725 replies to this topic

[Dexter]

A decade to redevelop the most unsightly property in the city. Amazing anything gets done in this time. I liked all the proposals for NJ. Even the tower one, however I realize it may have disturbed more than a few heritage advocates.

[Jackerbie]

you're not far off, those buildings were the old streetcar barns & they were designed by rattenbury so they aren't going anywhere

 

AFAIK, the site is owned by Phillips and they have plans to develop second storey office space. There are building permits issued for seismic upgrades to the heritage structure and conversion of a portion of the building for wholesale distribution, and a building permit under review for an addition.

 

[Nparker]

A developer fires back at those who are clutching their pearls at the "imminent demise" of Victoria's Old Town.

Victoria’s Old Town is alive and well, and not under threat or facing a historic personality crisis, says a local developer who has restored many of the city’s historic buildings. “I think it’s much ado about nothing,” said developer Chris LeFevre, whose LeFevre and Company has been active for decades restoring historic buildings in Old Town...LeFevre counters in his own letter to council that every project is fraught with hidden costs and overruns that no third party could foresee. “Small subtle height variations can be applicable in any zoning category of the city. This is site specific and small often means unnoticeable! ‘Token measures’ of preservation are better than nothing if they help the longevity of a building and respect Old Town guidelines and heritage,”...

https://www.timescol...says-1.23601350

 

[aastra]

 

...and not under threat or facing a historic personality crisis...

 

I'm a skipping record about this, but it absolutely drives me up the wall that the enlightened champions of heritage (who understand and appreciate Victoria's essence at a much higher level than us ordinary folk) are the same people who've been insisting that Victoria gets ruined every day before the sun goes down for the past ~50 years.

 

The city is always in the process of getting ruined or on the precipice of complete ruination.

 

I'm just so sick of hearing how the sky has been falling every single day for the past several decades. And it isn't merely the endless sounding of the alarm that gets me. It's also the inscrutable selectivity re: the threats and dangers that they identify.

 

Surface parking and traffic islands where old buildings and a bounty of wonderful historic urban fabric used to be: no problem.

Potential redevelopment of the surface parking and traffic islands: crisis and impending doom.

etc.

 

At this point I'd say Chris LeFevre on a bad day has more credibility than all of them in their wildest dreams put together and multiplied by a billion.

 

 

He says the suggestion that the heritage program in Old Town is slipping out of balance is unsubstantiated.

 

“Anybody looking at where Old Town was 30 years ago to where it is today will actually have to be pretty proud of what’s taken place. And I don’t say that for the sake of my own vanity. I say that for the sake of all the buildings that have been regenerated in a very nice fashion.”

 

Ah, but are we allowed to do that? Are we allowed to consider what was and then compare it to what is now? Are we qualified? Is pride even appropriate? Better to leave such philosophical matters for the high priests.

[Nparker]

...At this point I'd say Chris LeFevre on a bad day has more credibility than all of them in their wildest dreams put together and multiplied by a billion...

Agreed. 

[aastra]

It also bugs me how restoration of what was lost seems to be completely off the radar. I regard the Wharf/Government project in those terms. I'm hoping the new construction will restore some of the grandeur and presence that was lost when the old post office building was toasted back in the day.

 

So what do we get? We get dire warnings about how the new construction would be about as tall as the old post office was, and we're supposed to conclude that such towering heights would somehow be inappropriate.

Edited by aastra, 16 January 2019 - 10:41 AM.

[Nparker]

It also bugs me how restoration of what was lost seems to be completely off the radar...

This is particularly galling when one considers the insane process the Northern Junk project has endured.

[G-Man]

The Northern Junk project is another example of greedy developers trying to pull the wool over our eyes. How can you save historical buildings while ignoring the destruction of historical parking lots and traffic islands.

[AllseeingEye]

you're not far off, those buildings were the old streetcar barns & they were designed by rattenbury so they aren't going anywhere

Yep and I'm more than ok with that as long as they aren't permitted to sit there for an eternity + a day wallowing in their own decrepit-tude: the CoV needs to get off its proverbial butt and do whatever is required including moving heaven and/or earth to encourage such restoration as expeditiously as possible, be that by LeFevre or someone else.

 

How and why these "old town jewels" are routinely permitted to molder into the sad-sack state they all too often become in that part of town is mind boggling. All too often the strategy seems to be "well we're afraid of nasty profit-driven greedy developers so we'll just sit on this one" - even if that is for 30, 40, or even 50 or more years. And all the while the area deteriorates even further.

 

*Just saw Jackerbie's post with the proposed re-development + rendering of this building which looks great IMO. Now hopefully it gets built, you know......sometime in this century.....

[Jackerbie]

Yep and I'm more than ok with that as long as they aren't permitted to sit there for an eternity + a day wallowing in their own decrepit-tude: the CoV needs to get off its proverbial butt and do whatever is required including moving heaven and/or earth to encourage such restoration as expeditiously as possible, be that by LeFevre or someone else.

 

How and why these "old town jewels" are routinely permitted to molder into the sad-sack state they all too often become in that part of town is mind boggling. All too often the strategy seems to be "well we're afraid of nasty profit-driven greedy developers so we'll just sit on this one" - even if that is for 30, 40, or even 50 or more years. And all the while the area deteriorates even further.

 

*Just saw Jackerbie's post with the proposed re-development + rendering of this building which looks great IMO. Now hopefully it gets built, you know......sometime in this century.....

 

The building permit for seismic upgrades to the heritage structure was issued in September, and the building permit for the proposed addition is currently in staff review. The rezoning. heritage designation, and heritage alteration permits have all been approved by Council last year. Chris LeFevre wrote Council in support of the applications.

