Project 200 Information

[officedweller]

Price Tags has posted information and a link to the whole scanned Project 200 document:

http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2012/...#comment-17309

http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2012/...#comment-17311

Believe it or not, there were only 4 office buildings in the plan - the rest were apartments and hotels.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmv/set...th/6852779716/

[Pinion]

Very interesting. I hate 60s architecture, but it sure would be nice to have downtown grow over the train tracks. Seems like every plan for that vaporizes soon after appearing.

[jlousa]

There's no doubt Vancouver would've been very different today if it had gone through. Think there are elements of Project 200 that still have merit for tomorrow's Vancouver.

[Metro-One]

that is how I feel as well, project 200 wasn't completely negative, it actually has some good portions, and I am very happy we at least got 1 tower out of it, which adds some nice texture and variety to downtown.

[phesto]

Thanks for posting. I don't think I'd ever seen the elevations before.

It looks like the taller Granville Square (where PWC is now) would've been about 550 ft tall. It would've been cool to see that one built and give Granville Square a more cohesive look - although it looks like it extends over Cordova, which would've been awful.

Note from the elevation the tallest (hotel/office) tower looks to be almost exactly twice as tall as Granville Square which would put in the 800-900 ft range. I can't help but wonder how different Downtown Vancouver would be if one taller tower had ever made it through back then...

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by phesto

Note from the elevation the tallest (hotel/office) tower looks to be almost exactly twice as tall as Granville Square which would put in the 800-900 ft range. I can't help but wonder how different Downtown Vancouver would be if one taller tower had ever made it through back then...

Yes, it is a shame that Vancouver did not build at least one beautiful, soaring, iconic tower before the politicians castrated the city with their viewcones. It could have served as a beacon of inspiration, of hope and of the possible until Vancouver got its balls back.

[invisibleairwaves]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Yes, it is a shame that Vancouver did not build at least one beautiful, soaring, iconic tower before the politicians castrated the city with their viewcones. It could have served as a beacon of inspiration, of hope and of the possible until Vancouver got its balls back.

I agree with you in principle, but if Granville Square is any indication of what a giant 60's tower in Vancouver might have looked like, maybe it's for the best. "Beautiful, soaring, iconic"? Ehhhhhh....

[phesto]

Came across this: http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...lks/w_gt18.htm

Didn't know this building was the first phase of Project 200. Makes sense though; I hate it!

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by phesto

Thanks for posting. I don't think I'd ever seen the elevations before.

It looks like the taller Granville Square (where PWC is now) would've been about 550 ft tall. It would've been cool to see that one built and give Granville Square a more cohesive look - although it looks like it extends over Cordova, which would've been awful.

Note from the elevation the tallest (hotel/office) tower looks to be almost exactly twice as tall as Granville Square which would put in the 800-900 ft range. I can't help but wonder how different Downtown Vancouver would be if one taller tower had ever made it through back then...

It was to be called Federal Square - so I think Sinclair Centre would have been demolished and Cordova closed.

Interesting bits:

- It mentions a commuter, inter-city, intra-urban and airport transportation hub (with future rapid transit). It would have been interesting to see if VIA would have chosen the CP Station over Pacific Central had Project 200 provided a new station.

- If the office core had a firm footing close to Gastown (rather than moving up to Burrard & Georgia), would Woodward's and Hastings Street have died and become the DTES as we know it? (Someone should do a thesis on that.)

- And look at all that residential space (likely rental) - well before the current trend in downtown living.

[whatnext]

Mercy, fetch the smelling salts, there would have been a freeway that deprived us of that swath of tired East Van homes! And cut us off from the beautiful industrial waterfront, (just ignore the fact wewould have gained a built over plaza to the waterfront) And a North Shore tunnel that would have allowed the restoration of Stanley Park.

Thanks to the small minds that defeated this.

[quobobo]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Mercy, fetch the smelling salts, there would have been a freeway that deprived us of that swath of tired East Van homes!

I'd love to do a compare and contrast between all your posts defending anyone who wants to keep condos out of their neighbourhood and all the ones excoriating people who don't want to live next to a freeway.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Mercy, fetch the smelling salts, there would have been a freeway that deprived us of that swath of tired East Van homes! And cut us off from the beautiful industrial waterfront, (just ignore the fact wewould have gained a built over plaza to the waterfront) And a North Shore tunnel that would have allowed the restoration of Stanley Park.

Thanks to the small minds that defeated this.

Meh, yeah!!! It's a good thing we have small, parochial-minded governments to keep things from progressing too fast, too much, as you say!

[flight_from_kamakura]

they did something like this in sf, the embarcadero complex off justin herman plaza. it's one of the most hateful parts of the city, something virtually everyone agrees is monstrously ugly and destructive to the urban fabric. it replaced gastown-like buildings too (though sf's we considerably taller and having greater mixity of uses). we all know the story of the freeway removal, i'm sure, but the embarcadero center is probably still a few decades away from demolition

as for the development over the tracks, that'll happen someday soon, maybe even by 2020, and it'll be a lot better than this shitty plan, with these shitty towers.

