The province is hoping to get through the city’s rezoning process, complete with public hearings, for the downtown casino in the next eight months so that Paragon can start digging and, soon after, start paying its lease to the province to help pay for the roof.
But city types are already sending warning shots across the bow that they’re not just going to approve any old thing. More fun for all of us to watch. The last time we went through this was with the convention centre addition, which the province also took through the city’s design process. That was not a happy time, with many in the city feeling that they were making the best of a bad and unfortunate inevitability.
We’ll see how this one goes. In the meantime, I can’t help but add my two cents’ worth (two cents that I’ll never be spending on slots, no matter what, because the one and only time I tried using a slot machine on a one-day visit to Las Vegas, I was too dense to figure out how to work the machine). Isn’t it kind of strange that Vancouver would have a big casino downtown? That’s usually something that you see in loser, rust-belt cities that can’t figure out what else to do with their depopulated downtowns.
Again, I appeal to people with more time on their hands to do research than I currently have. Is there another healthy Vancouver-like city that has a big-butt casino in the middle of its downtown?
Though I must add here that when I talked to Pavco chair David Podmore, he made this whole megaplex sound more like a second convention centre/concert venue in the city than a casino resort. He says the new arrangement, with the new roof, will allow about 40 more nights of BC Place use during the summer, likely primarily for entertainment. As well, he says it will enable Vancouver to bring in the kinds of conventions that require seating for 50,000 (the Lions, Rotary or AA were examples he cited).
Good or bad, hmmm.
21 responses so far ↓
1 Urbanismo // Mar 30, 2010 at 8:30 am
“A green urban casino” ! God help us! They really do take us for sucker!
“But city types are already sending warning shots across the bow that they’re not just going to approve any old thing.”
The city is smitten with the Stockholm disease: it’ll go for anything . . . you know it . . . I know it!
This is becoming humiliating!
2 Greg // Mar 30, 2010 at 8:44 am
Melbourne Australia has a Casino right in the heart of its downtown which is probably the model upon which the BC Government is hoping for this one.
It is huge, central to downtown, fairly walkable, and has a number of clubs, restaurants, and venues. I spent a few days in and around there when I was in Melbourne, and it wasn’t too bad.
I’m hoping that they work withthe City for design purposes, so that the end result is at least architecturally significant and beautiful.
3 Brenton // Mar 30, 2010 at 9:59 am
“A green urban casino” ! God help us! They really do take us for sucker!
Care to explain? Is the implication that one can’t build a casino using green building practices? Because I’m pretty sure it would be fairly easy to do. Or is the implication that they would say they were going to but wouldn’t actually do it?
Maybe it’s just the exclamation marks that are confusing me.
4 Mick // Mar 30, 2010 at 10:02 am
Melbourne’s Crown Casino. Much bigger than anything planned for the BC Place site, right on the river, and the locals seem to like it.
5 Urbanismo // Mar 30, 2010 at 10:20 am
@ Brenton thanqu for your response . . . the explanation marks are the point!!!!!!!!
I’ll be delighted to explain!!!!!!!
Green of course is a euphemism for “sustainable”!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, ENTROPY states: nothing is permanent, everything decays . . . even casinos!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Green” is usually the architectural profession’s way of marketing itself and the profession is, or should be, aware of that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanqu again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6 Joe Just Joe // Mar 30, 2010 at 11:04 am
What’s the issue with a “green casino”. We will be getting this casino regardless by the sounds of it, so why not try to demand the most of it. There is definate room for improvement on the current proposal. Ensuring the casino obtains Leed Platnium for instance won’t make the situation any worse. Let Greenpeace set up a poker table while we’re at it so that industry can play for carbon credits and the tables take goes to save the seagulls that used to live in the parkade. 🙂
7 Sean Bickerton // Mar 30, 2010 at 11:42 am
The Province’s desire to push this project through offers an opportunity to see Creekside Park finally built after two decades of promises.
As part of the deal they’ve made, the Province will remediate contaminated soils on the casino property. If they agreed to also remediate the soils under Concord’s Lot 6C at the same time – they’re contractually obligated to – that would free up Lot 9 for immediate construction of Creekside Park. That would be a win-win for the entire city.
But no Creekside Park? No Casino!
