The 2400 Motel on Kingsway opened in 1946. It still has an old fashioned, retro feel and its huge red and blue neon sign.
I fell in love with the 2400 Motel on Kingsway 20 years ago when I was writing Frommer’s With Kids Vancouver. Loved the old fashioned, retro feel of the place and its huge red and blue neon sign. The freshly painted green and white bungalows had the feel of a country cabin. Kids could play on the lawn outside, the rooms were clean and functional, and staying there was inexpensive.
Endangered list:
The last time I wrote about the 2400 Motel was in June 2011, shortly after it made Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Endangered hit list. According to a Statement of Significance prepared in 2007 the auto court was the last and best example of post-war car culture. “Not only did the 2400 function as a home-away-from-home for many travelers…but it has entered Vancouverite’s collective imagination as a seemingly immutable part of the city—a whole, miniature world from an earlier simpler time.”
The City of Vancouver bought the 3.5-acre site in 1989 as part of the proposed Norquay Village neighbourhood centre. But the plan lacked any heritage retention, and the building was not and is still not on the heritage inventory.
Opened in 1946:
Built in 1946 when the car was king, the motel has seen tourists from the States, retired couples from BC Interior and Alberta and loads of families over the last 75 years.
In 1966, the Grateful Dead played at Jerry Kruz’s dancehall The Afterthought for $500. Jerry says, his dad knew the owners of the 2400. The 17-year-old Kruz put Jerry Garcia and the band and Owsley Stanley, their sound guy and more famously, the manufacturer and distributor of their LSD up there. Jerry tells me they left the motel exactly how they found it.
Bomb plot:
In November 1999, the 2400 received worldwide media attention when an Al-Qaida terrorist named Ahmed Ressum (millennium bomber) built a bomb in one of the cottages. He planned to blow up LA’s International Airport that New Year’s Eve. In 2001, 21-year-old Kevin Peters was murdered there in a drug deal gone bad.
Mostly, though good things happen at the 2400. The motel has been the backdrop for movies and television shows including X-files, Bates Motel, Motive, Super Natural and a Bryan Adams music video.
Sanctuary:
The 2400 continues to offer reasonable accommodation for travelers (I could have booked a pet friendly one-bedroom suite with kitchen for $129 Friday night). Over the years, it’s also become a sanctuary for people in distress. In 2006, it provided emergency housing for families and individuals who were forced out of their apartment building after a leaking roof. In 2016, it became a haven for more than a dozen Syrian refugees. At the outbreak of the pandemic it housed people recovering from Covid-19, and sometime in the near future it will provide a roof for people waiting on the long list for permanent housing in Vancouver.
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