HASTINGS PART III
Evolution

 

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Woodward’s demolition

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HASTINGS PART III
Evolution


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Woodward’s is back, and it’s a multi-purpose community hub and home to hundreds of Vancouver residents. The new Woodward’s W was installed when Woodward’s re-opened in 2010. The iconic red letter now uses energy-saving LED lights.
 

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Gregory Henriquez, managing partner, Henriquez Partners Architects

GREGORY HENRIQUEZ
The essential thing at Woodward’s wasn’t the building. But it was really the intangible history, the memories that everyone holds that is important for Woodward’s. It was about community, it was about the social and economic vitality of the neighbourhood. And so what we’re trying to do is put the body heat back into Woodward’s and have it be the hub of the community that it once was.

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The new Woodward’s complex is home to hundreds of people in both subsidized and market-rate housing. The complex also features a grocery store, coffee shops, restaurants, a bank, a university, and public gathering spaces.

GREGORY HENRIQUEZ
I think it’s done more to change the retail and the neighbourhood than we ever imagined. If you could criticize Woodward’s at all, it’s been too successful. And the fear and reticence people have in the neighbourhood is that somehow, it’ll change too quickly, and that somehow, they’ll be displaced.

NARRATOR
After such a long stretch without much new commercial activity in the neighbourhood, new developments in the Downtown Eastside garner mixed reactions. One block east of Woodward’s, another iconic neon sign presides over the street. The Save on Meats butcher shop and diner has been a Hastings Street institution since 1957. It closed its doors in 2008 and was resurrected in 2011. The Save on Meats re-opening was met with both fanfare and controversy.

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Mark Brand, owner, Save on Meats

MARK BRAND
Criticism is because of fear, and I understand that. And sadness, overwhelming sadness about a neighbourhood that people here love so much, that is changing before their eyes. This building was going to be converted to condos. That Save On, beautiful neon sign was gone. That was going to the scrap yard. And we were gonna have underground garage and $600,000 units. Instead we have a $1.50 breakfast sandwich and $3 all-day breakfast.

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In addition to concerns about how new businesses will work with the neighbourhood, affordable housing for local residents is a constant source of worry.

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Judy Graves, City of Vancouver advocate for the homeless

JUDY GRAVES
Rooming houses in the rest of the city have been closed or renovated or gentrified. The rooms in the Downtown Eastside have filled up. In 2005, they were about 30 per cent vacant. Today, it would be hard to find probably 12 or 15 rooms that are ready to rent. And the demand for the rooms is huge. There is nowhere else affordable to house people.

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The future of Hastings Street requires balancing the complex commercial and social needs of a neighbourhood in flux.

MARK BRAND
This street has to come back to life. And there’s gonna be a battle for it the whole time. You’re going to have condos pop up everywhere. And if you can keep things like this in the neighbourhood, then the SROs and SRAs that aren’t going anywhere—they’re not moving any of these. They’re going to stay right here. This community can be served and it can be as vibrant as it once was, because a real community is based off people from every demographic, every walk of life.

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Bringing ambient light back to the street is one key to restoring its vitality. In recent years, the City of Vancouver launched a granting program for business owners in heritage neighbourhoods like the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown to bring neon back to the streets. The move directly contradicts the 1974 sign bylaw. It actively encourages people to return neon light to where it once stood.

JOHN ATKIN
The city has actually recognized that that is an important piece of the puzzle for Hastings Street: protect those few neon signs that actually survived, so the Save On Meats, the Hotel Washington, The Balmoral. But also reinforce the heritage with new neon. And so the Pennsylvania Hotel is a reconstruction of the 1940s-era sign. And as businesses start to show up on the street, they’re encouraging neon to be used.

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Installing, maintaining, and restoring neon signs is hard work. It’s expensive and time-consuming. But for those who take it on, it’s a labour of love—an expression of their dedication to preserving and restoring the history and vitality of a changing neighbourhood.

MARK BRAND
If you’re gonna bring back an icon, the icon is the icon. You don’t open Save on Meats and change everything about it. The importance of that sign being back up, being all there, being immaculate and rotating back for the street, it’s really important. It’s important to me to show that we’re here and we’re deadly serious about everything that Save On used to be, and everything that we are making it now.

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