Vancouver's 'cultural precinct' takes step forward but can the city afford arts mega-projects?

Dan Fumano: The decades-long dream of a multi-venue 'cultural precinct' in downtown Vancouver is inching ahead, just as the Vancouver Art Gallery's budget for a new building spikes by 50 per cent

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Published Aug 31, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

Leila Getz inside the Vancouver Playhouse on Aug. 29. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

In the half-century that Leila Getz has been active in Vancouver’s cultural scene, there has always been talk about the need for new performing arts venues.

Proponents tried to advance different versions of a multi-venue “cultural precinct” for the city. Designs were even drawn up, and some big names were involved. But nothing came to fruition.

But Getz, founder and artistic director of the Vancouver Recital Society, says she’s feeling more optimistic now about the cultural precinct idea than ever before. And, she says, that’s even after this week’s news about Vancouver’s other cultural mega-project, the new art gallery, being forced to change plans and delay construction.

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The cultural precinct’s proponents envision a concert hall and “opera/ballet hall” with about 1,800 seats each, and a roughly 800-seat recital hall, ideally assembled in a single location in downtown Vancouver.

Getz said she feels confident this project has momentum now that Vancouver’s cultural institutions are getting together behind it, and after the recent hiring of Toronto-headquartered architecture firm Diamond Schmitt to complete a feasibility study.

Of course, in a multimillion-dollar, multi year project — just like in musical or dance performance — timing is crucial.

Leila Getz inside the Vancouver Playhouse. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

And when the Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society, the non-profit group advancing the cultural precinct, recently confirmed Diamond Schmitt had been engaged for this next phase of work, they didn’t know the Vancouver Art Gallery would issue their own statement three days later declaring their new building’s budget had ballooned by 50 per cent to $600 million, forcing changes to the design and an undetermined construction delay.

“Talk about timing, eh?” Getz said with a chuckle, the morning after the gallery’s news broke. But the gallery’s trouble, she said, “doesn’t in any way disillusion me or chase away my hopes for a wonderful venue for dance, opera and all kinds of music in Vancouver. I think you have to keep moving forward.”

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One reason Getz is so bullish now, she says, is the unprecedented coalition of 14 local arts groups that have come together to support the cultural precinct: in addition to the recital society, the group includes the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Opera, Ballet B.C., DanceHouse, as well as choral, jazz and youth-focused organizations. Getz expects that list to grow.

“In the past, we’ve all been fighting for our own little fiefdoms … But this is such a crushing need (for new venues) that we are all together with a common voice,” she said. “Harmony!”

The project could be an important piece of revitalizing a downtown core that has seen better days, Getz said. And Vancouver’s existing venues — including the city-owned Orpheum, Playhouse and Queen Elizabeth Theatre — are in greater demand than ever, she said, and not well-suited to certain kinds of performance.

Over the next nine months, Diamond Schmitt will consider possible downtown locations for the cultural precinct, produce a business case and consult with the community including local First Nations. The firm recently completed the renovations of Manhattan’s David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

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In the early 1990s, Vancouver city council eyed a site in Coal Harbour for a possible arts complex.

The Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society proposed a new concert hall on March 4, 2011, to be built underneath the existing Vancouver Art Gallery in downtown Vancouver by 2017. In attendance was architect Bing Thom. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

In 2011, the Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society, then chaired by local businessman Ron Stern, proposed to repurpose the Vancouver Art Gallery building on West Georgia Street, with an underground concert hall and multi-purpose theatre. That proposal was unveiled at a news conference, where famed Vancouver architect Bing Thom and globally renowned Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota presented their designs. But it never proceeded. In 2011, the underground venue’s construction budget was estimated at $220 million.

It’s too early to have a budget estimate for the new cultural precinct project, Getz said.

Concept design created in 2011 by Bing Thom Architects (now Revery Architecture), showing an underground concert hall and theatre below the current home of the Vancouver Art Gallery in the 800-block of West Georgia Street. sun

The Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society is now chaired by Suzanne Anton, former Vancouver city councillor, B.C. Liberal MLA and attorney general, who hopes to get the project finally built after so many years of discussion and dreams.

Representatives from Vancouver arts groups will have their first meetings with Diamond Schmitt in September, Anton said.

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“This a big step,” Anton said. “Everything else has been leading up to this.”

Vancouver’s current mayor and city council are enthusiastic supporters of the project, Anton said.

Former municipal and provincial politician Suzanne Anton is seen in a 2011 file photograph. Anton is now chairwoman of the Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society. Photo by Arlen Redekop /Vancouver Sun

In a written statement, council’s representative on the Vancouver civic theatres board, Coun. Peter Meiszner, said he has recognized for many years the need for new arts facilities in Vancouver, and the proposed venues will be “transformative for Vancouver’s arts community.”

Mayor Ken Sim was also quoted in the same statement, saying this project will help solidify Vancouver as (using one of his most frequently invoked phrases) “a world-class city.”

For her part, Getz said: “We’re not giving up … You have to keep going, you have to have hope.”

In other words, the show must go on.

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