Peter Wall (property developer)

He is a property developer in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who, in the 1990s and 2000s, played a significant and controversial part in the city's real-estate boom.

He has been described as "a leading contributor to Vancouver's 'City of Glass' reputation" during a period in which the city's skyline has been transformed, along with its economic and social profile.

[1] Rejecting the label "developer", Wall has stated that he "just make[s] some money investing in business ideas and projects".

Wall has been described as the city's "ultimate business maverick" in the press, which depicts him as a colourful, flamboyant character which resounds through his architecture.

[2] The controversial award-winning hotel and delicate condominium tower, One Wall Centre, completed in 2001, is regarded as his crowning achievement.

His degree citation credited him with "a creative and innovative mind which allows him to bring unconventional solutions to otherwise insoluble problems".

[8] Frequently called "flamboyant", according to journalist Drew Hasselback, he is known for his "outspoken opinions, designer clothes, German accent, in-your-face enthusiasm and self-confessed love of spending money".

According to an anecdote reported in The Vancouver Sun, in 2002 he gave a Rolls-Royce convertible to a friend to save him from having to walk to a meeting.

[17] The company has been described as a barometer of Vancouver's real-estate market;[13] but Wall and his firm have also been accused of driving up land values themselves.

[20] Wall owes his success not only to hard work and an ability to anticipate the market but to the favourable economic and social conditions of Vancouver's 1990s and 2000s real-estate boom.

[22] In the early 1980s, the city experienced an economic recession as British Columbia's traditionally dominant lumber industry struggled.

[23] In the next decade, however, Vancouver became less dependent on the economic fortunes of the rest of the province, and real-estate values held firm in the city even in 1991 when forest industries made record losses.

According to cultural critic Paul Delany, writing in 1994, this success "may be credited to its relatively vital and efficient downtown core".

As The New York Times noted in 1997, panic after the Tiananmen Square killings of 1989 "sent many Hong Kong families packing.

Arriving in Canada, these wealthy immigrants in turn triggered "sky high real estate prices" in their new host city.

[29] The commissioned architect, Peter Busby, said that "Wall represents a dying breed — a client willing to take a risk to build a tower that will stand out".

Toronto's Financial Post reported that Wall "obtained an exemption from the bylaw on his promise the tower's windows would be transparent", only for the city subsequently to sue on the basis that "the tower's windows were not transparent, and that the building threatened to be a 'dark, forbidding obelisk' on the highest ground in the downtown core".

In charge of the building's sales and marketing campaign, Rennie claimed that it "played right into Peter Wall's model of 'take a prime location and undersize the suites a bit' ".

[41] Many commentators argue that Vancouver's real-estate boom, which has been accused of increasing the divide between its rich and poor,[42] is a bubble about to burst.

[48] The donation was criticized by some as problematic and inappropriate and was made during a time of increased activism and city council attention to the issue of defunding the Vancouver Police Department.