From his desk on the second floor of a converted loft on Carrall Street, Sean Heather can see one of his eight restaurants and cafés reflected in the glass storefront across the street.

His office is above the marquee “gastropub” that bears his name, the Irish Heather, which opened 14 years ago opposite its current location at 210 Carrall St. when Gastown was “tougher and darker” than it is today.

“In those days there was not a lot of passing traffic,” he said.

These days, that’s suddenly no longer the case.

“I definitely feel that we’re growing in the right direction,” he said.

“The neighbourhood has changed dramatically. It’s happened quickly, absolutely I think it’s happened quickly.”

Revitalization is quick and still only concentrated to a few city blocks where poverty, drug addiction and crime are seemingly held off by flower planters, a bicycle greenway and the beautified Pigeon Park.

“It’s shocking to walk out of here and walk over there. I walk it 15 times a day. You see it, you can’t help but scratch your head and ask, why have we not got a solution for this situation?”

Heather, a 44-year-old, Toronto-born Irish-Canadian restaurateur, supports Gastown’s latest economic reincarnation but concedes the revitalization is happening at an unprecedented pace.

Gastown is saturated with restaurants—including four of his own and a scotch tasting room—but Heather believes stable business can buoy a neighbourhood by servicing and supporting the diverse needs of various tastes and incomes, even customers as different as those who live on dollars a day and others who earn hundreds in an hour.

Gastown, a distinct residential and commercial neighbourhood within the greater Downtown Eastside, is zoned as a historical district with incentives for developers to maintain heritage features and more than a century’s worth of character. The city also designated the Downtown Eastside for low-income housing, and as Vancouver’s population grows, it has sought to maintain two subsidized or low-rent units for every market-price condominium. The differences between the two neighbourhoods can be astounding, said Heather, but in the past year, he opened two tapas-style tasting bars side by side in Blood Alley, Salt Tasting Bar and Judas Goat, as well as a coffee shop nearby in Chinatown.

In coming months he will open two casual take-away places, including a hotdog kiosk, Fetch, and a yet-unnamed doughnut shop and bakery at the corner of Carrall and West Hastings.

“It’s possibly one of the toughest corners in the country, but I will open up a doughnut store there.”

He also bakes the desserts, breads and baguettes for his own menus from a kitchen in the Pennsylvania Hotel he rents from the Portland Hotel Society. He will soon sell bread alongside those double-glazed and chocolate mini-doughnuts.

Heather is a businessman prepared to take a risk on the community where he not only works but also lives. But unlike how he’s expanded his restaurant realm, in this case he’s looking to follow, not lead.

He points to Save-on-Meats, which closed in 2009 after selling affordable cuts and ground meat for more than 50 years.

“Business people like myself can be approached by government and if I were told, ‘We want you to open a meat store,’ I would do that. I don’t mind running it, I don’t mind taking some risk on it, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t see that body out there coming to us.”

He doesn’t believe entrepreneurs new to the neighbourhood disingenuously exploit the gritty side of the Downtown Eastside in attempt to capitalize on infamy or imagined authenticity. But he does characterize the impatient owners who fail to recognize the neighbourhood’s poverty as “ignorant or arrogant.”

“I think there are a lot of people like me down here who realize you can’t be successful and survive in this environment unless you’re compassionate, unless you give a shit.”

mstewart@vancourier.com