WEDNESDAY
February 11 2015 Vol. 106 No. 11
OPINION 10
Geller on affordable housing URBAN SENIOR 8
Memories of war STATE OF THE ARTS 17
Chutzpah! gets violent There’s more online at
vancourier.com MIDWEEK EDITION
THE VOICE of VANCOUVER NEIGHBOURHOODS since 1908
Vancouver won the Games A giant block party, pride and a great transit line our legacy from five years ago JOCK AND JILL Megan Stewart
mstewart@vancourier.com
KEYS TO THE FUTURE Pianist Parisa Yee performs composer Cornelius Gurlitt’s “Dancing on the Green” during Saturday’s Strawberry & Tea recital as part of Vanier Park’s fourth annual Winter Wander open house. See story on page 14. PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA BLISSETT
Giant screen to add ‘vibrancy’ Media screen proposed for Telus Garden would showcase video art and community programing
Naoibh O’Connor
noconnor@vancourier.com
Plans for a giant media screen that would be lowered each night at dusk for several hours on the side of the Telus Garden office building will be presented at an open house Wednesday. Henriquez Partners Architects has applied on behalf of Westbank Corp. and Telus for an amendment to the city’s sign bylaw to allow for the screen. Measuring 7.5 by 11 metres, if approved it would appear on the west facade of the building at 520 West Georgia St., facing Seymour Street, between the 16th and 18th floors where the so-called “sky garden” protrudes from the building. The screen would be retractable and drop down in the evening hours from dusk to
11 p.m. daily, according to the proposal, which notes it will use rear projection technology that’s only viewable in low-light conditions and it “will showcase video art and community programming and announcements, with limited brand recognition for businesses at Telus Garden.” The media screen has always been part of the general plans for the Telus Garden development with the understanding that its approval required an amendment to the sign bylaw. “The screen drops from the inside of the glass on the 18th floor,” explained Rhiannon Mabberley, Westbank’s development manager for Telus Garden. A view-line study was completed, according to Mabberley, who said there are no residential towers with a sightline directly into Telus Garden at the 16th floor. The tower directly across is Scotia Tower. “Obviously, it’s also an office building and they have the biggest direct sightline into the tower, if you will, at the 16th level and there’s no residential directly facing that building,” she said. “It’s
meant to be for the benefit of pedestrians to really add some vibrancy to the skyline. If you think of Vancouver on a wet Wednesday night and you’re walking home in the middle of winter, it’s pretty bleak. There’s not a lot of interest. So we created this as a way to add an interesting fabric to the urban realm.” Mabberley said they’ve looked to partner with schools such as the Vancouver Film School and Emily Carr to provide content for the media screen. “We’re really in the very beginning process of partnering with those people to create a program whereby students could create content for the screen,” Mabberley said. “The screen, of course, is not approved by the City of Vancouver today, so don’t have a lot of information to go forward with, but should it be approved, that’s our intent.” While the application proposes the possibility of “limited brand recognition” Mabberley said the screen is not meant to be a billboard or advertising venture, but there can be a cost for creating content. Continued on page 5
In Vancouver’s short modern history, lifelong residents recognize the city’s coming-of-age as a kind of biblical Before and After. We were one thing Before Expo ’86 and we were another After. Three decades later, many agree. On the timeline of our post-colonial city, we can pencil in a thick line for the year of the World’s Fair. The initially small-scale transportation expo cost billions of dollars and was called the “biggest single catalyst for the dramatic change in the city.” The north shore of False Creek became the prototype for our city of glass, design grew sky-high where wood frames couldn’t follow. The SkyTrain delivered the suburbs downtown, and the futuristic geodesic dome turned into the post-cardpretty landmark of our future. More than 22 million people stopped by. The world came to visit and never left, as the joke went by Mike Harcourt, the city’s mayor at the time. Five years this month after Vancouver 2010, can we say the same thing about the Olympic Winter Games? Did a brief, intense fixation with red mittens change us? Here’s what happened in the years since VANOC became a household name.
We came through
Vancouver 2010 was an abject failure before it ever started. International headlines declared it so. We had no snow. The Athletes’ Village was still under construction. And then the high-speed, accidental death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili took our breath away as we paused for a terrible moment of silence. How to go on? In Canada’s respectful way, under the watchful eye and inescapable coercion of the IOC. The mourning shroud lifted as the sun came out and the Robson Square zip line wait times surpassed an hour. The Bay sold out of red mittens. The Times of London described the scene as “joyful.” We were “modern,” “beautiful,” “an amazing party town.” Yahoo.com wrote, “…it’s the people that power the movement. The Canadian people pushed these games back from the brink of disaster and right off into history.” Salon, famously, announced: “These were the best Winter Games ever.” Continued on page 20