This just out from the VAG. I’m told by locals that the VAG discouraged anyone local from applying by themselves and instead encouraged them to partner up with an international firm.

Vancouver, BC — January 9, 2014 — The Vancouver Art Gallery has short-listed five architectural firms as finalists for the design of its new home in downtown Vancouver. Selected from a pool of 75 firms representing 16 countries, the finalists include Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York), Herzog & de Meuron (Basel), KPMB Architects (Toronto), SANAA (Tokyo), and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York).

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I went to a meeting organized by the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant just before Christmas to talk about issues related to the transitional housing complex that’s about to be opened at the old Biltmore hotel, Kingsway and 12th in Mount Pleasant.

Unlike a city-roganized meeting a couple of weeks earlier, concerning the transitional housing that will be going into the old Ramada on East Hastings, this one didn’t turn into a near riot — perhaps because it wasn’t organized by the city but also perhaps because a group of people who support this kind of housing in the neighbourhood made an effort to turn out.

Which makes me wonder how the city meetings (tonight and Jan. 11) will go — will that same group turn up? And what position will the people who are active in RAMP take on this?

One thing I noticed in the meeting is that the RAMP people who were there — Lewis Villegas, Randy Chatterjee and Ray Tomlin — clearly wanted to organize something that would alert people to the lack of consultation the city has done so far. But all of these guys are socially progressive or liberal or whatever you want to call it. So when a few people at the meeting started worrying aloud that their property values would go down or their security would be compromised or how poor people have it easy because they get everything for free — well, that didn’t go over so well.

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I still run into people who assume that Vancouver condos are all just a speculative game being played by offshore investors. Perhaps it still is, but it’s a long game these days.

As recent B.C. Assessment Authority numbers showed, as they issued their 2014 assessments, condos are by and large not appreciating and values are, in fact, declining in many areas. Did a short story on this here.

I wrote a story before Christmas about some of the dissent going on within COPE. But I have to say, my story was very milquetoast compared to this story reported by Carlito Pablo at the Georgia Straight. It reads like something taken directly from the pages of the Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

I’ve been wanting to do a feature for 20 years on this strange chunk of the city known as the Tea Swamp, ever since I first started the city beat. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to photograph and write about the crazy house (on Prince Edward, on the north side of the lane between 16th and 17th) that was the most tilted over of the lot in the Tea Swamp — it was torn down about five years ago and the man I quote in this story built something new on the lot. But I did manage to write about it at last this year, here.

But there are still more than a few wonky palaces and bungalows in this funny little area, which became a bog thanks to the the industrious beavers of hundreds of years ago. A couple of pieces of history that Bruce Macdonald related as well, which I didn’t have room for in the print edition:

– Apparently the family of Gerry McGeer, Vancouver’ s most famous mayor (tore out the city’s slot machines, did you know?) homesteaded in the area when the bog was still very much a bog. Bruce tells me that Gerry’s sister told him that, when she used to walk to school (I’d presume at the lovely old Mount Pleasant school that sits where the Kingsgate Mall is now), she would see beavers scurrying around.

– The last of the beavers was seen, according to legend, in the hats of a couple of sisters whose wealthy father had built a mansion on top of the Fraser Street hill overlooking the bog.

While I was scouring the Internet for history, I also found a re-creation that someone did of what Vancouver would have looked like before we all arrived and started cutting down the streets.  Here it is.

You can also read some of the observations by pioneers here and here about going hunting in the swamp, the horrors of travelling the North Arm Road (Fraser Street, which apparently consisted of logs placed on the muck, which were somewhat unstable) and more. Just do Control F and search for swamp to find all the relevant bits of info in the documents. (You’ll also discover references to the other swamps in Vancouver.)

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Yes, sorry, I’ve been slacking off over the Christmas holidays. But the rumballs are all gone — can’t have those for breakfast any more — and it’s time to begin tackling 2014.

To get all of you warmed up, as you’re slowly dragging your butts back into work, I’ll post a couple of the features I did over Christmas.

This first one is about the Canada Post tunnel that winds it way underneath the downtown streets, unbeknownst to many of you. It is, apparently, about to be filled in because, since Canada Post is selling its building to the B.C. pension func bcIMC, it is legally obligated to do whatever the city wishes in order to get out of its 100-year lease. And the city is saying the tunnel is too expensive to maintain and too small and impractical to do anything useful with.

I was alerted to the story by someone who knew that Richard Shannon, an interesting and Rube Goldberg-sounding guy with a specialization in developing methods for growing food in harsh climates, was trying to convince the city to save it. That led me down a long and winding path to sub-topics like growing food with artificial light, how to reinforce old concrete with new spray-on polymers and other bits of technological invention that were new to me.

Apparently Richard, and others who called, was unsuccessful in convincing anyone at the city of the brilliance of his ideas on how to salvage the tunnel and use it. But it sounds like all his calling did have one impact. When I asked Mayor Gregor Robertson  (who got to walk the tunnel its full distance from the post office to the waterfront train station and back, rats, when I and a photographer from the Globe had been turned down repeatedly) what was going to happen, he said that, although it will be filled in, the city wants the fill to be “as green as possible” — i.e. not the Portland cement that had originally been in the works.

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One of the things that is always startling about Vancouver is — in a place with spectacular natural beauty — it has some of the weirdest, tackiest, most awful single-family housing around.

And it’s not even one kind of awful. We have endless varieties these days. The modest World War 2 bungalow renovated with a river-rock facade. Pink nondescript boxes. Vancouver Specials, versions 1.0 through to 7.8. Fake heritage fronts glued on to the front of giant boxes. Gaudy palaces that look like someone went wild at the Home Depot frosted-glass sell-off.

But, in my peregrinations around town the last couple of years, I started to see something different: very modern houses — concrete, cedar, aluminum, glass, with flat rooves, clean geometric lines.

Recently, I got a chance to go door-knocking (that is almost literally how I found the people in this story, as it’s not something a marketing agency is involved in) and find out what’s going on.

My story here (and below). Hope many of you can get to the link, as the pictures on the site were even better than in the paper.

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And this is how people in Vancouver (as opposed to everywhere else in the country) viewed the Supreme Court ruling on sex work.

A year ago, I was visiting brothels, madams, and feminist advocacy groups all along Hastings Street to talk to women about the benefits and dangers of doing sex work in the city.

A reminder, in light of today’s Supreme Court ruling, of the situation then.

In case anyone was wondering, this just out:

Statement from the Mayor on relocation of casino

I have been very clear that I am opposed to any expansion of gambling in the City of Vancouver. Today’s decision by the Development Permit Board ensures that the proponent will have to align operations with the concerns raised in the recent Provincial Health Officer’s Report on Gambling.

Before a new casino can begin construction, the proponents have to come back with a plan that addresses the health concerns raised by Dr. Perry Kendall. If they don’t, it cannot proceed.

I’m pleased to see the DP Board direction to the applicant to develop a management plan that will address Dr. Kendall’s recommendations, including issues such as access to alcohol, the availability and number of ATMs at the casino, and the need for a public health strategy to minimize risk and harm.

These steps go far beyond anything previously mandated by the city when it comes to gaming and public health.

Even with these conditions to the development permit, I’ve heard clear concerns from the community about the potential for future councils to expand gambling.

Given these public concerns, many of which were raised at today’s Development Permit Board meeting, I will ask City staff to identify further measures to prevent any expansion of gambling in the future on this site, including  amendments to by-laws or the Northeast False Creek Official Development Plan that will restrict the allowable casino floor space to the existing proposal.