“we are populated with a noticeable contingent of scarily parochial residents and politicians.”

QFT!

….

“And there are too many people in significant positions here who think the city can survive on resource pillaging and consumption industries as the base of its economy.”

Not to go off on a tangent, but this is why a VAT-style HST is critical to further economic development.

Great cities are built slowly over the course of generations, much longer than our human lives. Vancouver is but a teenager at most. I think quote of the week should go to Frances for the title of this post, as it about sums up the truth of the situation.

As parents, we work hard to make the right decisions for our children – and in the process we all make mistakes. The critical part, is that when we make mistakes, as good parents, we must first recognize that we made a mistake, secondly, admit that we made a mistake and thirdly, work really hard to make sure that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. The other part of good parenting, is listening to our children – – sometimes they have good ideas. I think Vancouver needs new parents.

There is such a disparity between the way we try to portray ourselves and the way we act that we have very little hope of realizing our dreams. This council doesn’t listen, but tries to look like it does, while blockbusting neighbourhoods to accommodate developers. Give me the days of Phillip Owen and a council that actually listened. Everything has become “image”.

Bobbie Bees @ 7
Your statement is a scream, buddy!
How about calling your COPE and VISION friends for what they are, a bunch of self entitled spreaders of the ‘truth’! Self entitled ‘the chosen ones’ when everybody knows they wrote the Book of Bullshit. Get out of town…Vancouver town!

Shit cake, indeed. On a week when we should be celebrating Vancouver history, the braintrust of Vision decides to DEMOLISH THE PANTAGES THEATRE, the oldest vaudeville theatre still standing in North America? The buildings in the land assembly are falling as I write. Two out of four are rubble today…

I guess this is what happens when you hand MacDonald Realty a cheque for $150,000 and ask them to come up with a plan to save the theatre. Duh. What did they think the result would be? An innovative and creative plan, or demolition by neglect? I could have saved you $150k.

Attending the hearings in Chinatown, where business owners are desperately seeking a way to revitalize the area, the councilors all sit on their hands with glazed looks on their faces, nervously checking their tweets and texts, completely oblivious to what real revitalization without displacement might look like.

What is missing is an anchor, a draw for Vancouverites from all walks of life to visit the area and wander the streets before and after a show, to dine out, to window shop, to add body heat.

A beautiful theatre with a long history perhaps?

Nope, its towers, towers, towers.

That’s the only solution? Seriously? That’s the best plan Vancouver can come up with?

This Council has zero creativity or political will to do anything innovative. They show no bloody leadership. The only creativity they have shown is in their ability to make excuses, to pass the buck, to pretend it’s not their fault.

This is our generation’s concrete freeway mowing down our history and heritage: the death of the Pantages Theatre and approving towers in the Historic District.

I am embarrassed to be a Vancouverite today.

Bobbie Bees:
If you think the Capitol 6, with its dinky little auditoria, was something, you should have seen the theatre *it* replaced, the (single-screen) Capitol. I have no idea what its capacity was, but it rivalled the Orpheum for size, which would put its seat complement at around a couple of thousand. You yourself would have been in your element in 1968, when the theatre was converted to Cinerama for the initial run of “2001: a Space Odyssey”. What an experience. I can just envision you in the front row during the Stargate sequence, plotzed out of your mind on the finest products of Kitsilano’s “Chemical Row” (which was on 7th east of Arbutus, but that’s another story: http://www.heritagevancouver.org/wt/hippie.html). I never got over my resentment of the Capitol 6 because of its status as a poor substitute for the original (don’t remember when the conversion to the multiplex happened, but it must have been in the mid-70s).

But if you want to talk theatres, let’s have a moment of silence for the old Vancouver Opera House, which I got to know only in its final incarnation, as the Lyric, back in the late 60s. The Lyric was located on Granville where the Eatons/Sears store now stands. It was built early in the 20th century as a vaudeville and concert hall– until the Orpheum opened in 1928,it was considered the theatrical showpiece of the city– and a lot of famous and soon-to-be famous people trod its boards in those early days– WC Fields, the Marx Brothers, Rachmaninoff, and many others. I remember a vast, shadowy, cavernous space with brass-railed box seats on the side walls. Movies were a buck and a half you could stay all day, and they never asked for age ID, so a 16-year-old like me could get to see restricted fare like “Blow-Up”– an important consideration at that hormonal age. The stage curtain was the largest in the city and, IIRC, had some kind of mountain panorama painted on it (I’ve heard that it was stored for many years in the Museum, but if that’s true it must be pretty musty by now).

The Lyric/Opera House was torn down to make way for Pacific Centre, an incalculable historical/cultural loss (preceding the equally tragic loss of the Birks Building by a few years) that I’d like to think would not be allowed to happen now– but truthfully? It probably would.
Money talks in this city, and even louder now than it did then… as the dreadful news (http://www.vancouversun.com/Hollywood+Theatre+faces+final+curtain/4509142/story.html) of the impending demise of as many as four of the last independent theatres here in Dinkytown (the Park, the Hollywood, the Dunbar and the Ridge) makes all too clear. Plus ça change…
gmgw

@Max:
The Hollywood is not in a leased space, so there was no lease to renew. The Fairleigh family has owned the theatre and the property since the Hollywood first opened. What has likely contributed to their decision to pull the plug at long last is the advent of digital projection, and the prohibitive cost of converting to a digital system (well into six figures). Since most feature films are already screened in digital format, the Hollywood would soon have had no more product to present unless they made the conversion. For the Fairleighs, selling now makes perfect sense, even though the rest of us may regard it as a terrible loss. The same thing is happening, or soon will, to small neighbourhood and independent theatres throughout North America– the few that still survive, that is. We’re at the end of an era.

It would be great if the VIFF could take over the Hollywood— Alan Franey has said they’re looking at the possibility– but I suspect that the economics of the proposed acquisition (the reported asking price is close to $3 million) simply won’t work for them, short of receiving a very generous corporate or government cash infusion. And over and above the purchase price, the need to upconvert to digital, not to mention a major refurbishment of the theatre itself (new seats, sound system, screen, et. al.) would still be there. So think $4 million at the very least. Not too likely…
gmgw