No, I’m not in Bologna or Surrey, as some speculated earlier. I’m in Los Angeles as I write, a city I have grown to be fascinated with because of the way it works and doesn’t in various ways.

Lots of things to write about, but I’ll start with my visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where current Vancouver Art Gallery director Kathleen Bartels used to work until she moved north to be with us in 2001. The MOCA’s central gallery is in what I guess is the civic cultural precinct of Los Angeles, though it’s not called that. It’s on a raised section of Grand Avenue near the financial district that is home to MOCA, the Frank Gehry-designed hall for the LA Philharmonic and, next to that, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that is home to LA’s opera company.

And what a empty place it was. We went on a beautiful Thursday afternoon and it was like being there on at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. A few people drifting along the street, a couple of handfuls of visitors at the MOCA — supposedly an architectural thing of wonder, but it looked like a bad 80s office complex to me — and a sense of being cut off from the city. (Too bad, because it is putting on a 30-year retrospective and there was wonderful stuff there: big groups of photos by Robert Frank and Nan Goldin, a whole room of Mark Rothkos, and more.)

It reminded me that every civic “precinct” I can think of has the same feel. The area around San Francisco’s city hall, also loaded with cultural buildings, is one of the few dead-feeling areas of lively San Francisco. Lincoln Centre in New York has never struck me as particularly friendly feeling. And it made me remember that cultural precincts were things that planners came up with in the 50s and 60s, when they imagined that you could remake whole areas of the city into single uses.

The cultural institutions I’ve always enjoyed the most are the ones that are part of an interesting street or plaza: the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal, the British Museum surrounded by Bloomsbury, the Beaubourg in the middle of a lively ancient part of Paris (even though they bulldozed part of it to build the modernist spectacle).

But I’d be happy to hear from some of the energetic researchers here if they know of a city that has a lively cultural precinct — that is, a whole district cordoned off for big institutions — because I can’t think of one among my admittedly limited list of cities I know. There’s something about the vast, windswept plazas those kinds of places seem to require that makes them feel not-human-friendly. As well, they’re often set in parts of the city that were being “rehabilitated” or something equally ominous and so they’re not surrounded by a lot of pedestrian-generating businesses.

Some people might think that that applies to all of the Los Angeles downtown, but that would be wrong. Just a few blocks to the south of the precinct is Los Angeles’ old downtown, which feels busy and lively in a 1950s way. The streets are lined with big jewelry stores and the old theatres and hundreds of little businesses. If you took pictures in black and white, the street scene would look like old photos of New York’s downtown in the 1950s where regular people shopped and worked.

The contrast between the two different parts of the downtown made me try to imagine how a new Vancouver Art Gallery could work at that east end of the downtown, removed from the busiest part of the downtown, and what it would need in it and around it so that it wouldn’t become a dead zone.

In case anyone missed it, the region’s politicians are buzzing with anxiety about what the province has in mind in terms of paying for the Evergreen Line.

It’s difficult to imagine what is getting cooked up in Victoria, given how many options the province has already rejected, so people have taken to guessing and worrying. Here’s the latest chapter in what appears to be the never-ending TransLink drama.

If you want to get a sense of what Vision Vancouver is evolving into, note that the party just chose Ian Baillie as its new executive director over, I’m told, Stephen Learey.

Baillie, one-time assistant to Liberal MP Sophia Leung, has worked on various federal Liberal Party campaigns and became the communications chair for the Liberal Party in B.C. last November.

Learey, who worked for years in the Downtown Eastside and with Jim Green, is more closely associated with the B.C. NDP.

Sorry for the skimpy posts this week, but I had some big projects on the go and was hunkered down working on them. However, I have transported myself to another city, so reports to come on that.

I wasn’t quite sure what the procedure would have to be on this, so I checked and, yes, the casino being planned for BC Place, even if it’s just transferring over from Edgewater, will have to be approved by council after public hearings and a rezoning.

It will be interesting to see how much public debate this generates. Councillor Raymond Louie, who participated in some long and impassioned debates over casinos and slots during his first term, when slots were approved at both Edgewater and Hastings Park, says he thinks the public mood has mellowed a little, now that people see that casinos haven’t brought many of the negative consequences that were feared.

One thing I am wondering about, then, as I read the stories about the “deal being inked” is how much of an expectation this sets up that the province will get to have whatever it wants there? Theoretically, the deal can’t be inked until the city okays the use on the site. Is this news trickling out a way of forcing the city’s hand — making them look like the bad guys if they turn it down?

For those who want a trip down memory lane, here’s a July 1994 story by Jeff Lee in the Vancouver Sun about the opposition to the old waterfront casino that Steve Wynn planned so ambitiously with the then-NDP government.

[Read more →]

I’ve been staying out of the whole complicated issue of what is behind the termination of Vancouver’s chief electrical officer Ark Tsisserev just before the Olympics. These kinds of stories, where neither side is willing to speak publicly or clearly about what is going on, are problematic to wade into, as there are often all kinds of issues that one side or the other can’t legally bring up. There have been other terminations of people at city hall under previous administrations that generated some rumblings, but they also went mostly uncovered because there was no real proof of what was going on — just a lot of friends of the fired saying it was a terrible thing, with some sinister motivation behind it, and an official denial from the city, along with vague rumours emanating from same about problems that might have led to the firing.

As I’ve said to others, these kinds of stories remind me of when media used to have a field day in the ’80s accusing the Ministry of Human Resources of all kinds of heartlessness every time someone on welfare said they’d been mistreated. That might have been the case or it might not have been, we never had any way of knowing, because the ministry was legally prohibited from giving details about a particular person’s case that might help explain what was going on.

