Hadani Ditmars covers the latest developments in Gastown for The Globe:
With the high-tech sector driving a mini commercial real estate boom in Gastown – where square footage is cheaper than downtown – landlords have to respond to the demands of the millennial work force. Drafty heritage buildings that swelter in summer do not fit the bill. So the architectural challenge is to create a new purpose-built, energy-efficient building that still respects the scale and heritage.
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The online coverage includes images of projects – notably the Ormidale block:
The terra-cotta tiled Ormidale Block, located at 151 West Hastings Street (signed with Asia Imports), is a heritage building created in 1900 that is being readied for its new definition as a Class-A building:
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The building will retain the Hastings Street façade, but be completely rebuilt – with an entrance to the lane behind that jogs between Cambie Street and the Woodwards courtyard, creating one of the potentially more interesting spaces in the neighbourhood.
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After:
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My comments:
Gastown, Vancouver’s first downtown, has always been a neighbourhood in transition, says Gordon Price, a former city councillor and director of the Simon Fraser University City program.
He notes the area’s chameleon-like qualities – from 1978 alone, it’s gone through three major transitions: touristic old town, reinvention as a residential area to high-tech, education and creative-arts hub.
Its “flexibility” means that the heritage component has to be adaptable. “It can’t be cast in stone, or preserved just for architecture’s sake but as part of a neighbourhood that grows and changes,” he says.
The main obstacles to heritage conversion in Gastown have “always been about [building] codes,” Mr. Price explains. “Fire and seismic issues have often prevented it from changing.”
And yet heritage architecture, he says, is key to the neighbourhood’s essence, and if approached correctly becomes the “very definition of adaptability” – by “keeping its feel and character while accommodating new uses and definitions.”
Too bad there isn’t a better place for all the dumpsters.