S TANDARD TERRACE
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VOL. 26 NO. 52
www.terracestandard.com
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Housing prices climb By ANNA KILLEN
JOSH MASSEY PHOTO
LOCAL COFFEE shop owners Alexander Vogel, Sonny Yoo and Lance Dettwiler raise their respective to-go cups. These roast masters operate within blocks of each other.
Coffee scene perks up
By JOSH MASSEY EARLY LAST month a group of Cafenara regulars approached owner Sonny Yoo and told him they wanted to renovate their beloved coffee shop for him. The owner of the Lazelle Ave. business of more than 10 years was naturally surprised to see such an intervention staged by his own clients. “It was sort of embarrassing,” Yoo says with a laugh. “‘It’s really that bad, is it?’ Was my first thought.” His longtime group of clients had noticed something Yoo was aware of but didn’t have time to act on with his busy family life — that the coffee shop landscape in Terrace was heating up with new options available to coffee drinkers.
Volunteer ho! The Mills Memorial Hospital Ladies Auxillary ushers in Volunteer Week \COMMUNITY B1
The new arrival, Xanders Coffee, had burst onto the scene in December last year and the Elephant’s Ear had been reborn this February after major renovations and service overhaul. “You could say that my friends saw the other coffee shops doing this,” Yoo said. They figured it was “time to wake him up.” Just a few blocks away from Cafenara, over on the 400 Block of Lakelse, Xanders and Elephant’s Ear are practically across the street from each other. Alexander Vogel learned the art of craft roasting beans before starting up Xanders and says the lease in the space at the Coast Inn of the North building was highly opportune. “Everything fell into place,” he said. “The lease came up and
I just had to go for it. I stuck to my guns and went for it.” The bean roasting allows Vogel to create unique flavours himself and is one of his shop’s distinguishing features, he said, and those beans are available for customers to purchase. Cafenara also roasts their own beans, and Yoo says the shop’s restaurant-style food options help them stand apart. The Elephant’s Ear went through a complete interior redesign in January and now has a deli component to its service. “Every five to eight years we do that in the business to look fresh and new,” says owner Lance Dettwiler of the upgrade. “I was going to do the renos later but with the competition arising I moved the timeline ahead – plus January is a slow
month so it was a good time to do the renovations,” he said. On top of the refinished look Dettwiler now offers a deli products selection and buildyour-own sandwich options. He kicked off his re-opening with an open mic night featuring local musicians. None of the owners did their transformations single-handedly. They all had help from the community. For Yoo, this has meant volunteers, many members of a local church, helping out with time and even cash donations to paint the walls, clean and change fixings. “They felt genuinely from their heart that they wanted to help this guy,” said Yoo of the efforts that have been going on over the past month.
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THE AVERAGE selling price for a single family home in Terrace is nearly $100,000 more than it was at this time two years ago. Numbers released by the Northern B.C. Real Estate Board (NBCBEB) show that the average selling price for a detached family home in Terrace for the first quarter of 2012 was $200,926. By March, 2013 that first quarter average was $226,303, and now, into the first three months of 2014 that number has climbed to $294,067. In 2014, 43 single family homes were sold, compared to 32 last year and 41 in 2012. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase over the last two to three years,” said realtor and NBCBEB director John Evans. “If you would have bought around 2010, 2011 that’s when there were some really good buys around, and in that case it’s basically doubled,” he said. And it doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon, he said. “The market is continuing to show that it’s very strong and showing signs of continuing to improve,” he said. “We continue to get calls.” In the first quarter of 2014, 101 properties were sold overall in Terrace, up from 60 last year. This year, the total value of these properties was $23 million – double the $11.5 million total for the first quarter of 2013. “Going from 60 to 101 sales – that’s a huge increase in the activity that’s going on in the community,” said Evans. Homes sell quickly and to a wide variety of buyers, said Evans, noting that it’s a combination of first-time homebuyers, out-of-town buyers that are moving to the area for work, out-of-town investors looking to capitalize on the area’s growth, and people who already own homes looking for a rental property. “The out-of-town investor who is looking to Terrace now, they’re seeing opportunities because housing is still relatively cheap if you’re on the outside looking in,” he said.
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Big bonspiel The 59th annual Loggers Bonspiel hit the mark at the Terrace Curling Club \SPORTS A20