the rest of the development could be mixed uses of housing and hotels and retail and community facilities. So, we started to draw up this idea, and what the density could be.”
Vancouver builders embrace multiplex construction as city plans to increase density
The provincial government was widely ridiculed for selling the industrial acreage well below market value, for a reported $320-million as part of a 15-year agreement.
Mr. Harcourt said there was a lot of controversy, and some suspicion, around Hong Kong-based Mr. Li, and “the sweetheart deal” he got for the site.
“We were rubes,” said Mr. Harcourt, who would have preferred to see the site sold off in parcels to local developers.
And so, Mr. Kwok’s role as representative for the controversial offshore billionaire required masterful expertise – as well as diplomatic finesse. It so happened he had the personality and highly collaborative nature to pull off the difficult task, according to those who worked closely with him.
“[Mr. Kwok] was regarded very highly because he was a gentleman and really smart, and he’d done a lot of very successful development,” Mr. Harcourt said.
“He was a real hard-nosed developer, you know, and architect, and he thought the city was too low-density, that we should get rid of single-family zoning, which I also thought.”
Canadian International Trade Minister Pat Carney leads British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher through the Plaza of Nations at Expo 86 in Vancouver on July 12, 1986.The Canadian Press
As a result of Mr. Kwok’s collaboration with the city, the north side of False Creek, which includes the Concord Pacific lands, is Vancouver’s densest neighbourhood, with a series of skyscrapers on the skyline that isn’t oppressive at ground level.
Ray Spaxman, who was director of planning for the city from 1973 to 1989, was involved in all major developments at the time. He recalled meeting weekly with Mr. Kwok as they planned the Expo site. Mr. Kwok understood the principles of good planning, an approach not shared by everyone in the development industry, Mr. Spaxman said.
“Stanley emerged as an enormously valuable person, both for the Chinese owners, and also for the planning department and the city generally, for his co-operation,” Mr. Spaxman said.
“He was fairly unique in the sense that he was a developer and architect, with a major scheme, who actually listened to what we said. And he was very compatible with the movements that we were involved with at the time, of creating higher densities, but with a humane sort of attitude to what that should mean, both socially, but also physically,” Mr. Spaxman said.
Planner Larry Beasley worked under Mr. Spaxman at the time, as deputy planner, before becoming co-director of planning. Being relatively new to the development world, he hadn’t known of Mr. Kwok, who was by then deputy chairman and president of Concord Pacific.
“All of a sudden, here was this gentleman and he was very suave, very smart, and it took me a while to understand that his belief in the community side of development was actually pretty fundamental, not just something he did strategically.
“He was an exemplary collaborator.”
Mr. Beasley spent years working with Mr. Kwok on False Creek North, planning the new large-scale Concord Pacific lands.
They prioritized slender towers that weren’t oppressive at ground level, streets that accommodated pedestrians and cyclists and trees, and turned Pacific Boulevard into something grand compared to the typical major arterial road. Mr. Beasley recalled that Mr. Kwok favoured parks along the water and applied the Chinese principles of Feng Shui.
Last piece of undeveloped Vancouver waterfront gets new plan
“Stanley understood – and you can see many people nowadays are not understanding it – that density had to come with quality of living,” Mr. Beasley said. “He never had a closed mind to any idea that we felt was important from the public perspective.”
In addition to making a name for himself in Vancouver, Mr. Kwok held several other far-reaching positions over the following decades. He worked on the master plan for Dubai Marina, Halifax’s Purdy’s Wharf and Crystal Mall at Metrotown in Burnaby, B.C. And he served on more than 20 boards for various organizations, including the Bank of Montreal, BC Hydro, BC Cancer Foundation and the Vancouver Foundation. He remained lifelong friends with Mr. Li, according to Mr. D’Eathe, and he sat on the board of Mr. Li’s major conglomerate, Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd.
In 2012, he received an honorary doctorate from Victoria’s Royal Roads University, and in 2016, the lifetime achievement award from the Association of Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurs.
Mr. Kwok leaves his wife of 35 years, Eva Lee Kwok; four children, Jing Hun, Joanne, Marianne and Colin; eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.
To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.