Canadian Demolitions

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

^Yes, that was almost always the case: the building looked grimy and decayed from years of negligence. Even today, great buildings come down because they're missing a cornice or the porch has been sawed off or decorative window arches were long since replaced. That's why I find slathering EIFS on historic buildings to be so offensive. It's not just that it makes the building look like shit today, it's because the material gathers dirt and grime very easily while hiding any semblance of architectural flourish. It'll look really bad in 30 years, and it'll persuade many people to just tear the buildings down rather than to spend the time and money exposing the original brick and renovating it to its original glory.

There won't be anything left to restore after 30 years. People are throwing up EIFS usually because the brick facade is in poor condition already.

We have can full circle on appreciating pre war architecture though; doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It's now the buildings that replaced the pre war build in the 1960s that is now seen wholly as disposable. We haven't really growing at understanding architecture which is unfortunate considering how much easily it is to access information compared to that generation.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

We have can full circle on appreciating pre war architecture though; doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It's now the buildings that replaced the pre war build in the 1960s that is now seen wholly as disposable. We haven't really growing at understanding architecture which is unfortunate considering how much easily it is to access information compared to that generation.

In 20 or 30 years I think people are really going to regret all of the mid-20th century architecture that has been torn down in the past couple of decades. It's too bad that demolition controls and heritage preservation measures in Canada are, on the whole, so unsophisticated. If you look at, say, listed buildings in the UK and their heritage protections and funding you will see that Canadian cities are far behind. Plenty of Canadian buildings that nobody cares about here would get automatic protection in the UK.

Up until recently the only protection registered heritage buildings got in Halifax was that they couldn't be demolished for 3 years after applying for a permit. I think the rules in Ontario used to be similar but I'm not sure what they are like now. Heritage registration in Nova Scotia is still only done by owners and the scoring system ensures that hardly anything from the mid-20th century can qualify. Most of the time, when a landmark building from the 1950's is torn down, it is not even reported on as a potential heritage building by the media (the stories are along the lines of "run-down old building to be replaced by shiny new building"). Halifax has buildings like the Morris House from circa 1760 which was lived in by an important historical figure, was never registered as a heritage building, and was only saved from demolition at the last minute when a heritage group came up with the money to move it to another site.

Another angle to this that I find sad is that there is so much attention now being given to LEED certification and the like, but then there is hardly any awareness of how environmentally unfriendly it is to demolish and rebuilt buildings every 30 years instead of properly maintaining them. Will those LEED buildings be as environmentally-friendly as advertised if they also only last 30 years?

Affordable housing is somewhat similar. People usually talk about it in terms of building new units, but the biggest source of affordable housing in most Canadian cities is older buildings. Politically it may be better to do a photo shoot in front of a shiny new building than it is to bump up some maintenance and retrofitting budgets.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Vancouver may soon see its biggest demolition ever if the surprise plan to demolish the 380 feet and 40 floors tall Empire Landmark Hotel (built in 1973) gets the go-ahead. While the tower could use some exterior renovation it should still not be allowed to be demolished as the plan calls for replacing it with two shorter and complete mediocre condo towers.

The tower has one of Vancouver's only two revolving restaurants at its top.

Would be a shame if they allow this. That's one of the best slab buildings in the country!

So sleek:



So majestic:



It's been 3 years today since I first landed in Vancouver. Haven't been on a vacation since.

[Black Star]

^^^ Best shot on SSP today.

Cool....

[lio45]

Originally Posted by vid

Even assuming this building has zero architectural value, there has GOT to be a myriad of much much cheaper options to free up the same amount of land in the immediate neighborhood than to buy this thing and destroy it!!

The tower pictured above being "sold for land value only" is mind-blowing -- it's the tallest thing in the picture!!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

Even assuming this building has zero architectural value, there has GOT to be a myriad of much much cheaper options to free up the same amount of land in the immediate neighborhood than to buy this thing and destroy it!!

The tower pictured above being "sold for land value only" is mind-blowing -- it's the tallest thing in the picture!!

I wonder why this happens. I have some theories or related observations.

If you walk around Vancouver's West End, you'll see a lot of smaller buildings which mostly have little or no historic value. Some of them are affordable housing (some of these are even detached houses which I guess need to stay there forever because tearing down any affordable housing is bad). Others just happen to fall in areas with very low height limits designed to prevent sunlight on Robson Street from being blocked, etc. Planning orthodoxy in Vancouver demands that basically every part of town be "liveable" in the small town sense.

