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[James Bay] Royal British Columbia Museum redevelopment | 14-, 12- & 10-storeys | Proposed

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#41 ZGsta

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 12:32 PM

Well if this comment does not typify the Victorian attitude I don’t know what does … sad, sad, so sad.

Re: "Museum's tower plans a step closer to approval," Feb. 18.

News that Victoria city council has sent the Royal B.C. Museum's redevelopment proposal to a future public hearing is welcome, but the fact that the council did this "with very little debate" is troubling.

The museum's plans are insensitive and grandiose, including three high-rise towers of 10, 12 and 14 storeys each, projected costs unknown. This is a museum staffdriven project of dubious public benefit during this difficult period of our history, with unsolved homelessness on our streets, high unemployment, falling real estate values, and ever-increasing residential property, HST, carbon and other taxes.

Museum staff and city council should have enough brains and sensitivity to realize that this is not the right to time to be proposing such an expensive and unnecessary empire-building project. I am confident that a significant majority of informed Victorians will participate in the public hearing with an urgent message: Council and the Royal B.C. Museum should both reprioritize and operate more frugally, within existing budgets, until such time as the homeless are properly housed, local employment figures improve and counterproductive tax increases are halted.

I don't know a single person that is clamouring for the museum to expand its operations. Victoria council should not approve the rezoning application which would allow these unnecessary high-rise towers to be built.

Gregory Hartnell Victoria



Read more: http://www.timescolo...l#ixzz1Ecoc5zis


That's pretty much every boilerplate, cliched Victoria-style complaint rolled into one.

"Homelessness and taxes are things that exist, so a 'tall' building shouldn't be allowed!"

Although it's crazy Gregory Hartnell (CCC candidate) so I'm not really surprised.

"Empire-building." Lol

#42 Nparker

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 01:10 PM

As though somehow NOT expanding the RBCM is going to solve all of societies social ills. BTW if the Province can find $500 million+ to put a new roof on BC Place stadium, has $1 billion to toss around as "wiggle room" for the future Premier, it surely can find at least $100 million to put towards the first major public* expansion in over 4 decades of one of the province's cultural masterpieces.

*I am assuming the majority of the funding for the mid-90s renovations to the RBCM came from National Geographic/IMAX.

#43 Baro

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 01:51 PM

I don't understand this idea that by denying a project that that money then goes towards fixing social problems? If the city was paying for these buildings I'd understand it, but this is money coming INTO the city, coming into our coffers, this is tax money to be spent on solving social problems.

I just don't understand it. Do they actually think fighting these projects have ANYTHING to do with homelessness or HST or carbon taxes? Where's the link?
"beats greezy have baked donut-dough"

#44 2F2R

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 02:08 PM

As the biggest supporter of development in this city, it is just this attitude that slays me … as with the Aria … was to be seventeen floors … NO, it must be only 12 floors … now it is acceptable … in my mind, shaving the five floors only reduced what would have been beautiful twin seventeen floor buildings to the usual, predictable and boring twelve floor table top “skyline”. As I have said in many of my “rants”, it’s most sad to me as I believe many beautiful “tall” buildings have been lost to further somebody’s career … what if the citizens way back … had shot down the Empress Hotel for only half the reasons it would be turned down today …

OK, one more … Shelburne Street … so we canvas the people today and they want of course … less traffic, bike lanes, wider boulevards and lots of flower baskets … I say, we build for the future … that artery needs to be upgraded not downgraded … I say it needs to be four lanes … cut down all those ridicules looking maples and replant new maples down the middle of a divided road like Veterans Parkway … a road can be made to look very nice in this way … put the bike lanes and wide walking sidewalks the next road over …
Old Island highway out of town … what a waste of time and money on that one … once again … it’s lanes we need, not boulevards and flower baskets … now we are still stuck with five lanes of traffic funneling into one lane trying to get out of town … can’t we have one road dedicated to actually moving traffic … all this traffic calming around town is nice on all the side roads but again, plan for the future will you …

#45 2F2R

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 02:14 PM

>>>I just don't understand it. Do they actually think fighting these projects have ANYTHING to do with homelessness or HST or carbon taxes? Where's the link? <<<


Well at least it shows us what "Gregory Hartnell of Victoria" knows about the Museum expansion ... NOTHING

And Mister Hartnell says ... "I don't know a single person that is clamouring for the museum to expand its operations" ... well I am not exactly clamouring, but I am sure as heck for it ... and for many reasons ... please hurry ! ! !

