New hotel project with Filipino Cultural Centre endorsed by Vancouver City Council | Daily Hive

Preliminary concept of 1940 Main St. (south hotel tower with the Filipino Cultural Centre) and 143 East 3rd Ave. (north hotel tower), Vancouver. (Formosis Architecture/PortLiving)

After extensive consideration and discussion over two separate public meetings, Vancouver City Council has endorsed exploring a new Filipino community and cultural centre integrated into a future new mixed-use hotel development in the Mount Pleasant area.

Today, the ABC Vancouver majority on City Council approved a member motion by mayor Ken Sim and city councillor Lenny Zhou, while the four non-ABC councillors abstained. An abstention is technically counted as a vote in favour, though it does not signal explicit support.

With this approval, City staff are directed to work with private real estate developer PortLiving and the non-profit organization Filipino Legacy Society to expedite the review of upcoming rezoning and development permit applications, including collaborating with proponents to resolve any technical and design issues. City staff will also help the organization secure a temporary cultural centre until the new purpose-built facility is completed.

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“I want to express my gratitude to Mayor Ken Sim and Councillor Lenny Zhou for working with our community, and their colleagues on Vancouver City Council who voted in favour of the motion,” said Warren Dean Flandez, chair of the Filipino Legacy Society, in a statement issued shortly after the vote today.

“With support from the City of Vancouver, as well as the provincial and federal governments, we have an unprecedented opportunity to create a permanent home for our community. I look forward to working with all levels of government to help realize this dream.”

1940 main street vancouver filipino cultural centre portliving hotel

Preliminary concept of 1940 Main St., Vancouver, featuring hotel uses and the Filipino Community and Cultural Centre. (Formosis Architecture/PortLiving)

More than 160 public speakers — the vast majority in support — addressed City Council during the initial public meeting on Nov. 26, but the deliberation and decision was postponed to Dec. 10 after some city councillors requested time to consider the motion and seek advice from the City’s lawyers.

At the initial meeting, Green city councillor Pete Fry raised the possibility of referring the motion to the City’s integrity commissioner, citing concerns about how the project was presented and about the developer’s foreclosure records and past financial issues. However, today, during the deliberations, Mayor Sim said after a review for an abundance of caution, the City’s integrity commissioner and third-party lawyers found no legal or conduct issues.

“Both the integrity commissioner and independent counsel confirmed that no conflict of interest or breach of the code of conduct has occurred. The court filings reference do not involve any actions taken by myself or any member of this Council. Independent counsel further stated, ‘We are unable to discover even the reasonable grounds upon which a belief that a breach of code of conduct has occurred could be found,'” said Sim.

“There is nothing within the court filings which substantiates councillor Fry’s allegations, such as to separate them from mere conjecture or speculation. With that clarification on the record, I hope we can refocus on the important matter before us, and that’s supporting and uplifting Vancouver’s Filipino community. For more than 40 years, community members have aspired to establish a Filipino cultural centre, a place to share culture, food, art, and history. The proposal in this motion represents the first concrete pathway to achieving that vision.”

Furthermore, during the earlier meeting, PortLiving owner Tobi Reyes told City Council that his company — following previous financial challenges — has repaid over $400 million in debt in recent years and resolved all outstanding property tax issues. PortLiving has operated locally for more than two decades.

Reyes is proposing to redevelop 1940 Main St. — situated at the northeast corner of the intersection of East 4th Avenue and Main Street — into a 30-storey tower with 242 hotel guest rooms directly above a 60,000 sq. ft. purpose-built Filipino community and cultural centre within the first six levels of the building.

A second tower, also 30 storeys, containing hotel uses only, would be located nearby just to the north on a separate site at 143 East 3rd Ave. There would be 264 hotel guest rooms in this second tower, bringing the total number of hotel guest rooms to over 500 across both sites.

1940 main street 143 east 3rd avenue vancouver portliving hotel filipino cultural centre

Sites of 1940 Main St. (south hotel tower with the Filipino Cultural Centre) and 143 East 3rd Ave. (north hotel tower), Vancouver. (Formosis Architecture/PortLiving)

Preliminary concept of 1940 Main St. (south hotel tower with the Filipino Cultural Centre) and 143 East 3rd Ave. (north hotel tower), Vancouver. (Formosis Architecture/PortLiving)

The four city councillors who abstained made comments stating that they are fully supportive of establishing a new Filipino community and cultural centre in the city, but not necessarily this specific location and proposal with private sector involvement.

It is known that multiple Filipino community groups have attempted for decades — without success — to establish such a permanent centre in Metro Vancouver, replacing the community’s longstanding uses of temporary, informal, and/or make-shift spaces. The provincial government has expressed support for creating a centre and held preliminary community consultation work in 2024, while the federal government recently committed unspecified funding.

In recent years, the provincial government has indicated its support for such a centre, and conducted preliminary consultation in 2024 with the Filipino community on what should be the key considerations for a project. Earlier this fall, the federal government promised to provide an unspecific amount of funding towards the establishment of a centre.

