Downtown Vancouver Updates

[Pinion]

I think every building downtown should have large, continuous awnings. The lack of rain cover in this city is bizarre.

[Jimbo604]

720 Robson Street (@Granville) active demolition has started:
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/udp/2011/Minutes/Feb23.html#2


this is the back of the building, the alley with Chapters
photocredit: me

[officedweller]

Nice pic. I wouldn't have expected a steel girder in there.

+++++++

I guess it was common/popular to have lampposts on top of a balustrade on the cornice line (wrt the Dunsmuir building)?
The Hudson's Bay Company used to have them too (as well as both heavy metal awnings at the entrances
and fabric (retractable) awnings over the display windows (maybe for shading the displays)):


http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8


http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8

[dleung]

The original awnings were so much better. I rather they go with a "modern twist" a la Woodwards, instead of this double-faux heritage crap.

Hate vinyl awnings. All buildings should have awnings, and they should all be glass, IMO.

[SpongeG]

Originally Posted by Jimbo604

720 Robson Street (@Granville) active demolition has started:
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/udp/2011/Minutes/Feb23.html#2


this is the back of the building, the alley with Chapters
photocredit: me

charlies next door was pretty much all gone when we saw it from the alley on sunday - going to be weird to see that corner empty for a short time

[vansky]

Originally Posted by Vancity

been reading on people's comments on being 'world class' - I have a question. Why do people consider Toronto as a 'world class city'? what makes it world class? the size of the city? the cultural diversity of the city? the professional sports teams it's got? I'm just curious...

Chicago, NY, HK, London, Paris, etc are all known as world class/global cities (perhaps?), what defines a city to be world class? I think it's hard to define...and it's true. a lot of friends of mine always seem to inquire about coming to Vancouver, and how I'm lucky to be living here, etc, etc. Weird how the citizens of each city seem to always be envious about another city.

world class means u score high on all of the above and more, say headquarters, universities, research output etc. and van doens't qualify too well compare to toronto, due to the fact that there sin't enough economic
activity in this sector of the universe...i'd say world class depends on the diversity and quality of ur infastructure, education, population and etc.

but van is indeed world class in terms of livability, which none of those global cities come close anyways. if this city lives up to all other things, it'd replace toronto in terms of status.

on the bright side of things, van is urbanizing, and becoming more and more like a world class city.

just to be opstmistic, van needs another 20 yrs of progress to be on a stable conservative rank, right now everyone has diff opinions about its status, and that already puts it off the ranking....u never hear any debate about nyc or paris, or even los angeles, toronto is a little tricky since it seems that vancouver has more retpuation than toronto regardless of who's world class, that's an irony. but ig uess it's because van is near the top of livablity, what is toronto at the top for?? almost nothing, maybe "friendliness of its people?..."

[cc85]

Originally Posted by officedweller

http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8

This is class.

[Locked In]

^ Agreed - awesome photo. That block is pretty uninspiring these days - it's neat to see it like that.

[vansky]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod

can Vancouver please take a look at the view cones again? I think there should be a segment of downtown, say the Financial District area, that is exempt from the viewcone policy as long as the towers are architecturally significant following some school of architecture.

Other cities around the world have mountain settings and skyscrapers (even supertalls) are done tastefully so that there is a blend. To restrict downtown for the sake of being able to see the complete northshore view from City Hall is just a ridiculous restriction that is holding Vancouver back from being more of a national/world player.

Im not saying throw up a ridiculous tower like Seattle's Columbia Center (950 feet on a 400+ foot hill), but I am saying a tower like Washington Mutual and Two Union Square would do WONDERS for Vancouver's downtown in both height, office space, and skyline view. Those towers are only about ~150 feet taller than Shangri Li, that's not that much difference; particularly if located Hong Kong style (ala, on/near the waterfront) and if you consider RBC vs. Shangri La is 200 feet.

