The Globe and Mail

You used to be able to get a room at the Alhambra Hotel for $1 a night -- which in 1886 that meant the joint was real high-class. When the white-trimmed, bay-windowed Alhambra, one of Vancouver's oldest buildings, was threatened recently by an obtrusive development scheme, the building's cause was taken up by heritage activists, the City of Vancouver and a federal pilot project, the Commercial Heritage Properties Incentive Fund. The CHPIF agreed to consider the Alhambra's application for preservation money. Then, last week, during its wide-ranging purge of "wasteful programs," Ottawa discontinued the $30-million fund. Now the Alhambra's fate is back in limbo.