Woodwards' Giant Art of Oppression

Riddle me this...
If you are going to go into the Vancouver Downtown Eastside and basically beautify (read gentrify) an entire city block that once was the symbol of resilience. Why put up a giant mural that leaves the lasting impression of "If you get up to no good... We are going to smack you down. Just like in 1971".

First some history...

The building was built in 1903 by Charles Woodward as the second location for the Woodward's department store. Woodward's pioneered the concept of one-stop shopping; the store included a food floor which was at the time North America's largest supermarket, household items, men's and women's fashion, and provided cheque cashing, travel booking and other services. The store was well-known for carrying a large variety of goods that were not available anywhere else. The store soon became a feature attraction in Vancouver, and it expanded over 12 separate phases to a final size of 12 storeys. It occupied approximately 2/3 of the city block. The popularity of Woodward's attracted many other businesses to the area. In 1944 the landmark "W" was installed on the top of the building on a 25 metre replica of the Eiffel Tower, replacing a pre-war searchlight-beacon which had until then been the building's hallmark. The beacon, which was visible at night from as far away as Abbotsford and Mission, was shut down at the beginning of World War II because of its potential use as a landmark for aerial attacks.

Woodward's fortunes declined as customers gravitated to more suburban malls, but the Vancouver location was also greatly impacted by the transfer of the Eaton's department store from its location at West Hastings and Richards (a few blocks away), to the uptown location of Pacific Centre kitty-corner from The Bay, which signalled the demise of West Hastings Street as the central retail district in the city. In the 1980s, Woodward's sold the food floor - long known for its quality and its line of unusual specialities - to Safeway. The flagship food floor became an IGA store until the building closed as Safeway showed no interest in that location. During the same time, the area around the Woodward's building started to decline socially and economically. In 1993, Woodward's went bankrupt and closed its doors. Many of the store's suburban locations were sold to the Hudson's Bay Company for conversion to Zellers and Bay stores, but there was little interest in the historic downtown building. The closing of the Woodward's store precipitated an even more rapid decline in the area.

In 1995 the building was acquired by Fama Holdings. The firm developed a plan to build private housing in the building. However, many of those in the neighbourhood strongly objected, as it was felt to be important that the project incorporate social housing. The provincial government of British Columbia decided to fund some social housing as part of the project, but Fama and the province could not come to an agreement, and the project died. The building stood largely vacant, except for the occasional film shoot.

In 2001 the province bought the building from Fama for $22 million. A variety of options were pursued to develop the building. In 2002 the building was occupied by an organized squat that demanded that the building be developed into social housing. Eventually the city forced the squatters to leave.

In 2003 the City of Vancouver led by Jim Green purchased the building from the province for $5 million, and began a public consultation process, asking the community what they wanted from the redevelopment. After a two stage competition between three developers in September 2004 the city selected Westbank Projects/Peterson Investment Group to develop and Gregory Henriquez of Henriquez Partners Architects to lead the design of the new buildings, with Glotman Simpson as the Structural Engineers. The 400 million dollar project, includes 536 market housing units, 125 singles non-market housing units to be operated by PHS Community Services, 75 family non-market housing units to be operated by Affordable Housing Society, Nesters Food Store and London Drugs, TD Canada Trust, The National Film Board of Canada and civic offices, a daycare, public atrium and plaza, and a new addition to the Simon Fraser University downtown campus: the 130,000 sf School for Contemporary Arts.[1] The oldest part of the complex (built 1903–1908) will be restored, and will serve as non-profit office and community space (31,500 sf). Construction began in winter of 2006, with a completion scheduled for March of 2010.

The "W" neon sign, which topped the building on the Eiffel Tower replica, was removed before the demolition and will be replicated and installed when the new development is complete.[2] In 2008 the Vancouver artist Stan Douglas completed a 30' by 50' image on glass depicting the Gastown Riots (pot riots) of 1971. The over-sized photograph will become the central focus within the atrium of the new Woodward's Redevelopment.

This is where I have a problem... This "image" is scary and in no way empowering. I will let you make your own determination, dear reader. In my humble opinion, you don't need to be reminded of how horrible riots can go when at this very moment, in Vancouver, we are living in a police state. Don't fool yourself. NORAD is flying over in formations on the hour, there are spy-cams everywhere (check out the traffic lights on Granville) and the American military has increased it's forces just a few miles away.

"The most tangible sign of readiness at present is a "2010 Olympics Coordination Center," near Bellingham's airport, 37 kilometres from the B.C. border.

The $4-million retrofitted air hangar, which began operations this week, was funded by the Department of Homeland Security and will be the nerve centre for more than 40 federal, state and local agencies, plotting quick responses in reaction to any Games-related emergency."

I think it is quite impressive that Stan Douglas can make very large images in glass. I would submit that errr... anything else would have been a better idea at this point in history.

Colin