Vancouver is the best of cities for artists, with a thriving arts scene that combines the world-famous (Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Stan Douglas), the new-pop (New Pornographers, Destroyer, and Said the Whale), the experimental (Boca del Lupo, Ballet BC recently).
And it’s the worst of cities for artists trying to find spaces to actually live, work, rehearse and perform. Artists, pushed here and there starting in the post-Expo years, have been dickering with the city ever since, trying to find nooks and crannies where they can hang on.
City planners played with the idea of allowing artist live/work spaces to be built on the edges of industrial land near Main and Great Northern Way in the late 80s. The result was 1,900 units, but with no guarantee that actual artists are living in them.
City staff have come out with a report that will be debated Thursday, which includes a suggestion that artists be allowed to operate studios on industrial land. (Though no detailed strategies on how to get builders to add that kind of studio space to new buildings.)
Other efforts are in there, though I, like artists who’ve looked at the report, had a hard time figuring out what might actually get done and produce spaces within the next three years. Esther Rausenberg noted that the city, as usual, has declined to define who is an artist, meaning that whatever is done for artists will be hard to enforce.
In the meantime, as I researched this story, I tracked down a rumour I’d heard that a rather well-known building in the block opposite Woodward’s — a place that had provided space for about 20 artists — had been shut down by the city.
My story on all this is in the Globe tomorrow. You can read more here from the man who was renting the building and then sub-leasing it to various artists, Jim Carrico.
In the meantime, Councillor Heather Deal checked on this after my deadline and said the city, which has been pushing the owner to do basic improvements for months, is planning to go in and do them itself and bill the owner. According to her, city inspectors had been doing everything they could to try to keep artists in the building, without utterly ignoring the safety issues.
However, it’s hard for me to understand what was achieved by issuing an order to vacate, since that prompted anyone with valuable equipment in the building to leave immediately. It appears to have had no impact on the owner.
The latest update I had from Jim Carrico was that the owner was going to change locks today and that he was showing the building to Steven Lippman, who has been renovating/gentrifying other buildings on the same block, as well as the American Hotel.
All in all, a rather discouraging situation. Interestingly, I talked to one person who is developing artists spaces elsewhere in the Downtown Eastside and someone who bought a space. Neither wanted to talk on the record about it. Why? Because they aren’t sure that they are legally allowed to have artists’ spaces where they are, according to city bylaws, and so they don’t want to go public. That’s how uncertain the situation is.
Full disclosure: My son did live in the Red Gate building for about a year, though hasn’t for two years, and I don’t know anyone who currently does. I do like the New Pornographers and have been to several of their concerts.
14 responses so far ↓
1 Bill Smolick // Oct 4, 2011 at 9:47 pm
WTF? Rodney Graham is world famous and the New pornographers are new pop? Did I miss something…was that Rodney playing to a crowd of thousands at Stanley Park for the Vancouver 125 celebration?
2 Bobbie Bees // Oct 4, 2011 at 10:39 pm
On this I wish the city would change the by-law to allow ‘artist-loft’ type spaces. Officially.
However, I can agree with the city shutting the spaces down in the meantime.
If there was a fire in one of these places, who’d be liable, especially if the city was aware of the existence?
I was the chief engineer for a property management company that operated four heritage buildings.
When I took over in my newly created position, it quickly became apparent that we’d no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the number of tenants that we had who actually lived in the buildings full time. The fire by-law dosen’t allow it, the building by-lay doesn’t allow it, the zoning by-law doesn’t allow it and our insurance company basically said that we’d be on our own if one of these live in tenants died during a fire or other event as our general liability insurance wouldn’t cover it, and if a judge did make an order for the insurance to pay, they’d come right back at us for full reimbursement plus costs.
Mixed residential / light industrial is probably one of the hardest zonings save for institutional to pull off. Fire code issues, worksafe issues, workplace hazard issues, fume extraction.
I really wish the city can pull something like this off, but there are some many different issues at play that it may be easier said than done.
3 Bill McCreery // Oct 4, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience Bobbie. I had some similar experiences on Granville Island in the 70s. We didn’t have sleep-overs, but we did have City staff who were ‘helpful’. Matters of this sort are more challenging today as you have illustrated, but if there’s a will there’s a way. It sounds like Cllr. Deal has good intentions, but you need more than that to overcome the many roadblocks.
One of the priorities of an NPA Council will be to simplify and streamline the approval processes generally. One of the most challenging will be this subject area. I look forward to meeting that challenge. Vancouver’s artists are critical to defining who we are as a place. They must be supported.
4 Tiktaalik // Oct 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
Heather Deal’s side of the story doesn’t really match Carrico’s at all. Why the rush? What about the “Interm Program” that Carrico mentions, which would give them time so long as they showed that they were working to address issues. It seems that this was designed for this exact situation. Did city officials forget this existed?
