Here’s a blog worth putting on your Favourites to check every so often if you want to stay current on a changing Vancouver.
John Atken and Andy Coupland wrote a guide, The Changing City, a few years ago – and then use this blog to add later additions. Because they’re on top of what’s happening with development proposals at City Hall, they get the scoop on when they go public.
And they add a lot of interesting background.
To wit: July 5 – OnQue
Replacing the Legion’s poppy factory, a more appropriate name might be ‘Finally’. The first proposal for the site was made back in 2004, with a different developer and architect. The developer then, the Holborn Group, switched architects and proposed the current scheme, designed by Gair Williamson, a few years later.
Then the project was put ‘on hold’ while Holborn switched bosses and concentrated on their two major projects …
Rize Alliance stepped in, took over the site and the design and finally started building.
Architecturally it’s pretty disappointing considering the location not too far from the collection of heritage houses along 10th between Ontario and Yukon. Maybe someone can explain to me why the two recent dominant themes in Vancouver architecture (although really throughout much of the developed world) seem to be towers on podiums and cheap looking brick and glass structures. It has a certain Sovietesque utilitarian quality to it.