One wet Saturday night in late October, a procession of drummers, fire dancers and other spiritual pilgrims marched out a front door on East 16th Street. Darkness and downpour didn’t prevent their parade down the block, around the corner and up to a vintage bungalow at 1920 Broadway.
That’s a former law office, now leased by local entrepreneur Morgan Hutchinson. Originally, she meant it to be the home of her cannabis marketing business, Golden Goat, but that has slowed down again, she said; more recently, the property has also been the parking place for the Funky Fresh Juice truck, another Hutchinson startup. Before that, in 2014, Hutchinson launched cannabis retailer High End Marketplace, two doors south on Broadway.
That’s a lot of ventures to juggle, and Hutchinson said she gets stressed. She found the antidote in a happy, spiritual setting where she could meditate: Wattle Tree Place, that sister business on East 16th Street.
Hutchinson “always vibed with what we were creating,” said Sophie Wegecsanyi, one of Wattle Tree’s founders.
Wattle Tree Place really is a sister business. It was launched two years ago by sisters Wegecsanyi and Anna Phillips, who hail from Australia and who traveled the globe before landing in Vancouver along with their husbands and children.
Wattle Tree Place quickly earned a loyal following. Moms loved relaxing in the fenced backyard while their children explored; wellness seekers got treated like royalty upstairs by massage and other therapists; snacks, sandwiches, coffee and beer were served at the counter; and, on special evenings, drummers and musicians would gather to make joyful noise.
The sisters like to say they “manifested” Wattle Tree Place in their minds before it materialized, and their parents — who eventually moved to Vancouver to be involved grandparents — invested in the venture. (“Mom’s a little woo-woo,” said Wegecsanyi, but not Dad. “But we’ve opened up their world,” she smiled. “We honor science and spirituality at the same time.”)
One troublesome detail got past the sisters’ manifestation, though. The East 16th Street property came with a monthly lease, because the whole block was a candidate for dense redevelopment. Not long after Wattle Tree Place earned a “Best New Business” award from Vancouver’s Downtown Association, the redevelopment plan got finalized.
Wattle Tree was forced to vacate at the end of October. It was a heartbreaking but ultimately surmountable obstacle, the sisters found. “We looked at everything and talked to everyone” about preventing the eviction or relocating elsewhere, Phillips said — and that’s how their need for a new rental came together with Hutchinson’s need for additional cashflow.
“I really loved and respected what they were doing, and I was in limbo,” Hutchinson said. When she took the sisters on a tour of the commercially zoned Broadway bungalow, she said, all they could say was: “Yup, yup, yup.”
Community came here
Doors opened at Wattle Tree Place’s new home in early November, but rebuilding the business is ongoing. Months of construction and decoration went into Wattle Tree’s former base before any customers saw it, the sisters said; the new one will have to be a phased process that’s on view to everyone.
“We can’t remake the whole picture yet,” Phillips said. “The community will see the progress this time. It’ll be one step at a time.”
The former and new Wattle Tree sites look similar, but the new one brings key disadvantages, too. For one thing, there’s no commercial kitchen. Food and drink service will take time, permits and probably a remodel job. There’s no plan for that yet. (Nor are there plans to make the place a haven for on-site pot consumption, the sisters added; if anything, they and Hutchinson are more interested in education about medicinal uses, they said.)
Crucially, there’s no longer a spacious, fenced-in backyard for daytime children and nighttime drum circles. In back is an alley and in front there’s a covered porch plus the single off-street parking pad sometimes occupied by the Funky Fresh truck.
But the sisters said several drum circles have already squeezed into that front area, and it works. And the landlord has approved a fenced fairy garden on the narrow south side of the property, they said. “We do need to be able to contain the kids,” Wegecsanyi said.
The day when The Columbian stopped by the Broadway site, it happened to be demolition day for the former site on East 16th Street. “The container of energy we created in that yard, when it came down, you could feel the whoosh,” said Wegecsanyi.
Phillips felt OK about it: “I thought I’d feel a lot worse, but I don’t because the community came here,” she said.
Hutchinson said she feels great about welcoming Wattle Tree Place to Broadway. “It’s not always easy” for entrepreneurs to work together, she said, “but this is what community should be. We’re three influential women in this community, and we’re here to embody resiliency.” And she recalled a famously influential, resilient woman from Vancouver’s earliest history.
“Esther Short was a fighter,” she said. “Esther Short didn’t give up and we’re not giving up.”