I think a couple of 800-986 foot office and/or mixed use office/residential towers TASTEFULLY done should be encouraged, and if 986 would give canada its first/only supertall.

surrey can build 5 200m+ in its central core, adn it doen'st change its status, because cracks will still be walking around...all i'm saying is that infrascture doen'st change a city's status unless the software changes along, which means culture...van's problem is that it lacks its own unique culture, which is still better than calgary because that one lacks culturei n general, which is still better than winnipeg because it doen'st have the infastructure, which is still better than regina, because i've never heard ppl going there,

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

not sure where this fits so will stick it here....

Parking being squeezed out in Vancouver

FRANCES BULA
VANCOUVER— Special to Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Jan. 30, 2012 5:09PM EST

At Graham McGarva’s architecture firm, only five of the 20 employees commute to work by car. And that’s a high ratio compared with other workplaces nearby.

So he knew already that office parking downtown was becoming less of an essential item.

But the point was really driven home when his firm, VIA Architecture, went to work on a new office tower that will face the city’s former train station, now its top transportation hub for commuter rail and buses.

The owner of the site, at 320 Granville, is tearing down a 50-year-old parking garage that is becoming less profitable every year. And, in the new 32-storey office tower that will be built in its place and likely house as many as 1,800 people, Mr. McGarva is including only 133 parking spots – less than half of what would have been required two decades ago and a quarter of the norm in the 1960s.

He’s not the only one – other office builders in Vancouver are doing the same. “We’re all seeing different aspects of that trend,” Mr. McGarva says.

“In the old days,” says Vancouver’s planning director, Brent Toderian, “they would have had to not only build the parking required for the new construction” – about 300 stalls – “but you would have had to replace the parking of the old garage.” In this case, the parkade that will be torn down has about 500 spaces.

Vancouver’s 1997 transportation plan capped downtown parking and banned new roads. Since then, the number of car trips and parking spots has gradually declined, even while the number of jobs and overall trips in the central city have increased.

Back then, the parking standard was one stall for every 1,000 to 1,500 square feet. Today the figure is far less – and negotiable for every building. That’s in spite of the fact that today’s buildings hold twice as many people in these open-plan, cost-cutting times.

Last year marked a big change in parking behaviour as commuters responded to a new 35-per-cent tax on parking stalls in commercial lots, higher on-street parking costs, and the new Richmond-to-Vancouver rapid-transit line built for the Olympics that has proven to be a huge hit with the downtown crowd.

Parking revenue collected at city-owned garages dropped by 9 per cent, while funds from on-street parking, traditionally an ever-increasing moneymaker, did not rise as much as the city’s finance department had been counting on.

...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...queezed-out-in-vancouver/article2319946/

Its really funny because I know some large firms outside of Vancouver who push for this too, what they do is offload the costs of parking on to the employees, its actually very sneaky. The firms I am talking about did this consciously, their whole reasoning was to offload costs on to employees in a way that is harder to notice. The employees are making the same money but now have to struggle to find parking and pay a decent amount for the spots they can snag.

Personally I would not even consider a job that either didnt have parking or didnt pay for the cost of parking above and beyond the actual salary for a reasonably located parking spot.

The minimum number of parking spots need to be maintained to cover natural demand plus a bit of extra capacity on top. 133 stalls for a project that can hold 1800 employees according to them is a joke the fact that they are also removing another 500 spots makes it worse.

As has been shown time and time again with cities like New Westminster or Chinatown or other cities that lacked adequate parking it really hurt these places and it was difficult to fix this problem with expensive parkades.

Its not like you cant convert underground parkades to other uses either if you ever wanted, but once you dont build them you are stuck with no options.