#46 my2cents

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Posted 23 February 2011 - 10:14 AM

Old Island highway out of town … what a waste of time and money on that one … once again … it’s lanes we need, not boulevards and flower baskets … now we are still stuck with five lanes of traffic funneling into one lane trying to get out of town … can’t we have one road dedicated to actually moving traffic … all this traffic calming around town is nice on all the side roads but again, plan for the future will you …


Hear hear! That intersection at Admirals/Craigflower/Island Hwy is simply horrid (everyone mooshing into one lane). It's too bad that the months of disruption we've been enduring, isn't addressing that problem. What a difference it would make if 2 lanes ran from there to Colwood.

#47 Bernard

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Posted 23 February 2011 - 11:17 AM

>>>I just don't understand it. Do they actually think fighting these projects have ANYTHING to do with homelessness or HST or carbon taxes? Where's the link? <<<


Well at least it shows us what "Gregory Hartnell of Victoria" knows about the Museum expansion ... NOTHING

And Mister Hartnell says ... "I don't know a single person that is clamouring for the museum to expand its operations" ... well I am not exactly clamouring, but I am sure as heck for it ... and for many reasons ... please hurry ! ! !


I have been hoping for a museum expansion for years. For my work I have seen the desperate need for a much bigger space for the provincial archives. They ran out space in the late 1980s if remember correctly

#48 2F2R

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Posted 23 February 2011 - 02:12 PM

>>>I have been hoping for a museum expansion for years. For my work I have seen the desperate need for a much bigger space for the provincial archives. They ran out space in the late 1980s if remember correctly<<<

Certainly ... it's a no brainer .... but, unfortunately ... the likes of Gregory Hartnell ... and Pam Spewoff ... will see to it that it is stopped ... why did we ever build outside the fort walls !!!!! ... ...

#49 Barra

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Posted 24 February 2011 - 11:43 AM

It will be a construction challenge to erect those new buildings in and around what is there currently. I will miss the native plant garden, but I doubt that most people even know it is there, and there are other places (Beacon Hill Park etc) to have such things. There is a real opportunity for interesting contemporary - even edgy - new architecture and a site for the Art Gallery.
I hope that they will be able to include underground parking. Given the surrounding buildings that need to be protected and the challenges of excavation, I would think that the only place to put it would be at the NE corner - i.e. where the garden, archives and Fannin building are now.
The remaining residential would only be the Glensheil - why can't they subdivide that part of the site off and leave the residential zoning just on that part of the site?
Pieta VanDyke

#50 Rob Randall

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Posted 11 March 2011 - 10:41 AM

RBCM plan stumps Design Panel

By Robert Randall • Published on Friday, March 11, 2011

The Royal British Columbia Museum’s expansion plan was presented to the City of Victoria’s Advisory Design Panel last week but the volunteer members were hard pressed to offer constructive criticism because the overall plan has yet to be fully fleshed out.

more...

#51 Phil McAvity

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Posted 29 March 2011 - 06:39 AM

I don't understand this idea that by denying a project that that money then goes towards fixing social problems? If the city was paying for these buildings I'd understand it, but this is money coming INTO the city, coming into our coffers, this is tax money to be spent on solving social problems.

I just don't understand it. Do they actually think fighting these projects have ANYTHING to do with homelessness or HST or carbon taxes? Where's the link?


There is no link. Just like the link between Hartnell's brain and his mouth is pretty dubious. His wish (and that's all it will ever be-a "wish") is a pie-in-the-sky delusion that will never happen anyway because some people refuse to be housed. More people need to write letters-to-the-editor denouncing half-wit nutbars like Hartnell in the hopes that maybe just maybe, he will learn to shut up once and for all.
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#52 Mike K.

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Posted 07 June 2011 - 01:27 PM

City Hall is siding with the RBCM's plans, apparently.