Vision and the city have been lousy on the cultural space file. This recent event has got to make one question how serious they are about addressing the core problems.
5 Michelle // Oct 5, 2011 at 10:13 am
Bill #3
Heather Deal does not have good intentions. Never did, never will. Election time is close. She needs a cause, and she needs the job. There are also openings waiting for her @ McDeals, intern positions of course. We live in a democracy, right? Cubed!
6 jesse // Oct 5, 2011 at 10:43 am
Hey dumb question: why not rent some space in Richmond or Surrey? Or do we need to force the esteemed and cultured folks in Vancouver to cough up money for the arts now? Whither benefactors?
Come on, rich people. Your City needs you now more than ever.
7 Roger Kemble // Oct 5, 2011 at 11:00 am
Bill @ #3
“Vancouver’s artists are critical to defining who we are as a place. They must be supported.”
Absolutely, and if you can extend that sense of place to Nanaimo there may be help.
A couple of years ago I completed a 65 unit condo here in downtown that includes six artists’ live works. Believe it or not they have remained unoccupied ever since. Being close to VIU we thought they’d be hot property.
My family owns them: the design architect was my son-in-law. We may be able to do a deal.
On a relevant topic, when I worked in the belly-of-the-beast (Provincial DPW, Victoria) I would often spend my lunch hour watching Nakapenkim Chief Mungo Martin create his wonders in Thunderbird Park . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_Martin
. . . that would have been the early 1950’s.
Talking of support for artists, without it we wouldn’t have Wawadit’la, also known as Mungo Martin House, a Kwakwaka’wakw “big house” built by the Chief 1953 . . . and much, much more.
8 paul // Oct 5, 2011 at 11:11 am
there’s plenty of artist space in industrial buildings – as to the legality of it, i’m not sure.
9 Morry // Oct 5, 2011 at 3:55 pm
@Roger. Are you really a developer? If so you need a better looking new website.
10 Erin Green // Oct 5, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Unfortunately the legality surrounding artists spaces is so convoluted that it actually works against the regulations put in place to save people from themselves and the terribly maintained buildings in which artists work and entertain in.
Artists in these spaces hide things from inspectors, inspectors don’t know what the place is used for so it doesn’t get shut down. This is great for the artists initially, but potentially deadly. The only places available to artists are the old warehouses with bare wires, ceilings that cave in, or only have one entrance/escape the size of a closet door.
The issue here is not just about supporting artists rather than underhandedly manipulating them to gentrify neighbourhoods and then to kick them out (as is Red Gate scenario), but equally about public safety.
You should not be allowed to have shows in fish factory basements with one fire escape, and artists should not be forced to perform in these spaces; artists should keep in mind the risks put in place by entertaining large crowds in potentially deadly situations. Conversely, regulators and City Hall need to do something about accommodating artists in a way that does not contradict laws put in place for the sake of public safety.
There was an event this past year in a Vancouver art space where I witnessed a potentially disastrous situation that could have seen over a hundred people dead. Of course, no one has heard about it. If people did, then even more of our artist spaces and performance spaces would have been shut down… This sucks for everyone.
11 Roger Kemble // Oct 5, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Morry 2 #9
I am an architect . . .
Thanqu for the advice.
I am quite happy with the numerous web pages I mount as they become germane to the topic under discussion . . .
12 Roger Kemble // Oct 6, 2011 at 7:52 am
Oh and BTW Morry who are you?
You come across to me as a looser, uninteresting, a complete bore!
Suck it up.
13 Stephanie // Oct 7, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I really have to wonder how this went down. Red Gate had been working with the city for a long time doing work to address safety concerns, the city keeps moving the goalposts, Red Gate keeps complying…and then out of nowhere comes a demand for a development and building permit application. And whaddaya know, Steven Lippman’s on site in short order, telling Red Gate the locks will be changed tomorrow and their remaining belongings will be thrown into the street.
Last night there was a group of young women wearing day-glo yellow shirts with TEAM VINYL in big black lettering on the back, coaxing men to the new club in Lippman’s latest acquisition (Vinyl at the Lotus Hotel) for their post-Canucks game drinking needs. I shudder to think what kind of Donnelly-light horror is going to end up at Red Gate…
14 Bill Lee // Oct 10, 2011 at 6:08 pm
And near Red Gate, yet another 115-seat restaurant from The Diamond’s John Pape for the trust fund bohos slumming on the Eastside at 120 West Hastings.
That will drive working artists out.
On the southern front, The Habit Lounge is opening an 85-seat Southeast Asian at Main and Union.
Remember that the 1963 “October Show” was held in the Yaletown area warehouses with outside artists lofts and studies as a protest against exclusion in the first VAG showing in the then new Courthouse move. Soon the artists were being hunted down and moved out as they developed cheap land for idiots.
Arts funding doesn’t show diversity : http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2016460878.html
Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging art groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report being released Monday… [ more ]