August 5, 2016

Space and Place at Pacific Centre

Since the story on the cube house on Point Grey Road generated so much interest, let’s go for another architectural and open-space controversy.
Michael Geller starts it off in his Courier column:
Pac Centre
The third important event that happened last week has nothing to do with housing. It has to do with how we plan our downtown.
The story started with a call from CBC’s Early Edition inviting me to comment on a proposal to replace a glass rotunda and plaza with a new commercial development. …
The researcher wanted to talk about the plaza and rotunda at Howe and Georgia streets, part of Cadillac Fairview’s Pacific Centre, for which a proposal was going to the city’s Urban Design Panel (UDP) later in the week. …
I subsequently attended the UDP meeting where I was shocked to see plans and a model for a three-storey retail complex on the plaza. However, I was told the proposal was in accordance with a 2006 rezoning.
When I subsequently asked why a proposal for such a prominent site was proceeding without any community input, I was told by an official city spokesperson that this was standard procedure for a development permit application in accordance with zoning, and staff would be seeking public feedback through the neighbourhood notification process.
Surprised by this response I decided to review the 2006 rezoning decision myself.
While it confirmed council had approved a deal to allow the plaza to be redeveloped in return for a developer contribution towards the cost of the nearby SkyTrain station, council also decided “in the preparation of a development application, the public should be consulted about proposed land use and design concepts, through workshops and open houses.”
Compared to most world cities, Vancouver has few public open spaces and plazas, and sadly we seem to be losing many of the spaces we do have.
Before we lose another plaza at Howe and Georgia, I urge the mayor, council and the city’s planning department to instigate a proper public consultation process to find a better solution to retain all, or at least a portion of this important downtown open space.
Georgia and Howe
 
Ray Spaxman weighs in:
This is so awful!
It is bad architecture at this location, bad urban design for this location, bad loss of public usable space, bad scale in that location, terrible corner and frontage to Howe Street. It looks as if it was relocated from Robson Street (where it might fit well).
Perhaps some people want Georgia Street to look like Robson Street – crass commercialism overwhelming public good and opportunity. The design rationale in the application seems unaware that there is something called Urban Design.  We seem to have lost the ability to visualise the potential design and functional richness of a whole street.
And where is the city’s Downtown public open space plan?

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  1. How much $$$ are they going to contribute in exchange for being allowed to build such an ugly building of how many square feet ?

  2. If you read the 2006 rezoning report, development here was compensation for giving up the Canada Line station site across Georgia Street at Granville.

  3. While I don’t have a huge issue with the architecture or the reasoning behind , there is every reason to strenuously object to the city’s lack of hard core urban design skills, mainly the utter lack of an overall vision for urban open space especially in the core where it is needed the most. We have parks, road allowances and view corridors up to our eyeballs. We desperately need pedestrian plazas and squares, which are the social heart, marketplace and focal point of communities and neighbourhoods.
    The proposed half-block VAG plaza slated kitty corner from this site will represent the very pinnacle of our ability to build a city today with this consideration. It’s not nearly enough.

  4. I don’t share the views on how ugly this is, however I’m sure it can be improved. I really don’t share the concerns about losing public space in this location because directly across the street is the Art Gallery plaza that is now under re-construction which is a massive public space RIGHT THERE! Combine that with the permanent closure of Robson on the other side of the the Art Gallery and you have even more public space. This area of downtown is not lacking public space.
    There is also the new open space at Telus Garden.
    I think this desperately needs to be infilled with quality retail, spaces for which are grossly lacking in the downtown core.
    Challenge the overall design if you like, but that space is far better served commercially than as public space.

  5. I want to echo Ray Spaxman – where is the city’s Downtown public open space plan? Another very sad loss this year was the destruction of the beautiful and well-used plaza with the seating and cherry trees on Alberni between Burrard and Thurlow, to be replaced by a commercial building.

  6. Thanks to Michael Geller and Frank Ducote for looking up the 2006 rezoning that permitted this change. I was the first to cry foul (see the original PriceTags post), but I spoke out too soon. As I now understand it, enclosing this open space was a trade off for the plaza and entrance for the Canada Line City Centre station.
    I can only imagine that it was a fraught negotiation between the city and Cadillac Fairview. The developer got direct entry from the station to its retail property, and the right to enclose and merchandise the existing plaza, which it now wants to do.
    Was that the right trade?
    The station location was critical, the site was private property, and I imagine there must have been great pressure to insure that the Canada Line would be ready for the 2010 Olympics. At the time, I might have made that trade.
    Looking ahead, Ray Spaxman asks, “where is the city’s Downtown public open space plan?” I hear that there are other plazas under threat. Fair question, and one that needs a public conversation.

