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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2014
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‘New is easy to get, but old you can’t get’
D
avid Sarraf is a land baron, but you wouldn’t know it to see his car. The worn-out 1996 Ford is literally ripped apart inside and stuffed with supplies for cleaning and maintaining the 37 properties – including eight in New Westminster – he owns. The entire back seat of the car is NIKI HOPE gutted and full of boxes, extension cords, tools, sealants, paint. The car is clearly just for work. When I suggest he must have another car for driving outside of work, Sarraf says, “Yes.” “What kind,” I ask. “A BMW,” he says, adding, “a 1995.” I meet with Sarraf on a damp January afternoon in one of the office buildings he owns on Columbia Street. The building houses everything from a mortgage company to a yoga studio to a school called the Institute for Hypnotherapy. On the day we meet, Sarraf is there to show one of the spaces to a prospective tenant. The old building is beautifully kept, with exposed brick (which Sarraf did when he bought the old building) and clean, fresh paint. Sarraf proudly shows how
Hands on: David Sarraf started investing in New Westminster commercial properties in 2010. Today he owns eight buildings downtown but says the old ones are expensive to maintain. He’d like the city to offset those costs – and make it easier to keep old buildings – with tax incentives.
ON MY BEAT
Jason Lang/ THE RECORD
he’s managed to upgrade the old building without compromising the character. “This is the beauty,” he says as he glides his hand across the warm brick. “You have to keep the new with the old, … it doesn’t have to be fancy, just simple, simple, cause this is me. I’m simple. I
don’t like fancy stuff, and I don’t like to throw stuff away.”
‘I fell in love’
Sarraf started investing in New West in 2010. At the time the Dunbar businessman, who formerly owned a chain of kitchen stores that is now down to one location, didn’t even know how
fell in love with the street and the city people,” he says. When Sarraf was looking into buying the properties, he called city hall with a few questions. To his surprise, he got a quick call back. “I remember Lisa Spitale at that time she was the head
to get to the city. “I didn’t know where it was. It took me four or five times to figure out how to get here. I always got lost. I still do, because it’s my character,” he laughs. A real estate agent told him about a property on Columbia Street. “The guy showed me, and I
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City’s love for Thrifty’s impresses bureau BY THERESA MCMANUS REPORTER tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
New Westminster has made quite an impression on the Competition Bureau but that’s not enough to stop the closure of Thrifty Foods in Sapperton. During a recent visit to Ottawa, Coun. Lorrie Williams met with three members of the Competition Bureau about its decision
to order Sobeys to sell 23 grocery stores in Western Canada, including the local Thrifty Foods, as part of the company’s purchase of Canada Safeway Limited. She said the Competition Bureau has determined Sobeys owns too many grocery stores in New Westminster and must sell the Thrifty Foods, as well as more than 20 other grocery stores in Western Canada. “Why that store?” she asked. “They
would not share with me the negotiations that would go on.” Members of the Competition Bureau expressed surprise at the response they’d received from New Westminster regarding the closure of Thrifty Foods in the Brewery District. Williams presented the bureau with a petition signed by people objecting to the closure. “They said in all the time the Competition
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Bureau has been operating, they have never had so many responses, emails, plus my visit, the petition,” she said. “They were quite impressed. They thought that must be one special town.” The Competition Bureau, an independent agency that aims to ensure Canadian businesses and consumers prosper in a competitive marketplace, believes that
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