‘What is that?!’: The long, bizarre history of the 2400 Court Motel

What do 19th-century colonial land grabs, al-Qaeda schemes, modern horror movies and Syrian refugees all have in common? The 2400 Court Motel on Kingsway, of course. 

Driving through the Kingsway Corridor, amid increasingly dense clusters of high-rises and ever-changing restaurants, retail, and gas stations, there is one property that remains seemingly frozen in time. 

The 2400 Court Motel on Kingsway and East 33rd Avenue, in many ways, typifies the aesthetic combination of post-war austerity and optimism. 

The motel itself was built in 1946 and, according to Heritage Vancouver, is “one of the best remaining motor courts in the Lower Mainland,” due in part to its “scrupulously maintained” and “virtually unchanged” property. 

This distinctly “of-another-time” feel of the motel has made it a versatile set for a number of TV and film productions over the years. Most recently, the motel was cast as a nightmarish, pastel-accented suburban backdrop in the highly reviewed horror film, Backrooms. 

“The amazing thing about the 2400 Court in particular is that it looks like this fantasy post-war utopia,” said James Burton, the now-retired lead consultant on the Statement of Significance for the motel. “ [It has] bungalows that sit in the lawn with shrubbery underneath the windows and front porches. It looks like the typical post-war suburban development that was happening all over the country.”

But before it was captured on big and small screens alike, from Bates Motel, The X-Files, Yellowjackets, The Exorcist and more, the motel captured the hearts of road trippers in the post-war prosperity boom.

“The 2400 Court [Motel] is an interesting remaining marker of that sudden change to automobile travel and tourism,” said Burton. “There were only a few hotels downtown at the time… then after the war, all these motel courts sprang up along Kingsway for visitors to Vancouver.”

To get the full scope of the significance of the 2400 Court Motel, Burton said, we have to go back even further into the history of the route it runs along. The road we know today as “Kingsway” was once the main thoroughfare through what would later become Vancouver. Originally a well-tread First Nations trail, the road was later also used and expanded by European colonizers. 

The Royal Engineers, a contingent of the British Army, were sent from England during the gold rush in 1858 to establish British Columbia as a colony, fearing the expansionist efforts of the United States. 

In that process, the Royal Engineers constructed Kingsway, then known as Westminster Road, a 13-mile-long trail from New Westminster, the then-capital of B.C., to the Burrard Inlet. Over time, the stretch was converted from a trail to a wagon road and then to a streetcar line. With the invention of the automobile, Westminster eventually became a wide, paved asphalt road, and its name was officially changed to Kingsway in 1913. 

Middle-income families and waves of mass European migration began to populate the areas around Kingsway throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the completion of the Pattullo Bridge crossing the Fraser River in New Westminster in 1937, Kingsway became the northernmost section of the road system linking Vancouver to the rest of the U.S. coast and Mexico. 

Following the construction of the Patullo Bridge in the late 1930s, Kingsway’s dominance as a roadway was further underscored as it became the major artery for entering Vancouver from both the south and the east, said Burton. 

After World War II, the post-war prosperity boom that spread across most of North America brought with it a surge in car culture. “You were considered high on the hog if you went for a road trip…[Back then] you didn’t hop on a plane and go to Bosnia Herzegovina for a walk in the mountains,” said Burton. “You got in your car, you hoped it was as fancy and as big as possible, and you went for a drive in North America.”

Auto courts (the precursor to modern motels) and later motels (a portmanteau of “motor” and “hotel”) were designed with individual parking spaces in front of each room and often placed cars at the physical centre of the property. 

Along with the emergence of accommodations for road trippers throughout the city, drive-ins and other car-centric entertainment and amenities began to emerge along Kingsway. 

Another reflection of the supremacy of car culture, said Burton, was the emergence of giant neon signs, like the one out front the 2400 Court Motel, throughout the city. “Vancouver was known as a city with streets that were fabulously lit up with neon,” said Burton, pointing to areas along the Granville Strip and the Bowman sign on Broadway and Alder as relics of a neon-dominated era. 

