New lighting on Robson – all sparkly blue and white – filling the crowns, encircling the trunks, giving the street a boost before it loses momentum (empty storefronts!) by Jervis Street.
Robson’s prestige is being eroded by Alberni, a block north where the high-end girls have gone to play. Once just an extra-wide alley for through traffic and entrances to surface parking, Alberni’s sparkly stuff is now the jewelry at Tiffany and Cartier.
Even Thurlow between Robson and Georgia was, in the 1970s, lined with surface parking lots. That’s changed:
The above shot is the podium of The Carlyle, a 20-storey rental block built in 1989 – targeted to middle-income urbanites willing to actually live in the CBD. While it demonstrated it was still possible to build market rental, the Carlyle remained an outlier for several decades, with a constant change of retail tenants in its podium.
Once a 7-11:
And now a Prada.