What seems to be giving the current story legs — and enticing the larger media outlets to start covering it — is that Mayor Gregor Robertson doesn’t seem to be up to speed on what’s going on and is fumbling the ball as he goes out in public to give various explanations. Cover-up? Or just a guy who isn’t very good at giving the “official explanation” for something that can’t really be discussed publicly? I have absolutely no idea. Neither do most people, but that certainly isn’t keeping anyone from debating it. You can read all about it here, here and here.

And just to acknowledge the stinkbomb that my dear friend AT loves to throw over here on this issue: Yes, you’re the most amazing investigative journalist ever on the planet. I am unworthy and I don’t know how I’ve managed to remain employed in journalism for all these years.

In the always interesting case of the plans for Northeast False Creek — that chunk of territory between BC Place and Science World, owned by four heavy hitters in the development world — there has been persistent talk of the current casino at the Plaza of Nations moving over to a new complex attached to BC Place. Sounds like everyone in Victoria this week was talking about who the new casino partner will be, along with a few more details on what’s going to be there. The casino, to my knowledge, will soak up some of the high amount of commercial space that’s been designated for that area. It will also provide the bucks for fixing the BC Place roof.

Talking to all the parties involved in trying to resolve TransLink’s financial mess is starting to remind me of sitting at the dinner table every night with your about-to-divorce parents. They keep insisting everything is fine and they’re having long constructive talks about some differences they’ve been having. But then you overhear them exchanging bitter words about who’s going to pay for what when the split comes.

These days, that feeling is running high because of the continuing stand-off over who’s going to pay for the Evergreen Line in the region’s northeast sector. (I have to say, sometimes it makes me long for the days when the provincial government would just unilaterally pay for everything. Sure, they made all the decisions and not always in the best interests of the city. But we didn’t have to hear this back and forth about whose little pile of tax money should be depleted more to pay for these things.)

It’s taken me a while, but I think I’m finally beginning to grasp what the essential disagreement is: who is going to stick it to which taxpayers. (Here’s my MSM version of all this.)

Yes, all the money eventually comes from taxpayers in one way or another. But the local mayors are worried about hiking taxes throughout the region only to pay for the Evergreen Line, which will not be a pretty thing to explain in Delta or West Vancouver. (At least Burnaby, Vancouver and Richmond won’t gripe too much because they’ve had massive spending on transit in their areas.)

So they’d rather see the province put in the missintg $400 million or get it from something besides property taxes, which always creates ill will at the voting booth.

And the province doesn’t want to put in more than the $400 million it already has, because it’s not a pretty thing to explain in Nanaimo or Kamloops or Prince George that all your capital money went into transit projects for latte-swilling urbanites.

So each side is trying to make the case for why the other group should pay. Mayors would like it to be either everyone in the province or, at least, drivers in the Lower Mainland (through road tolls and vehicle levies) — which, in the latter case, is not the same as property-owning, tax-paying, voting residents. The province would like Lower Mainland residents to pay, which is why Transportation Minister Shirley Bond is sounding feistier with every interview and why she’s trotting out more arguments every time I talk to her about the low taxes that people in Metro Van pay.

The province is supposed to be making some kind of announcement by the end of the month. What I’ll be waiting to hear is — will it be something that will really resolve the issue of mega-transit-project funding forever? Or can we look forward to another five-year squabble over who pays for the Millennium Line extension in Vancouver as soon as the five-year squabble over the Evergreen Line ends.

I’ve been hearing about Tom Timm’s impending retirement for a year, one of the names that kept popping up on the list of “people most likely to get fed up and quit after Vision and Penny Ballem took over.” Then I also heard that he’d been saying even before that he was only going to stick around til the Olympics were over.

My crack investigative team is at work on other things right now, so I won’t get to the bottom of this immediately. But in the meantime, here’s the notice going out to city hall today about his retirement. And I’d like to note what a pleasure Tom was to deal with — always available, always calm, always giving you as much information as he possible could. Even union types appreciated his level-headedness and even-handedness during the six-month strike.

It sounds like city hall is going to do an international search for a replacement. It will be interesting to see who gets the job. Former head engineer Dave Rudberg did a great job of recruiting and promoting strong people in engineering and so there are several good internal candidates.

From: Ballem, Penny
To: [Deleted]
Sent: Fri Mar 12 15:06:08 2010
Subject: retirement
Having honored his commitment to guide Engineering through the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Tom Timm, our much beloved City  Engineer, will be retiring at the end of March 2010.
Tom has been with the City since 1978. He has served in many roles over the years – mostly in engineering where he became an assistant city engineer in 1988, the deputy city engineer about 10 years later in 1999 and finally the city engineer and general manager of engineering in 2004. Some of you might have forgotten that he also served as the city building inspector for 2 years in the late 1990’s. Tom has led numerous initiatives throughout his many years of service, and he leaves a number of important legacies behind, including many successes during the  2010 Games. We will all miss Tom’s leadership, his wry sense of humour and his passion for the great Canadian Game.
The City will be undertaking a broad search process for Tom’s replacement. I have asked Peter Judd, Deputy City Engineer, to assume responsibility for Engineering during this process. I know you will all join me in wishing Tom the very best in his retirement. As is the custom in Engineering, there will be a raucous celebration of his departure at a time and place to be decided!
Penny Ballem

The city just sent out a memo saying it has added more to its list of “open” data sources available to the geek-prone public. Here’s the site for what’s available: http://data.vancouver.ca/