Further Rotwangification

[mbarrick]

If you are familiar with downtown Vancouver, you've probably seen the half-finished, derelict building on the north side of the 1100 block of W. Georgia between Fitness World and Terasen Gas. I have no idea what happened that the building was abandoned part-way through construction years ago (it's been abandoned for alt least eight or nine years). In recent years its only occupant has been a hawk feeding off local pigeons occasionally leaving its prey's dismembered wings randomly scattered around the area. The current owners, who also own the adjacent building that houses Terasen Gas, have for years now been unsuccessful in getting the appropriate permits and zoning to redevelop the site. I've watched several permit application notices go up on the hoarding in front of the site and come back down again when they failed, mostly because the designs failed to stay clear of the view corridor. Vancouver has a number of protected views that ensure various parks around the city don't lose sight of the mountains.  The diagonal lines though the map to the left are the limits of the view corridor. The site dead-centre in the map, across the street from the highlighted site is where the 60-storey Shangri-La hotel and luxury apartments, the tower portion of which has a nearly triangular footprint to work around the view-corridor. It only took the current owners of the derelict building five years of redesigning assorted buildings that blocked the view corridor to look across the street and figure out that they needed to design something with the tower confined to the north-east corner of the lot. A 56-storey hotel & apartment building has been approved for the lot and as of today, demolition has begun on the derelict building. Including the service structures on the top of the building this new building will be just a shade shorter than the Shangri-La across the street. That will put the two tallest buildings in Vancouver on the next block over (the image to the right shows the street as it is today with the sky the two new skyscrapers will occupy greyed out - Rotwang's Lab is the red wall on the left). A 42-storey hotel/apartment is nearing completion at the corner of Bute and Melville. Two new buildings in the 30-storey range (33 and 28) are going up on the 1200 block of Melville. Soon the small L-shaped enclave of heritage buildings along Bute and Melville will be completely surrounded, including the two 25+ storey towers on that already exist on the same block. You might think that I would be worried about this building being torn down for some other development, but it's quite the opposite. The remaining older buildings on this block are all class-A and class-B on the heritage register. Vancouver's heritage bylaw prohibits the demolition of these buildings and the development bylaw requires new development to put money into the maintenance of adjacent heritage buildings. I love my 98-year old apartment in the middle of the city.

Comments

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

when i worked for birk's in 1990 i delivered a package to that building that's being torn down...it had something to do with a business affiliated with learning...soon after they threw everyone out and were going to retrofit it...they ran out of funding and it just sat there forever...the building they have planned for there is supposed to be really cool...it will twist all the way up...i'm very glad that eyesore is finally coming down...i was walking up georgia today and thinking along the very same lines as you...i was remembering where there were hardly any buildings on that corridor, i was down by the old "wang" building and the "cube"...those used to be the only tall buildings on that end of the street...i am glad there are the heritage buildings still left that you speak of...an acquaintance lives in the one down the street from you on bute and melville...you may remember "dougie" from luvafair, the buff bald actor guy who was always drenched with sweat and hitting on all the women...ha ha...he was more of a klassix night guy in the mid '90s...a fixture of the club in those days...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yup, here is the architect's page on the building showing the twisted tower: http://www.mcmparchitects.com/projects.cfm?projectID=134

I did a little more reading and discovered that the new, wider sidewalk along my block of Bute is part of the requirements for this building. Bute is being groomed as a pedestrian high street as the path from the Coal Harbour waterfront to Robson.

BTW, the angle of the Wang building is because of another view corridor. It's the same corridor that keeps that muddy vacant lot at Robson and Broughton from being developed. Nothing tall can be built on it.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

i always wondered about that lot...seemed a bit too good of a location for selling christmas trees once a year...i'm surprised nothing at all has gone there...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

If I was to hazard a guess, I suspect the land is probably being sold and re-sold without mentioning the hight restriction problem. Each new owner goes in envisioning a small hotel, language school, office building, etc., finds out too late they can't do that and sells off to the next dupe. Nothing will happen until someone can acquire the whole block for another L-shaped development.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

oh and i was thinking the other day i would be willing to bet there will be a starbucks in the basement of the melville...the currently don't have a presence in that neighbourhood...or if not one of the two new ones on pender/bute/melville...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no doubt. I was surprised when the place at the corner of Bute and Cordova wasn't a Starbucks.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

yeh i noticed that one...haven't been in there yet...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

They're closed for renovations (which seems an odd thing for a new building). They won't be open again until the summer.

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

When kim was playing at the ELEMENT PUB (now known as Pub 340) the new owner took some urine soaked rotting asbestos covered pannels off her building to clear out the disease rats and the hyppdermic needles - and she was promptly fined for damaging a Vancouver heritage building -


A friend of mine was working a business that bought a funeral chapple from a woman who had inherited it from her family - the woman had run the business into the ground (pun intended) (how bad do you have to be to lose a business with a guaranteed client base?) and didnt was to sink any more of her money into it
My friends company bought the business - but this woman didnt want them to do anything with the building so she had it declared a heritage site AFTER she sold it.



the short story here is that historical preservationists really piss me off sometimes

the only things I see preserved is red tape and egos

[saturnina.livejournal.com]

It's the new Ritz Carlton! Our office is doing the interiors for it.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Neat!

[valerian.livejournal.com]

Any idea in what month our building was completed? We should have a "centennial" open-house building party in 2009! Wear Victorian/Edwardian clothing, get a big cake, BYOB, play MP3's made from wax cylinder recordings & 78's, etc., invite the whole building (and a few of the former tenants chased out by the fire, of course!).

:D