The More Victoria Changes, the More It Stays the Same...

Edited by aastra, 08 July 2019 - 07:25 PM.

 

did that hot dog vendor fix it?

Sadly, no. The cart blocked the view.

 

 

On one side are those who insist that highrise buildings aren't necessarily ugly, but help revitalize a steadily declining downtown.

 

As long as the buildings are of a high architectural standard, they say, the city doesn't lose any of its appeal.

 

On another side are those who want to convert the entire Inner Harbor area into a park. Waterfront, they claim, should be used for the benefit of the public.

 

And then there are those in the middle who are willing to tolerate a certain amount of commercial activity (restaurants, shopping facilities, lowrise apartment buildings) as long as the public is assured of a fair share of waterfront access.

Or maybe the dichotomies and competing premises weren't entirely valid to begin with? How about high-quality lowrise commercial buildings and apartments with restaurants and shops that not only assure a "fair share" of waterfront access but actually enable more & better waterfront access than would otherwise be possible?

 

There was a military presence established on the waterfront between Cook St and Clover Point as early as 1866. A rifle range was located on the waterfront from 1900 until 1931.

https://victoriaheri.../fairfield.html

This article is focused on Vancouver but still, you get the idea. Some excerpts:

*****

 

House-hunting in Vancouver? Bring lots of cash -- and a tent

Globe and Mail
April 5, 1980

 

...thousands of families in Ontario and Eastern Canada are thinking of packing their station wagons and heading for the Pacific Coast for a new life in the golden West.

Daffodils and tulips have already peaked. Vancouver's 60,000 street trees have burst into blossom. It's that time of the year when locals brag that they may comfortably ski down a mountain before lunch and sail around English Bay until dinner.

But wait. Listen first to Jim Patterson, British Columbia's embattled rentalsman. ''If you're coming out on spec, you should have lots of money -- and a tent."

...finding a job can be tough enough, without the double-whammy of a seemingly insane housing market...

In Vancouver, one of the tightest housing markets in North America, the vacancy rate is .2 per cent. In Victoria, it is .1 per cent, and in some suburban areas it is a flat zero.

Average house prices in Greater Vancouver, which rose 7 per cent last year, leaped 8.3 per cent to $76,811 in the first two months of this year. ''Don't bother looking for worse statistics," says Richard McAlary, regional economist with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. ''They can't get any worse."

...B.C. led the country into its last housing crisis, in 1973-75. Rent controls were imposed in the province in 1974...

...landlord and tenant groups, revived and infused with a new militancy, are pressing the federal and provincial governments for incentives to boost rental construction.

Small professional investors and the rental construction industry have been in a sulk for months about Ottawa's cancellation of popular MURB tax shelters - Multiple-Unit Residential Buildings - that permitted the depreciation of capital costs against personal income.

Ottawa bureaucrats have acknowledged that while the West would have benefited from prolonged tax sheltering, that was insufficient justification to maintain a $10-million nation-wide program.

Opinion here is that it will take a broad new program by the federal Government, reintroducing tax incentives and dealing with high interest rates, to improve the B.C. picture.

Rental market analysis by the rentalsman's office shows that dizzying dips in the roller-coaster rate of apartment construction in the past decade have coincided with elimination of federal incentives provided by the Revenue Department and CMHC.

The Human Resources Ministry, the bailiff of bankrupted dreams, has no empty beds in its usual emergency shelters. It has about 300 people bunked with friends and in Vancouver hotels and motels.

Low wage earners have been forced on to the street by rent increases of up to $250 on apartments they had been renting for $450 a month.

Rents on a one-bedroom apartment in a five-year-old building in Vancouver are averaging up to $375 a month. About 25 per cent of the renters already are paying out more than 35 per cent of their gross income for rent.

The housing market in Vancouver requires a wrenching adjustment for those newly arrived from most other cities in Canada. ''We've had people living in tents before when the vacancy rate was much higher than it is now,"

...