There also seem to be at least two major tracks for development. There are the projects for fairly local, average people, and then there are the shiny Trump Tower (since renamed) type projects that seem to be designed mostly for international real estate buyers. Apparently the primary attribute of those projects is that they must be very shiny and high-end-looking; they don't necessarily need to function efficiently as usable space. A do-over of a 1970's slab would not cut it.

With these factors I can more or less see why it makes economic sense to tear down this building. Most areas, even downtown, are off the table for large-scale highrise development, and a brand new tower with eye-catching design is required to attract top dollar from rich real estate buyers who have few practical concerns when it comes to getting value for dollar.

[GeneralLeeTPHLS]

This is the only time I ever have and ever will appreciate an LCBO, for that looked like a sweet design for choosing whatever booze you wanted.
[IMG]D Havis resi (Pinkerton Day) by Joshua Kennington Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

I wonder why this happens. I have some theories or related observations.

If you walk around Vancouver's West End, you'll see a lot of smaller buildings which mostly have little or no historic value. Some of them are affordable housing (some of these are even detached houses which I guess need to stay there forever because tearing down any affordable housing is bad). Others just happen to fall in areas with very low height limits designed to prevent sunlight on Robson Street from being blocked, etc. Planning orthodoxy in Vancouver demands that basically every part of town be "liveable" in the small town sense.

There also seem to be at least two major tracks for development. There are the projects for fairly local, average people, and then there are the shiny Trump Tower (since renamed) type projects that seem to be designed mostly for international real estate buyers. Apparently the primary attribute of those projects is that they must be very shiny and high-end-looking; they don't necessarily need to function efficiently as usable space. A do-over of a 1970's slab would not cut it.

With these factors I can more or less see why it makes economic sense to tear down this building. Most areas, even downtown, are off the table for large-scale highrise development, and a brand new tower with eye-catching design is required to attract top dollar from rich real estate buyers who have few practical concerns when it comes to getting value for dollar.

But surely the zoning that allows this height isn't limited to the very lot where this building stands?!?

Imagine the following insanity: there's a city with a few skyscrapers, who are already there and are a few decades old; residents in general are NIMBYs and love to have the sun unblocked so the height limits are low everywhere; the latest revisions of the zoning only allow skyscrapers where there currently are skyscrapers -- i.e. the municipal policymakers chose to make these lots compliant by bending the zoning to what was already there -- but everywhere else, which is currently low-rise, is zoned for low-rise.

What will the result of this be? You guessed it: to build a new skyscraper in this city, you absolutely have to acquire one of the existing ones, and demolish it to build the other in its stead; anything else is off the table.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by lio45

Even assuming this building has zero architectural value, there has GOT to be a myriad of much much cheaper options to free up the same amount of land in the immediate neighborhood than to buy this thing and destroy it!!

The tower pictured above being "sold for land value only" is mind-blowing -- it's the tallest thing in the picture!!

Yeah - based on the proposal that was posted above for the site nothing really seems to add up. I can't fathom how buying that lot and tower, demolishing it then building two shorter condos works out financially. I mean, unless the building has some structural issues or something.

[WhipperSnapper]

It's a 1970s hotel with low ceiling heights and an odd floor plan. I can see a reason to replace it with two towers with 300 suites which is why planning needs to serious consider the heritage value here. There are other easier sites to develop however, they own this one. Happens everywhere where large buildings are demo'd beside lowrises or parking lots. It's a large site too. To assemble one like this would take some time.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

But surely the zoning that allows this height isn't limited to the very lot where this building stands?!?

The building heights in downtown Vancouver are often site-specific, e.g.: http://www.straight.com/article-3674...ilding-heights

Here's a map of the view cones (from 2009):


Original thread: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/arch.../t-167028.html

Frankly I find these pretty silly since in some cases they mean trading off a huge amount of downtown density to preserve one of many mountain views in a lower density residential neighbourhood. These aren't all in major city parks and the like. And what about the new views that would be created in the highrises, or the views of the city that would be more interesting with more construction?

Imagine the following insanity: there's a city with a few skyscrapers, who are already there and are a few decades old; residents in general are NIMBYs and love to have the sun unblocked so the height limits are low everywhere; the latest revisions of the zoning only allow skyscrapers where there currently are skyscrapers -- i.e. the municipal policymakers chose to make these lots compliant by bending the zoning to what was already there -- but everywhere else, which is currently low-rise, is zoned for low-rise.

