FIRE GUTS CITY'S FAMOUS 'POT BLOCK'

Police Believe Three-Alarm Blaze Was Deliberately Set In Dumpster

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's world-renowned "pot block" was engulfed in smoke
Sunday morning as fire destroyed a significant piece of the city's heritage.

The three-alarm fire raged through a two-storey building at 311-317 West
Hastings, gutting the Blunt Brothers, a marijuana-oriented cafe that billed
itself as "a respectable joint." Smoke from the blaze on the edge of
Gastown could be seen as far away as White Rock.

Vintage clothing store Cabbages and Kinx was also destroyed, as was
Spartacus Books, a long-standing left-wing bookstore.

The B.C. Marijuana Party headquarters and bookstore are located next door
at 307 West Hastings, a building that suffered major smoke and water
damage. Other pot-oriented businesses were located on the upper floors of
the building.

Capt. Rob Jones-Cook of the Vancouver fire department said initial reports
were that the fire started about 6:30 a.m. in a dumpster in the back lane
behind the buildings. It quickly spread to two more dumpsters and then to
the rear of 311 West Hastings.

"I will not say it's arson, but it could be a suspicious fire," said
Jones-Cook.

There were 11 fire trucks on the scene and more than 50 firefighters, and
the fire was contained well before noon. The firefighters found a small
marijuana-growing operation in one of structures.

The 300 block of Hastings has achieved international renown in the past few
years because of all the marijuana-oriented businesses there. Pot tourists
showed up by the thousands to smoke a joint in North America's only pot
cafes, the Blunt Brothers and the New Amsterdam (which recently closed).
Even comedian Tommy Chong came to Blunt Brothers to smoke a joint.

"You'd see people from all over the world that would make their way there
to check it out and get their pictures taken in front of the signs and
stuff," said Steve Lippold, owner of Cabbages and Kinx. "It was on certain
people's lists of tourist places to visit."

The future of the pot block depends on the damage to 307 West Hastings. Pot
guru Marc Emery hopes the damage to the Marijuana party headquarters and
bookstore isn't too severe and that it can reopen quickly. He thinks a
logical place for Blunt Brothers to move would be into the New Amsterdam
storefront.

Emery didn't hold out much hope for the upstairs businesses, however. He
said at the height of the fire, smoke was billowing out the upstairs
windows of the three-storey building, which would make for a lot of smoke
damage.

Emery said the Marijuana party headquarters/store costs $5,500 a month to
rent. He feared damages of $20,000 to $40,000 in merchandise. The store
wasn't insured.

"No one insures businesses with the name Marijuana in it, in my
experience," said Emery.

Cabbages and Kinx was insured. Lippold feels he may have lost $80,000 to
$100,000 in stock, plus store fixtures, computers and the like. Ironically,
he had been thinking of selling the business, which he has run for 31 years.

Lippold was alerted at 6:30 a.m. by his alarm company and arrived on the
scene just as fire trucks were pulling up.

"I went in the alley and there was a couple of dazed looking people, I
guess artists who had been living in garrets above," he said.

"The alley seemed to be on fire, the dumpsters and such. There was fire
coming out of the boiler room downstairs, and I went around front and the
fire was well in motion at that point."

Jones-Cook said there were no reports of injuries at the scene.

The businesses were located in a pair of 1890s brick buildings that are on
Vancouver's heritage register. The structure at 307 West Hastings is known
as the Rogers building, and was built in 1898, the time of the Klondike
goldrush.

Both buildings are relatively modest, but were in excellent shape and
important because they were the first buildings built on their site.

"They are some of the earliest construction on that part of Hastings
street," said heritage expert John Atkin.

"When Hastings street was put through, these were the first buildings built
there. They're very early.

"The building that has major damage [311-317 West Hastings] is a wonderful
building with an amazing sheet metal facade to it, lots of pressed tin. It
was very rare in Vancouver because the original overscale pediment that sat
on top of the building was still intact. Those are one of the first things
to fall down in windstorms or whatever, and here it was intact."

The buildings also had heritage value because they were part of a row of
century-old structures that was relatively intact and includes the Dominion
Building, one of Vancouver's most beloved structures.

Atkin hopes the facades can be retained in any redevelopment scheme.

"It's like a set of teeth," said Atkin. "Once you start knocking one tooth
out, suddenly it's the next tooth and then the next tooth and then your
mouth looks like hell. If you do that to that block, which had such
heritage integrity, it's going to be so bad."