Edited by Jackerbie, 17 January 2019 - 10:24 AM.

[AllseeingEye]

The building permit for seismic upgrades to the heritage structure was issued in September, and the building permit for the proposed addition is currently in staff review. The rezoning. heritage designation, and heritage alteration permits have all been approved by Council last year. Chris LeFevre wrote Council in support of the applications.

All good, now if only its approved and built in my lifetime....

 

Between the LeFevre development across from Capital Iron and this one at the other end of Store Street perhaps the energy provided by both will serve as a stimulus and an impetus to "get 'er done" with regard to the rest of that area in between and out to Government Street.

 

And once_that happens hopefully it might in turn help to kick start a vision and strategy for that other steaming pile of poo, namely the blocks between Government and Douglas; we dropped off some bags of empty pop cans to some the street folk outside the Mustard Seed on Queens Avenue last weekend - hot damn that whole north end of town is just....sad. It needs a complete and utter re-do in the absolute worst way.

[Rob Randall]

[Cassidy]

It came down in the Dec 20th(?) windstorm.

Edited by Cassidy, 30 January 2019 - 08:50 AM.

[Mike K.]

No kidding. Wow.

[Nparker]

It actually looks way cooler now.

[Rob Randall]

The Colonist archives at http://britishcolonist.ca have been expanded another decade up to 1980!

[aastra]

 

Daily Colonist
May 13, 1976

Noted camel finds haven
Stone head of camel, which has looked down from top floor of Campbell Building at Douglas and Fort in Victoria for more than 60 years, was salvaged by crane Wednesday during demolition.

Campbell Building is being demolished to make way for new main branch of Royal Bank.
 

 

https://archive.org/...e/n25/mode/1up/

 

The article immediately below is:

"Victoria heritage law probably won't work"

Edited by aastra, 14 February 2019 - 02:13 PM.

[aastra]

 

Daily Colonist
April 1, 1969

 

Downtown Office Block Planned by Royal Bank

An office building of "impressive magnitude" will be built at the corner of Douglas and Fort by the Royal Bank of Canada...

To make room for it, the seven-storey Campbell Building on Douglas Street and the Safeway store and a barber shop on Fort Street will come down.

Details of the new building have not yet been disclosed, but bank officials said Monday that it would be of "impressive magnitude" and that it would be reasonable to assume it would be a multi-storey, multi-million-dollar project.

Such a project fits the trend of other major banks putting up large office buildings in downtown Victoria.*
 

 

https://archive.org/...e/n20/mode/1up/

 

*large office buildings that tended to be shorter and smaller than the old buildings they replaced

Edited by aastra, 14 February 2019 - 02:13 PM.

[aastra]

Some excerpts from a fantastic article. The entire thing should be required reading. So many fine old buildings getting knocked down and being replaced by much less, sometimes by nothing at all. Methinks the writer only sort of gets it, because he can't help but call it progress even though it was actually destructive regress.

 

 

Daily Colonist
May 17, 1970

 

Progress takes landmarks

https://archive.org/...e/n57/mode/1up/

Progress means change, as even a glance at the modern Victoria scene will show. Construction has boomed in recent years, new buildings steadily making their appearance and altering the city of gardens' famous skyline.

Sadly, in many cases, the old has had to make way for the new... popular landmarks falling (so) that monoliths of glass and concrete might rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes -- or, to be more accurate, from the ruins.

It should prove interesting, in about 25 years, to see if any tears are shed when the first of today's highrise apartments is demolished for subsequent development!

Gone but not forgotten is the old Simon Leiser building, at the corner of Johnson and Store. With the neighbouring gas station, this structure was razed in 1965. As yet, the site remains undeveloped and an eyesore.

One intriguing structure, however, survives in the form of the wine cellars, built underneath Johnson and Store streets. What stories they could tell!

One of Victoria's best known landmarks which as fallen before the wreckers' hammers in recent years was the old YWCA building, at the corner of Courtney and Blanshard, replaced by a prosaic -- but profitable -- parking lot.

It is an intriguing signs of the times that property often is worth more than the buildings on it.

The same month, the historic Colonist building on Broad was razed to make way for the new Woolworth department store. For 70 years, the concrete Colonist sign had been a familiar sight to thousands. When bulldozers rumbled to work, it had been first to crumble.

The YMCA building at Blanshard and View followed its sister a year later... it shares the YW's fate as a parking lot.

The 10-storey Toronto-Dominion Bank, Douglas and Johnson, for many year's Victoria's tallest skyscraper, bit the dust last year, although not without a struggle. Demolition crews faced a major problem in razing the building, erected in 1912, due to its location in the heart of downtown Victoria. Experts in the business of destruction soon eliminated the difficulty, however, by knocking the building "in rather than out"... A modern six-storey office building, to be named after Allen T. Lambert, Toronto-Dominion president and native Victorian, is still under construction.

More recently, progress paid a call to 750 Broughton... As have so many historic buildings, 750 Broughton is to become a parking lot.

In March, an auctioneer's hammer officially sounded the death knell for the old Canada Safeway store at 707 Fort Street. Before Safeway bought the site 40 years ago, the store had been a Piggly Wiggly market.

Another popular Saanich landmark, the 50-acre Mattick's Farm, at Cordova Bay, has been sold to a major American land development company.

Other changes have occurred. Among them is the renovation of the 90-year-old Milne Building, 750 Fort, now the sparkling new quarters of the Bank of British Columbia.

Edited by aastra, 14 February 2019 - 02:12 PM.

[Nparker]

One thing has remained constant: lots of typos in the Colonist then as now.