8 JP Ratelle // Mar 30, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Any building envelope expert will tell you that green roofs (see the Convention Centre) in a temperate rain forest may just be the stupidest idea ever imagined or implemented in building construction. The cost for maintenance and repair on said roofs are extremely costly and completely unnecessary.
As for other green building initiatives, all anyone has to do is check out the Olympic Village development which had restoration companies on retainer during the games.
Sure, let’s do more of this crap using the taxpayer dime, all so that Gregor, his Hollyhock buddies, and those other misguided souls that don’t have a clue about building maintenance can feel good about their faux-world changing initiatives.
For once I’d like to see the people that design the buildings, and then those who build them and sell them off to unsuspected consumers, be honest about the upkeep and maintenance costs of these so-called green buildings to those folks who have no clue when they’re buying the place of the hole that it’s going to put in their pockets when it comes time to fix these “feel-good” amentities.
9 grounded // Mar 30, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Urbanismo: I agree with you that nothing, including cities, is truly sustainable as defined by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But the tone of your post seems to dismiss efforts to reduce the impact of human constructed environments and activities. In my opinion, that needs to be a bottom line principle of all city building exercises given the realities of our times: increasing oil prices (http://www.commoncurrent.com/notes/2010/03/peak-oil-in-four-years-mobilit.html) and accelerating biodiversity loss, CO2 equivalents in our atmosphere, ocean acidification, etc. The list disturbingly goes on… http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_T1.html#figure-title. So while I appreciate the potential of architecture and other industries to put a green label on pretty much anything in order to sell it, the principle of us living and growing with a smaller footprint is one that is fundamental to making the 21st century livable for us and other species. If we must have a new casino in Vancouver, then let’s have one that gets closer to operating as a closed loop system (e.g passive solar, recycles its water, generates at least part of its own energy supply).
10 Joe Just Joe // Mar 30, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The Casino/hotels wouldn’t be built on taxpayer dime though.
11 Urbanismo // Mar 30, 2010 at 2:09 pm
@ Grounded . . . wise comments . . . thanqxz . . .
” . . . If we must have a new casino in Vancouver, then let’s have one that gets closer to operating as a closed loop system . . .”
“If must we have a new casino . . . ” Must we? Many accompanying social problems are accounted for elsewhere on this Bula-blog . . .
A casino, by definition, is not “green” and not “sustainable” no matter what the spin Podmore puts on it!
If we need to invest for a return may I suggest any import-substituting industry or investing in silviculture rather than turning our tree-farm licenses into sprawl . . . or up-to-date public transit . . . or land based fish farms . . or weaning ourselves away from over priced real estate that the locals cannot afford . . .
I can thinq of a million endeavours that are less destructive than gambling and I bet you can too!
The quick fix. This govt is bereft of any redeeming economic sense!
12 landlord // Mar 30, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@Urbanismo : I hate to quibble (actually I love it) but Newton formulated laws of motion, not thermodynamics. You’re thinking of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) whose 2nd law is often given as S = k log W, where k = 1.3806505(24) × 10−23 J K−1 is Boltzmann’s constant, and the logarithm is taken to the natural base e. W is the Wahrscheinlichkeit, the frequency of occurrence of a macrostate or, more precisely, the number of possible microstates corresponding to the macroscopic state of a system.
Boltzmann hung himself, not because of gambling debts, but owing to depression brought on by the relentless criticism of smaller minds (ahem).
13 Urbanismo // Mar 30, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Thanqxz landlord . . . nice to see the conversation move up . . Newton+entropy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
14 Frances Bula // Mar 30, 2010 at 4:16 pm
It’s posts like landlord’s here that really give me a reason to keep on living.
15 Glissando Remmy // Mar 30, 2010 at 4:28 pm
The Thought of The Day
“When the herd’s lack of common sense is reaching the apathy mark, everything becomes so acute that there is no need for future shock treatment anymore. When the predators have successfully separated the weak from the strong and then take them down one by one, even the strongest sheep are merely becoming walking billboards for the “Eat Me Now” wolverine campaign. “
Common People of Vancouver!
Wake up, grow a brain, and exercise your Hercule Poirot’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPsNNnHMgSg&feature=related
little grey cells, make Darwin proud… or God, whomever you want, just don’t let those Apes catching up with you, it’s only one missing gene in their DNA and You Are It!