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by vansky

surrey can build 5 200m+ in its central core, adn it doen'st change its status, because cracks will still be walking around...all i'm saying is that infrascture doen'st change a city's status unless the software changes along, which means culture...van's problem is that it lacks its own unique culture, which is still better than calgary because that one lacks culturei n general, which is still better than winnipeg because it doen'st have the infastructure, which is still better than regina, because i've never heard ppl going there,

Vancouver is a great city that imo shoots above its weight but as my fiance said, "its like a boring little village". There are piles of cities in the world where Vancouver would be nothing but one neighborhood if place in them, one suburban neighborhood. Hard to be world class in the sense that some people want it to be, and anyways I wouldent want to raise a family in any of these so called world class cities anyways, fun for a young person that doesnt mind being walled inside a overpopulated, traffic and transit congested, polluted, cant relax mess that they are stuck in. I am yet to see one of these so called world class cities that arent like what I just mentioned, sure I havent seen all but I have seen a fair enough share, and lived in some too.

Like I said these world class cities are fun for many young people, they are productive and innovative, but they are not livable like say Vancouver or other cities with smaller population.

[entheosfog]

Originally Posted by cc85

This is class.

and people knew how to dress back then, at least when they were in public....

[Sir Conga]

This "world-class" discussion seems out of place in this thread. Or is it just me?

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Locked In

^ Agreed - awesome photo. That block is pretty uninspiring these days - it's neat to see it like that.

Yeah, it makes a huge difference to the view from the sidewalk - being able to see the columns on the facade as you walk by. The only other similar perspective in Vancouver is Sinclair Centre (given that you don't walk close past the art gallery columns).

[s211]

Originally Posted by officedweller

http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8

If I didn't know better, I would have said NYC!

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by s211

If I didn't know better, I would have said NYC!

Exactly the same thing went through my mind for a moment!!! All this show we can become "world class" not by the height and number of buildings, or the exact population size, but by educating ourselves to become more civic, educated, and refined people; learning the art of "savoir vivre" and transmitting it to our children and friends ... as well as to the people we meet ... (which we do by being approachable, polite, and understanding...)

[TwoFace]

Here's a "retro" photo I took last summer
Maybe we should have a dedicated (photo) topic or a showcase of our Downtown Street scene which would give life to our infrastructure and maybe complement it's "world class" city status.

** EDIT just found the "photo" site ... nevermind
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=180

[leftside]

Originally Posted by Sir Conga

This "world-class" discussion seems out of place in this thread. Or is it just me?

Agreed. And it's been discussed to death on here in the past.

[itinerant]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Nice pic. I wouldn't have expected a steel girder in there.

+++++++

I guess it was common/popular to have lampposts on top of a balustrade on the cornice line (wrt the Dunsmuir building)?
The Hudson's Bay Company used to have them too (as well as both heavy metal awnings at the entrances
and fabric (retractable) awnings over the display windows (maybe for shading the displays)):


http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8


http://vancouver.ca/ArchivesSearch/Resul...S=0&BG=&FG=&QS=&OEX=ISO-8859-1&OEH=utf-8

Notice also how much wider the sidewalk is than today? I really like how the awning goes right to the curb from the entrance, and is really a statement of THIS is the entrance! Also, I enjoy seeing the side of a building without the brooding overhang, like today's metal awning around the Bay.

Unlike some others here, I am not a fan of glass awnings over every sidewalk along every building. I'd much rather see a sea of umbrellas and smartly dressed pedestrians on a broad sidewalk than a bunch of people creeping along the edge of a building to get out of the rain.

If the Bay is really wanting to class-up their appeal (which they seem to be doing inside the store), they might want to consider reinstating many of these street-front niceties. #1 would be to take out that huge metal awning, install entrance canopies once again, and maybe look at making their big windows once again much showier than they are now, with perhaps individual sun shade awnings like was once here.

Unlikely the major bus stop will be going anywhere soon, but perhaps worth making some changes with this transit stop to have its own glass-topped covering for those waiting that doesn't clog up the sidewalk right up to the building.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by entheosfog

and people knew how to dress back then, at least when they were in public....

I a agree 100% with you. Hence going to Japan is refreshing because people still care about their appearance in public.