“It was the size of the signage that was big and new, in part to grab your attention as you were driving along,” said Burton. “You’re in an automobile on a modern road… [The signs] were meant to be apparent while you’re moving faster and can see them from further off.” 

During the motel’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, Burton said that the grounds were meticulously maintained by the family who owned it at the time. 

However, it wasn’t long before changes in urban planning and the construction of new thoroughfares throughout Vancouver set in motion the beginning of the end for the 2400 Court Motel. 

With the construction of the Massey Tunnel and the Oak Street Bridge in the late 1950s, the pre-eminence of Kingsway as the primary way into and out of the city steadily began to wane. 

“[Things became] even more geared towards speed and volume of traffic, and introduced you into the city via Oak Street and Granville Street,” said Burton. “Ever since then, that has been the preferred route to the border.”

The 1974 opening of the Knight Street Bridge pulled even more traffic away from Kingsway. As chain hotels began to dominate and traffic flowed away from Kingsway, the charm and necessity of automobile-focused accommodations like the 2400 Court Motel began to wane. 

Over the following decades, one major post-war motel after the other would shutter, leaving the 2400 Court standing alone on Kingsway. 

The motel was bought by the city in 1989, marking the very beginning of the plans for Norquay Village. While the motel was no longer in its prime, it would continue to live out a series of unusual chapters leading to the present day. 

In November 1999, the 2400 Motel became a worldwide media sensation for a highly unexpected reason. One of its patrons that year included an Algerian-born al-Qaeda member named Ahmed Ressam, also known as the millennium bomber.

Ressam stayed at the motel with an accomplice and effectively set up a bomb-making factory in a room of the 2400 Court.  He had plans to blow up the International Airport in Los Angeles that New Year’s Eve, but was arrested while crossing the U.S.-Canada border with more than 100 pounds of explosives stashed in the wheelbed of his rental car.  

In 2006, the motel became a sanctuary for several Vancouver locals who had been forced out of their apartment building due to a leaking roof. In 2016, it was temporarily used to house upwards of 27 refugee families from Syria fleeing the country’s civil war. 

During the early COVID-19 pandemic, the site was briefly used for temporary housing. While the motel’s days are likely numbered, guests can still make reservations to stay at the iconic site while it lasts. 

The motel’s 3.2-acre property at 2396-2400 Kingsway and 2441-2493 East 33rd Avenue will soon look very different. Plans for the transformation of the property have arguably been in the works since the 1980s, but the council formally approved general plans for the Norquay Neighbourhood Centre in 2010. 

Since then, a specific redevelopment application was submitted in Oct. 2025, and the city officially approved the rezoning in March, sealing the fate of the 2400 Court Motel. 

Once completed, it will be replaced by four massive residential high rises (the tallest among them measuring 28-storeys), complete with a 20,000 square-foot public plaza that will include retail and restaurant space. 

As for the residences, 100 per cent of the housing will be market-rate rentals with a mix of studios, one, two and three bedroom units. However, the project promises just over an acre of publicly accessible outdoor open space, including a playground, lawn, and pavilion. 

Burton was part of a team assembled in 2007 to assess the building's historical significance. While Heritage Vancouver named the site one of its Top 10 Most Endangered Heritage Sites in 2011, the motel ultimately will not be preserved. 

Burton has mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he said, the visual reminder of the motel along Kingsway offers a sort of portal into the past. “[When you see the 2400 Court Motel] you think, 'What is that?!’” He continued, “That helps people understand where the city has come from.”

At the same time, he said he recognizes that the city needs to “continue to grow physically…things are always changing.” 

But Burton added that he hopes that while the city continues to grow and expand, “we’ll do so in a way that honours and respects earlier initiatives that were so obviously done with care and add value to the culture.