“Green Urban Casino” it’s a sanitized slang version for “Well Dressed Killer”, “Compassionate Ventilator Remover” or “Medicinal Cocaine Distributor”. For goodness sake, they could tell you a “shit hole” in the ground is an “Organically Engineered Latrine” and you would buy two of them for your garden! In three $69.69 easy payments!
The charlatans are good, oh, they are good, they have the resources and the skills required for the rip-off and they are only getting better at it. If they could only make all of us to abide by their simple Three Monkeys Rule: “Audi, vide, tace…si vis vivere mille anni in pace” (Hear, see, and be silent…and you’ll live a thousand years in peace.) that would be just the thing.
A blind person could see that.
A deaf person could hear that.
A mute person could read it out loud!
Have you ever been through a job interview at the end of which, despite your perfect credentials and presentation, you were told “Thank you for coming, we’ll call you with our decision as soon as we finish with all the applicants” knowing, right there, at that very moment, that there was no chance in Hell they’ll give you the job, because the position was already spoken for?” Well, the people who’ve applied for all those Top City Jobs in the past year and a half, know what I’m talking about.
…
ASK PENNY
“Is it true, that when you fire someone, you do it in a Power Point Presentation format?”
But I digress.
The same seems to be the case here in our city. Bigger Casino, More Expensive Roof, New Vancouver Art Gallery, it seems that all the Crooks of this City are pulling their brains together to Con us again. It’s visible from the Moon and it’s clear that they are in urgent need of another Olympic proportions spending justification. That’s starting to look funny, in the sad way of funny. And they are selling them to us one Ecstasy Pill at a time.
In conclusion:
ONE
Why do we need a Casino in Downtown Vancouver? Too many unharvested Asian (known for their appetite for gambling) pockets in the vicinity? The answer for this would be… 60 -70 BS (Bessies)
TWO
Why do BC Place needs a Retractable Roof? Why does it need a roof at all? Check out the English Premiership Soccer games attendance numbers; on Stadiums similar to this one (capacity and Vancouver weather conditions). The answer, hmmm, give or take, 1 KR (Krapola), 9 BS
THREE
Why do the Vancouver Art Gallery needs to move from its prime, present location? The answer: 1L (Lieon), 22 KR, 13 BS
LEGEND:
1BS (Bessie) = smallest measurement unit for a Bullshit statement; 1 KR (Krapola) = 100 BS; 1 L (Lieon) = 100 KR
But maybe, you want to ask Gregor or Gordon or Podmore these questions? They will probably go over the same lines Mikito Fikune, my Japanese nanny would blubber out to the perplexed police officer, as her only explanation for why she was speeding in a school zone:: “Mi-zaru, kika-zaru, iwa-zaru…”
Not-see, not-hear, not-speak…
We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.
16 RossK // Mar 30, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Re: The Landlord’s comment and wanting to go on living…..
Either that, or it makes you want to take Grade 11 Physics all over again….
_____
Haven’t been to the casino in Melbourne, Victoria….But have been to one of the <a href="Paragon flagships in Marksville, Louisiana", and all I can say is that if Hunter S. Thompson were alive today, he would very likely have a much easier time being derisive about the latter venue than he was when he wrote about the Circus-Circus in 1971.
.
17 Richard // Mar 31, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Or Circus-Circus circa 1971 🙂
18 Frank Murphy // Apr 1, 2010 at 10:47 am
Frances: for your files — Millennium walks away from Nanaimo projects.
http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=109e75d2-4aba-4b34-b5e3-04a27be1d490
19 booge // Apr 1, 2010 at 3:11 pm
“A green urban casino” ! God help us! They really do take us for sucker!
Suckers and their green money are easily parted. This will be very Sustainable every single day.
20 Kam Lee // Apr 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm
It’s not the building of so many casinos. It is the lying by gordo. Thats the rub. A continuation of his lies, sad isn’t it?
21 Norman // Apr 27, 2010 at 7:01 pm
This is a very scary example of how citizens’ wishes count for nothing with this government. We are going to get a casino whether we want it or not, just like the HST, “run of river” power plants, fish farms and whatever else the government, not the people, want. What we really need is an effective opposition.