How many times must our landmarks fall...
BY PAULA SIMONS, EDMONTON JOURNALAUGUST 11, 2009
The vacant lot at 116th Street and 107th Avenue where the former Central Pentecostal Tabernacle used to be.
Photograph by: Larry Wong, The Journal, Edmonton Journal
Of all the sad and ugly corners in this sometimes sad and ugly city, the corner of 116th Street and 107th Avenue is surely one of the saddest and the ugliest.
Once upon a time, this unkempt vacant lot was home to two of Edmonton's most striking works of modernist architecture. The two buildings, which together made up the Central Pentecostal Tabernacle, were quite different in their architectural idioms.
The first, built in 1964 by Charles Laubenthal and Peter Hemingway, was one of the city's only examples of a building in the International Style pioneered by Le Corbusier, a clean-lined cube of concrete, stucco and green-gold glass.
The second, created by Hemingway in 1972, was a striking red cedar and glass pyramid, built along the lines of his other signature buildings, the Muttart Conservatory and the Hemingway Pool.
Not only were the structures two of Edmonton's most notable, iconic and influential works of modern architecture, they were buildings with a rich cultural and spiritual history.
But now, those extraordinary, inspirational buildings are nothing but a memory. When the congregation left its inner-city ministry in favour of a "big-box" church in the far western suburbs, it sold the land to developers, who in turn ripped down the tabernacle to make way for a new condo development.
Oh, there were appeals and protests mounted, both by the family of the late Peter Hemingway, by architecture and history buffs, and by a few discontented members of the Tabernacle congregation. The city's Historic Resources Review Panel even voted to grant the buildings heritage status and put them on the A-list of protected buildings. It made no difference. The city issued the demolition permit and in March 2007, the buildings came down, to make way for an infill housing development that was supposed to help revitalize the downtown core.
Except there is no condo development. Just a weed-infested empty lot, with a drunkenly tilted chain-link fence and a weather-beaten, off-kilter sign, promoting a phantom 225-unit apartment block called The Edge.
There's also a For Sale sign--the eyesore property was listed this summer for a cool $7.1 million.
Architect-turned-developer Eddo Cancian runs Time Developments, which owns the property, at least for now. When he bought the property, the Edmonton economy was in full boom, and the local condo market was red hot.
The economic downturn, he says, caught his small company by surprise.
And it's true. In the current credit crunch, it's not easy for developers to borrow money--and it's not easy for first-time homebuyers to qualify for mortgages.
"The market has changed. As a matter of fact, it's diametrically opposed to what it was when we purchased the site," he says.
"We started presales last October, with very little success. There are not enough sold to start the project."
But despite the For Sale sign on the site, Cancian insists he hasn't given up on the project.
"Our intention is to go ahead with the development when the market does agree with us....I wish that I could do something immediately, but I just don't have the power to change the marketplace."
Cancian, who once studied with Hemingway, says he's planning a well-designed condo. In fact, he says, one of the reasons his project stalled was that it took two years to win the approval of the city's design committee.
"We're a small boutique kind of developer. That's why the 116th Street property appealed to us--we wanted to do a spectacular job with the property."
But whatever Cancian's good intentions, no matter how innocently he got caught out by the dramatic economic reversal, the bottom line is that the city planners issued that demolition permit, they sacrificed two remarkable, original pieces of urban design--and got, in exchange, yet another sprawling plot of urban blight.
Instead of finding a way to preserve the buildings, perhaps as theatres or community centres or funky retail spaces, instead of taking steps to ensure the promised new development would actually go ahead, we allowed the razing of two landmark buildings on a prominent corner, and then allowed the site go to seed --literally.
Sobbing over spilled milk, of course, accomplishes little. But while nothing can bring back the majestic Central Pentecostal Tabernacle, it's not too late for city planners to take the necessary steps to preserve other important pieces of Edmonton's modernist legacy.
As a community, we need to recognize that buildings don't need to look like Gothic cathedrals or Tudor cottages to be worth saving. In a hundred-year-old prairie city, we need to celebrate and embrace our own authentic architecture, the structures that make our city distinctive.
We can't revitalize our downtown by tearing down the buildings that give identity and individuality to our streetscapes. And we can't revitalize it with a bunch of untended empty lots.
How many booms and busts must we ride out, before we finally learn that lesson?
[email protected]/Paulatics
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