What will the result of this be? You guessed it: to build a new skyscraper in this city, you absolutely have to acquire one of the existing ones, and demolish it to build the other in its stead; anything else is off the table.

I think this is actually pretty common now. Some cities also "grandfather" the existing buildings but won't give out building permits for buildings of equal size. This kind of thing is no doubt part of the reason why cities like San Francisco have become so expensive. It's hard to build much of anything there. Add in extremely tortuous approval processes (even for tiny modifications to buildings) and rent controls and it's a recipe for a super-expensive city full of run-down buildings.

[WhipperSnapper]

Every city is bound to have a few buildings that wouldn't be allowed if proposed today.

[BobLoblawsLawBlog]

Wtf. Why would they demolish that building to build SMALLER towers. There's an empty lot right across the street they can use if they need to build something so badly.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Every city is bound to have a few buildings that wouldn't be allowed if proposed today.

This sounds reasonable but if you look at it another way, the scale of new housing construction in West Coast cities hasn't necessarily increased a lot since the 1970's, but they have grown a lot since that time. If you have a growing city or a city where lots of people live and you don't allow housing construction to scale up, prices will shoot through the roof.

Thankfully Vancouver was never as bad in this area as San Francisco or as bad as LA has gotten in recent years. But I would still say that it is less development-friendly than most other Canadian cities, even in the face of enormous development pressure.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

This sounds reasonable but if you look at it another way, the scale of new housing construction in West Coast cities hasn't necessarily increased a lot since the 1970's, but they have grown a lot since that time. If you have a growing city or a city where lots of people live and you don't allow housing construction to scale up, prices will shoot through the roof.

Thankfully Vancouver was never as bad in this area as San Francisco or as bad as LA has gotten in recent years. But I would still say that it is less development-friendly than most other Canadian cities, even in the face of enormous development pressure.

I support the view cone in the downtown area, even though I think the city could be a hell of a lot denser than it is now. The mountain views aren't worth sacrificing for density.

Ideally, we should have torn down almost all of the SFH districts south of 16th avenue and replaced them, over time, with something resembling Fairview Slopes in density and design. Contrary to, say, flattening Toronto's now million dollar Bay and Gable neighbourhoods and replacing them with stacked townhomes, Vancouver would not have suffered a loss of architecture or urban vitality. We ended up disposing of those neighbourhoods, anyway, with monster homes.

[Klazu]

Vancouver's Downtown is not dense, you say?

[lio45]

So these are the mountain views that are supposed to be so precious that new buildings aren't allowed to block them? Wow. (Also, better find a way to make fog illegal...)

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by lio45

So these are the mountain views that are supposed to be so precious that new buildings aren't allowed to block them? Wow.

Come on, lio. I'm not exactly the most fervid Vancouverite but I will acknowledge that Vancouver's mountain-against-the-sea backdrop is pretty special among cities of this size.

So, yeah, my ability to see the snow-covered peak of Grouse from street level somewhere south of Broadway trumps some real estate developer's wet dream of selling a 80th floor penthouse to some Chinese money launderer.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Come on, lio. I'm not exactly the most fervid, homeboy Vancouverite but I will acknowledge that Vancouver's mountain-against-the-sea backdrop is pretty special among cities of this size.

So, yeah, my ability to see the snow-covered peak of Grouse from street level somewhere south of Broadway trumps some real estate developer's wet dream of selling a 80th floor penthouse to some Chinese money launderer.

We'll definitely have to agree to disagree (and it's okay, it's just opinions). IMO there's no need to be able to see mountains from the middle of the city. It's certainly useful to have mountains nearby (for hiking, skiing, etc.) but from an urban point of view I'd rather have more density than views, no question.

Now, of course, what's really strange here is that as you point out, Vancouver is an unique case where "more density" doesn't actually always mean more density; it can just mean "more empty condos sold to Chinese money launderers" with no increase in density.

All things considered though, in the real world there probably will always be a link between the number of units and density, if only because new units will help keep the prices in check.

[lio45]

On that topic, out of curiosity, do Vancouverites in general welcome the demolition of the Empire Landmark Hotel due to the fact that its disappearance will create new view lines?