[officedweller]

Don't think it's Telus (those are on Seymour).
Used to be CN/CP Telecommunications, so whoever is the successor of those companies - i.e. Unitel -> AT&T -> MTS Allstream

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNCP_Telecommunications

Presumably there's still switching equipment in there.

[Pinion]

No we wouldn't. Chinatown/the east side near the inlet is still a dump. People just end up driving 80km/h down Powell/1st.

[nova9]

To track the history of the Chinese that came and then the Hong Kongers that followed then the Taiwanese and now the new Mainland Chinese would be a whole other beast. But largely, it wasn't so much the departure of the Chinese that were already there but the arrival of the new wave in the 80's/90's that took the activity of my community out of Chinatown and to the outlying areas of Vancouver of the suburbs.

But my point about Seattle or Boston was more about why do we always look back at these aborted freeways and pine for them when other cities are getting rid of them?

[Metro-One]

Because Seattle and Boston are not getting rid of their freeways, they are simply replacing their mistakes now with how how their freeways should have been built in the first place.

And this is the problem with Vancouver is their balc and white appraoch to highways.

Vancouver mindset all highways / expressways / connectors = the devil.

Highway lovers = all highways, any form, are our saviors!

The truth = the middle

Vancouver would actually benefit from 1 or 2 well implemented (in respect to the urban fabric) 4 lane tolled expressways. Such expressways though would have to built akin to a Japanese or European expressway with narrow shoulders (small footprint) and 60 to 70 km hour design speeds. None of these ridiculous American urban expressways with 100 km h speeds + with huge footprints.

That is why it is good project 200 and t he other 60's era freeways were not built in Vancouver, but building nothing road wise has only made things worse in the city.

I just completed a built environment GIS study (I will share the website on here soon) and the top 5 locations for serious injury vehicle accidents in the entire lower mainland are all along Granville, Knight street and Marine in Vancouver proper with 50kmh speed limits

This is because these streets, with the lack of true heavy road artery, have become de facto freeways / expressways. The traffic is still there, and it wont go away, especially the commercial and industrial traffic. It is actually madness for "local" residential roads. And putting up more traffic calming only makes these main routes worse through some of our findings.

Again, a north south 4 lane tolled expressway (free for commercial and industrial traffic) would do wonders for streets such as Granville, Knight, Cambie, etc...

Such an artery would not have to go downtown either, but maybe meet up around Main street and connect to a future North Shore Bridge crossing when the Lion's gate is retired.

[mezzanine]

I would agree with your sentiment, but with a few issues:

1) I agree with road pricing and other things like vehicle levies, but that'd be even a tough political sell. (see: ujjal dosanjh and christy clark).

2) an elevated north/south expressway? Let's not think of the blowback of trying to convince people of a new elevated expressway in vancouver. knight st at mid day weekdays is not that congested in my experience, except at the bridge, which road-pricing/tolls should resolve.


if anything, IMO the volume of downtown commerical traffic has been greatly reduced in part to traffic management at the port of vancouver. even though container traffic has greatly increased in the past 20 years, people haven't seen a difference as most of the flow is shunted off at the port road at mcGill. further improvements there, such as the stewart street overpass will greatly improve effeciancies with little impacts to local residents. you'd have a stronger argument to put expressways thru chinatown to downtown if the trailer ferry to the island still loaded up at coal harbour, but it doesn't now.

[Metro-One]

hence my proposal would be in conjunction with a new Burrard Inlet crossing to retire the Lion's Gate bridge from general traffic use.

Plus, such a roadway could be largely cut and covered in many areas, trenched in others, and maybe only have short elevated section leading up to the bridge over the port lands and maybe Hastings.

And again, such an urban expressway would have small shoulders, 60km hour speeds (therefore making a much smaller footprint) and can be better incorporated into the urban form akin to Japan and Europe, where, believe it or not, they are still building urban expressways in countless cities. Drove some beautiful new ones in Scandinavia, Germany and France this last summer.

It is just like transit. We need backbone routes (skytrain). If everything is the same non articulated bus you create a cluster fuck. And yes, many find the sky train guide ways ugly / poor urban environment (that is largely a lack of will to incorporate them over the past 25 years), but they are a necessary situation where one puts functionality before aesthetics.

I missed my ferry the other day because it took over an hour to travel from south Van to Horseshoe Bay. Not many other cities in the developed world have that terrible of a road network to reach key features (especially given that all the #99 cross region traffic has to funnel through Vancouver's local streets, through downtown and accross a 3 lane bridge

Having a free flow toll expressway as I explained earlier circumnavigate all this mess and crossing Burrard neat Main street would be a far superior urban realm.

again, I hate Vancouver's black and white approach to roads.

[officedweller]

Looks straight out of Logan's Run.