Via the Downtown Waterfront Working Group
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A REMNANT OF THE FREEWAY THAT NEVER WAS
With The Guardian article on Vancouver’s freeway battle, it is fitting to point out a remnant from that era- 200 Granville Square. In our last post we lamented that one of our premier streets, Granville Street, terminates in a parkade. The office tower at 200 Granville Square was designed for the freeway passing to the north. We know level P1 of the parkade is structurally designed to accommodate traffic but we don’t know for sure if was designed to provide the freeway entrance as shown in the sketch below.
The City’s Central Waterfront Hub Framework (endorsed by Vancouver City Council in 2009) shows a way to undo the mistakes of the 1960s era and re-open Granville Street to the harbour.
And here is a link to Gord Price’s blog entry on the famous Project 200.
There are two major and fixable flaws with the Waterfront Hub Framework. It proposes the removal of a popular semi-public square but includes no equivalent replacement. And it proposes a network of roads over top of the biggest transit hub in Western Canada.
The transit proximity and lack of existing business (backlash) make this an ideal place to create an exciting car free urban commercial centre that might finally prove you don’t need cars for commerce. With the roads gone (or severely limited) there would be ample high quality space to replace the loss of most of Granville Square.
We need to be very thankful neither the open freeway (a replica of Seattle’s Alaskan Way? Or San Franciso’s Embarcadero freeway?) or Project 200 got built. The initial proposals for the Canada Place esplanade, Jack Poole Plaza, Harbour Green Park and a significant chunk of the extended Stanley Park seawall would have been completely subsumed by roaring traffic.
But the work isn’t complete yet. The remaining private property between the Waterfront Road and Cordova needs to be acquired by the Port for public use as a major transportation centre, or at least developed as a compromise with accommodating private development. The Hub plan so far falls short, but it’s a good start.