Skinny building beats city hall [Sam Kee building]

Vancouver (CP) -- The owners of the world's thinnest commercial building have discovered you can beat city hall -- eventually.

The owners of Jack Chow Insurance, operating out of the historic 1.8-metre-wide Sam Kee building in Vancouver's Chinatown, celebrated victory last week over nine decades of narrow-minded city bureaucracy.

Ostensibly, the skirmish was over a $260 annual fee the city charged for the air-space used by the seven bay windows jutting over the sidewalk from the building's second storey.

But to Rod Chow, whose family owns the Pender...