  7. The proposed extension us banal but really how well used is the open space anyway? Most of downtown’s plazas seem llightly used throughout the course of the year. If it wasn’t for the ragtag protests the art gallery plaza woud be a vacant lot shunned by most. Until the Christmas market came along you could shoot a cannon through the QE Theatre plaza without fear of injuring anyone. The homeless seem to make good use if the plaza at Dunsmuir and Richards but few others do.

  8. Agreed that it looks like it was relocated from Robson Street (and a mid-block location, at that).
    This is a very prominent site that – kitty-corner from the North VAG Plaza – should SCREAM:
    “Hey, come over here!” (and shop!).
    This design doesn’t do that. In fact, it turns a shoulder to the North VAG Plaza.
    It looks completely uninteresting from that angle.
    Even the 1980s rotunda has more “curb appeal” than what’s proposed.

  9. It’s awful! It’s way too short. Six to eight storeys would be more appropriate to form the enclosure that the VAG plaza needs. But I won’t miss the “public space” it occupies. We don’t have too few public spaces. We have zero good public spaces – too many crappy ones. They are all designed to discourage use and are mostly open to two or more noisy, smelly car oriented streets.
    The new VAG plaza will be a huge improvement and it will still suck. We need urban designers who understand urban space. I see no evidence that we ever have.

  10. I will never agree that we have too few urban public / pedestrian open spaces, but do agree that what few we do have are not very good. The only reasons these spaces are bad include: (i) they are not programmed for specific, purposeful public activity; (ii) most of them are left over space once the architect spent all the available energy and fee on the adjacent building; (iii) many are privately-owned by entities with no long-term commitment to public urban design; (iv) most of them have been very poorly executed; and (v) no one in the city administration has a well-developed sense of what quality public urban open space really means.
    The advantage of the new VAG plaza proposal is that it will accommodate more than the occasional muddy smoke out and protest. It will have services and design elements to support scheduled events, and it has a beautiful architectural backdrop — with the great exception of the Black Tower across Howe Street. (Another exception is the most tragic loss of the Atlas cedars that fronted the VAG façade.) Perhaps once a couple of years of scheduled events far better in quality we have seen before have gone by, our sense of place regarding the VAG plaza will deepen and lead to asking the hard question on developing more deeply-programmed plazas that are beautifully rendered. They needn’t be big, but they must have a deeply meaningful benefit to our culture. And they must be publicly-owned.
    Lastly, to denigrate the existing spaces only because the homeless gather there is a backwards judgement. Judge the quality of the space first. A well-used space with all kinds of activity at its edges will not attract the homeless who tend to leave when the public shows up. A plaza full of homeless people is the result of poor planning, zoning and design, especially in high density areas. A well-placed café or a plaza lined with retail (not roads) could make a world of difference.

  11. I suppose another way of looking at plazas and squares is that they have to present a vital, well thought-out social and cultural purpose. That should be the first criteria in the RFP, even before concepts are developed. Glossy mags and design profession publications are full of form-over-function awards on parks and plazas that do not pass the ten-year test, or those with exceptionally poor programming despite the expense of materials used and extent of contorted thought meant to garner the appearance of sophisticated design.
    I doubt the Pacific Centre space could have competed with VAG in the end, so it may as well capture some economic return. But that shouldn’t negate the idea that a Public Open Space Plan is required at least in downtown, and that the city budgets or CAC’s (or both) will ultimately have to fund new squares and plazas, hopefully with a serious look at programming and cultural relevance, and a much deeper effort to achieve design excellence. That will require budgets more than a modicum better than that used for left over space.

  12. I count 28 significant open spaces between the stadium, Nelson, Hastings and Thurlow. Most are not truly public but they were the result of providing “public space” within a development. Fewer are any good.
    Vancouver lacks a sense of enclosure that makes the opening to a public space feel good – tension and relief – like a perfect piece of music. We don’t lack quantity, we lack quality space. Our too-wide roads are part of the problem. They could be part of the solution but then we’d really have too much open space.

  13. Whatever transpires at this site, hopefully some consideration will be given to the thousands of North Shore transit passengers who were unceremoniously moved from the relatively sheltered confines of the Hudson Bay store to the windswept, unprotected, west side of Granville several years ago. Unfortunately, transit users’ needs seem to be of little consideration in Vancouver’s urban design discussions.

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