TRANSLINK MUST SAVE 525 GREAT NORTHERN WAY
Building that houses art spaces important to city’s history, say Fred Herzog, Gordon Smith and Jeff Wall.
We have a citizens’ request for TransLink, as it gets ready to spend billions on a new SkyTrain route from Clark Drive down Broadway to Arbutus: Please find a solution for the transit line to proceed without demolishing an essential cultural asset — 525 Great Northern Way.
The building at 525 Great Northern Way is a tangible recording of our city’s story that teaches us about our industrial history through its design, scale and materials. This repurposed heritage structure is a positive counterpoint to the homogeneous architecture defining Vancouver.
Repurposing this 1964 Finning Tractor shop into two outstanding art spaces is exactly the type of urban renewal that, like in most cities, we should encourage and enjoy. In a city where green building practices and sustainability are the hallmarks of our direction, it’s simply outrageous the decisionmakers at city hall and TransLink would send this building to the landfill, when it has been expertly transformed by local architects who have reused, refurbished and repurposed the materials of this substantial structure.
We need to stimulate this kind of urban development, not demolish it. There is no second chance, no “do-over” for these decisions. When you tear it down, you destroy the concrete history of the gift that Finning International Inc. gave to Great Northern Way Trust, and you lose the desire and ability to further build a neighbourhood where innovation, creativity and collaboration is happening.
With Emily Carr University, the Centre for Digital Media, and a strong group of public and private galleries and creative businesses in the immediate vicinity, Vancouver now has a thriving cultural precinct with 525 as a core resource for this neighbourhood.
When people get off the SkyTrain stop at Great Northern Way they should see a diversity of architecture with local businesses that are unique to Vancouver and offer an alternative to chain stores with more boring buildings. Viewing art in these beautiful repurposed galleries, which are free to the public, reminds us that art offers one of the rare opportunities for people with different perspectives and histories to come together and share an experience. The new TransLink station can and should be an educational and cultural stop.
As the chancellor of Emily Carr University, Geoff Plant wrote in his letter to Mayor Gregor Robertson, “the demolition of 525 would be a serious and irreparable blow to the GNW neighbourhood and the broader art and cultural community in Vancouver. This building is important from both an economic and heritage perspective and is a valuable asset to the city.”
He went on to say that “ECUAD will welcome improved transit to our new campus. However, we are keen that it be done in a way that allows this valuable and unique building to remain on-site.”
We believe there must be an engineering solution to save this distinctive public asset that is more creative than the cut-and-cover idea that was thought of and planned years before Emily Carr University took the bold step to move to the neighbourhood and elevated the cultural and educational transformation taking place in the Flats.
Cut-and-cover construction conflicts directly with Robertson’s assurance in November 2014 that the controversies of the construction on Cambie Street wouldn’t be repeated on the Broadway Extension by stating, “as long as I am mayor with a council majority, we won’t let that happen.”
Surely TransLink’s planners and engineers can be as creative as the artists whose work is exhibited in 525 or as creative as the 2,000 students now attending classes and putting their new skills to work just steps away at Canada’s most contemporary art and design school?
As artists who exhibit internationally but call Vancouver home, we firmly believe saving 525 — the last memory of the former site of Finning Tractor that helped build Western Canada — is vital for the soul of this city. Vancouver can’t afford to erase yet another important architectural link to our past.
For citizens. For artists. For the future. For the legacy of the Finning Gift. Let’s save this building — 525 Great Northern Way.
That is why we are adding our voice to the save525.ca campaign. We hope you will, too.
Fred Herzog is an Audain Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, an Emily Carr University Honorary Doctorate of Letters and a City of Vancouver Heritage Award Winner for his book, Vancouver Photographs. Gordon Smith is a Professor Emeritus at the University of B.C., Order of Canada, Order of B.C., and is a recipient of the Mayor’s Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement and a laureate of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual Art. Jeff Wall is a recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award, the Hartmann Prize for Visual art in Zurich and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
The building at 525 Great Northern Way is a tangible recording of our city’s story that teaches us about our industrial history through its design, scale and materials.
Fred Herzog, Gordon Smith and Jeff Wall The demolition ... would be a serious and irreparable blow to the GNW neighbourhood and the broader art and cultural community in Vancouver.