Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheba
The city doesn't own the Post Office building and I'm pretty sure the tunnel was filled in. Even without those pesky details, would the Post Office be big enough as is or would it need major work to fit the art gallery in?
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Well, everything is for sale for a price. I'm sure the pension fund that bought it didn't buy it for the intrinsic value of the building.
The block the VAG wants to use is about the same size as the post office block. Depending on height allowances, buying that property and selling the proposed site (basically swap land for land+money) might make the city money and give the pension developers more freedom to work with.
The post office building, as is, has an interior floor space of 686,000sq ft. (16 acres). More than double the VAG proposal. And I think it's type of construction allows it to be internally reconfigured.
It really is a great looking building, and a fairly unique one in all of Canada. It was even called the "Taj Mahal with escalators” when built. If you take off the coat of arms and put art in the blank spaces, any FoB tourist will easily assume that the building is a museum. And it is right across from the Library, and you wouldn't have to alter the QE theater plaza to make it fit in (as it already does).
Saving a heritage building worked great for the current VAG, maybe it should save another heritage building from the chopping block. As a federal building, it escapes the City's heritage designation, and as a crown corporation, it escapes even federal heritage status.
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