At least some of the opposition appears to stem from other organizations pursuing their own different proposals and looking to compete for the same pool of provincial and federal funding that will ultimately only support one concept. For example, the Burnaby-based Pinoy Festival Alliance spoke against the project during the initial public meeting, citing transparency issues as one of their key concerns, but did not disclose to Vancouver City Council or make public that they were also actively pursuing a competing proposal located in Metrotown.

“I just want to state for the record that I support and we’re grateful for a chance to convene meetings and discussions with many different representative groups of the Filipino community, some of which are aligned, some of which have been in this work for many, many, many years, and others that are identified in this motion,” said Vote Vancouver city councillor Rebecca Bligh.

“And I think at the end of the day, a personal value of mine is I have sort of been steadfast that my position on the Filipino cultural centre is not the Council picking between different groups — that the community needs to come together and be united. But regardless, this motion is coming forward in my opinion, a very grey area procedurally, and I’m not comfortable voting for or against this motion as it’s been presented. I think there have been missteps and a lack of procedural due diligence in terms of how it’s come forward.”

COPE city councillor Sean Orr added, “I thought this was a slam dunk from the beginning, from when I first saw the presentation. I thought it would, yeah, hotel. Yeah, finally get a Filipino community centre. And the more layers are peeled back, the more questions I have. I appreciate the mayor in answering some of those questions. I know that probably was not easy, but I still have some apprehension.”

However, the proponents of this particular project assert that after decades of varying efforts, this is the most realistic concept yet to realize a Filipino community and cultural centre in Metro Vancouver — for reasons that include its financial support, established major partnerships, and location.

This project is also strongly supported by Vancouver-Kensington MLA Mable Elmore, a prominent member of the Filipino community who has advocated for the need for a centre long before she was elected into office.

Not only does the Main Street site provide a central location in Vancouver near existing and future SkyTrain stations and major bus routes — and having a site ready removes the need for the project to buy land and property — but a portion of the hotel’s annual operating revenues would go to Filipino Legacy Society for the purpose of operating, maintaining, and programming their centre, akin to an operating endowment. Reyes also shared that construction financing has been lined up for the project, but it is time sensitive, hence the need for the City to expedite the reviews of the project’s applications.

“I am fundamentally behind providing a pathway for this to be considered and we will see what happens. And if not this one, I’m not sure how much longer it would be before a specific project could be considered. So, I will wholeheartedly support it, and I thank everybody that has come and put their shoulders behind it,” said ABC city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung.

“I know this is a process and it is aspirational, but again, let’s see what comes of it. Let us not put roadblocks in front of the opportunity, but let’s see if this is something that can happen and get done. And I think that the Main Street site, when you look at it from a number of opportunities as Philippine community there, it’s accessible by transit.”

ABC city councillor Mike Klassen compared the political challenges — both behind the scenes and in the public eye — surrounding the motion to the iconic opening scene of the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Jones escapes a temple while dodging traps and a massive rolling boulder.

“Every opportunity seemed to come along to try and stop this from happening. But we have the idol. And as we know from that story in Indiana Jones, he gets it and he gets away. We’re gonna get away with this cultural centre,” said Klassen.

Preliminary concept of 1940 Main St. (south hotel tower with the Filipino Cultural Centre) and 143 East 3rd Ave. (north hotel tower), Vancouver. (Formosis Architecture/PortLiving)

Earlier today, ahead of the vote, the non-profit organization Filipino BC — the event organizer of the Lapu Lapu Festival in April 2025 that ended in tragedy — issued a statement condemning the anticipated approval and alleging political influence and a lack of transparency, and going as far to accuse those involved of “corruption.”

“What we refuse to accept is a process shaped by influence behind closed doors, double talk in place of answers, or decisions made without you. We must ask ourselves: if certain individuals in positions of authority were not using their influence to avoid addressing real concerns, would we even be here today? If commitments had been honoured and communication had been transparent from the beginning, would our community be forced to fight simply to be included? Decisions of this magnitude should never be guided by the few. Where and how a cultural centre is built must be guided by us — the people,” reads Filipino BC’s statement today.

“And let us be unmistakably clear: we will not allow the patterns of corruption many of us witnessed back home to take root here. Not while our community is still healing. Not while families affected by April 26 continue to seek justice, support, and recognition. Legitimate concerns cannot be dismissed with vague assurances. Accountability cannot be replaced with political convenience.”

Filipino BC has clashed with the municipal government before.

Weeks after the Lapu Lapu Festival tragedy, Filipino BC voiced its opposition to the City’s plan to host the first official large-scale community memorial event in June 2025 at Rogers Arena, with the Vancouver Canucks providing the venue for free and covering the operating costs. This would have also provided a major fundraising opportunity to directly assist injured victims and the families of the deceased. However, Filipino BC issued public statements asserting their organization and the families of victims were not consulted, so the plans to stage the event were subsequently withdrawn.

No major fundraising and memorial event has been held to date, but there have been some potential suggestions of staging such an event at the one-year anniversary of the tragedy in April 2026.

More recently just last week, four former board members of Filipino BC called for transparency and an independent audit of how the organization used funds raised for victims — a charge the organization subsequently denied. An individual close to a severely injured victim described their experience with Filipino BC as “a lot of pageantry and promises with very little follow-through.”

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