Know it all.
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#53 aastra

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Posted 10 June 2011 - 11:18 AM

Did we see this? I wasn't aware that the parking lot would be developed first.
http://www.timescolo...6621/story.html

#54 amor de cosmos

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Posted 21 August 2013 - 09:58 AM

Victoria's Royal B.C. Museum seeks a makeover ‘that takes your breath away’
Carla Wilson / Times Colonist
March 19, 2013

The “dysfunctional” entrance to the Royal B.C. Museum is one of many things being targeted for change in a new master plan that will aim to map out ways to make the museum more engaging, less cluttered and easier to navigate.

Jack Lohman, museum chief executive officer, was forthright in directions to the lead architect: “I have asked that he urgently address the dysfunctional entrance that looks more like a threshold to a shopping mall, rather than an entrance to Canada’s top museum.

“I’ve asked him to create something that takes your breath away.”

[...]

http://www.timescolo...th-away-1.94595

#55 aastra

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Posted 21 August 2013 - 11:33 AM

...or any building that will wreck or destroy the city,


That's a relief. Anyone who was worried about those early renderings that showed a gigantic Transformers-style robot swinging a huge mallet all over the place can take a deep breath now.

I'm actually more concerned than ever about this project. I really don't want to see vast, sterile spaces with a few totem poles placed here or there:
http://sooniagara.wo.../30/grand-hall/

It's a presentation format that just sucks the magic out of whatever happens to be on display.

#56 gumgum

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Posted 21 August 2013 - 11:38 AM

Every time Victoria builds a tower it destroys the city.
The city has been destroyed a lot over and over again within the past decade.

#57 Barra

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Posted 21 August 2013 - 08:55 PM

That's a relief. Anyone who was worried about those early renderings that showed a gigantic Transformers-style robot swinging a huge mallet all over the place can take a deep breath now.

I'm actually more concerned than ever about this project. I really don't want to see vast, sterile spaces with a few totem poles placed here or there:
http://sooniagara.wo.../30/grand-hall/

It's a presentation format that just sucks the magic out of whatever happens to be on display.


The photo in the link does not do justice to the lobby in the Ottawa museum. Along the right side in the photo is a series of west coast First Nations house fronts that I thought were well presented.
Pieta VanDyke

#58 Holden West

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Posted 21 August 2013 - 09:08 PM

“I have asked that he urgently address the dysfunctional entrance that looks more like a threshold to a shopping mall, rather than an entrance to Canada’s top museum.

He later pointed out tall First Nations welcoming figures on display in the lobby, saying, “They’re now lost in this visually polluted space.”

Sad end to the career of one of Victoria's most famous architects of the last half century. John Di Castri's last major project dates from 1997 and is already being called a disaster past its due date. Reminds me of another legendary local architect's last project--Sam Bawlf's infamous "The Wing" condo.

Also bad news for architects de Hoog/Kierulf. The RBCM has dumped them and their plan to the curb in exchange for Paul Merrick and a London firm.

"...we have abandoned any idea of a massive series of skyscrapers, speculative office projects or any building that will wreck or destroy the city,”

Yeah, that's an odd comment. I thought the old plan was rather logical--lease unused curatorial space for commercial office use until needed. I guess I was wrong.
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#59 Ken Johnson

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Posted 22 August 2013 - 02:35 PM

The photo in the link does not do justice to the lobby in the Ottawa museum. Along the right side in the photo is a series of west coast First Nations house fronts that I thought were well presented.


I was fortunate in having a day-long tour of the Museum of Civilization in Gateneau conducted by an architect engaged in the design of museums. When exhibiting large artifacts as can be seen in the photo link, i.e., totems and house fronts, the designer attempts to provide a space that will help understand the context and the historical viewpoint. These items would have traditionally been viewed as one approached them from a distance.

#60 Bingo

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Posted 22 August 2013 - 04:01 PM

You don't need a fancy grand entrance and polished floors. You need a climate controlled building with spaces that allow the display artist to be creative, unhampered by a sterile atmosphere.

Once inside the displays of the present museum you loose track of where you really are.

I see no problem with the present entrance, other than the fairly high cost of admission.

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