Edited by aastra, 09 May 2019 - 04:52 PM.

If Victoria was a movie franchise, how many sequels and/or reboots would audiences have suffered through by now?

 

$6,000,000 Mayfair Open to Public Today
Daily Colonist
October 16, 1963

Bracing Themselves

A number of merchants on this part of Douglas Street, most of them on the Saanich side of the boundary, were put out of business some time ago by loss of trade resulting from the Capital Improvement District Commission's Douglas Street parking ban.

...one of the diehards, who had operated a drug store there for nearly nine years, saw the handwriting on the wall and locked up his store... with two years and two months yet to go on his building lease.

"I couldn't see any future," said Mr. Bruce...

Parking a Must

"This is exactly what I expected would happen when they took parking away," said Saanich Couns. Joseph Casey. "...as long as there is no parking, they cannot do any business."

******

 

"Downtown" Soon at Saanich Line
Daily Colonist
September 30, 1962

Greater Victoria shoppers in a few years' time will call the city-Saanich boundary on Douglas the "downtown" commercial district, a Saanich councillor predicted yesterday.

Coun. Gregory Cook said he thought downtown businesses will move to the fringes of the large Mayfair shopping centre under construction just south of the Saanich boundary at Douglas and Tolmie.

Major Area

Two community planners agreed the mile-long stretch of land east of Douglas between the Town-and-Country shopping centre and the Mayfair shopping centre will become a major commercial area, but felt there was no immediate danger of city merchants suffering because of it.

Edited by aastra, 01 July 2019 - 01:10 PM.

Campers in the park on the foot of Wharf Street:

 

Daily Colonist
May 1, 1980

Bugged by panhandlers? Grin 'n bear it

"Campers" in park at foot of Wharf have to move on, but begging tolerated.

The bumper crop of panhandlers that has shown up in downtown Victoria with the spring blossoms may be here to stay awhile...

As four business-oriented organizations turned to city hall and police for action Wednesday, the word was that little could be done about the situation.

"It's been a continuing problem around here," said a sympathetic Victoria police spokesman. "They can sit out in front of the liquor store on Yates Street asking for money as you pass and there's no law to deal with it. They took away the vagrancy charge years ago."

If the person putting the hammer on you is carrying a weapon or grabs you in a way that would constitute assault, that's another matter. Or if he gets in your way and impedes your travel, he can be charged with causing a disturbance.

The groups seeking help maintain that the normally pretty face of the city is being given an ugly look by the unwanted people of the street.

"They're turning the city of gardens into skid road..."

The complaint is that Victoria has been invaded earlier than usual by bothersome panhandlers. The problem is compounded by drunks.

Of the panhandlers, Acs says: "Some of them get quite belligerent if you refuse."

Philip Holmes, president of the business association, believes council should bring in a tough bylaw giving police power to deal effectively with the situation.

Information centre officials say they will send a letter of protest to city council, particularly because of verbal assaults on female staff members.

Included in complaints to council are stories about beggars walking into the Causeway tourist bureau to bother visitors, and drunks shouting obscenities and urinating in public.

Check this out from May 3, 1980:

 

"We're not beggars"

...one of a group of young people identified as campers in a story about panhandlers... denied he and his friends are beggars. "We were just resting in the park when a photographer came up and asked to take our picture," he said.

*****

 

Daily Colonist
May 1, 1980

Partial merger study started by area police

Talks have begun on partial amalgamation of services provided by Greater Victoria's five municipal police forces.

The first meeting of mayors and police chiefs of Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt and Central Saanich took place Tuesday and another meeting is to be held within the next 10 days.

...no definite conclusions were reached at the opening meeting...

...little money could be saved by centralizing selected services, but he stressed that the public would get better and more efficient service.

Edited by aastra, 11 June 2019 - 10:18 AM.

no definite conclusions were reached

 

Official Motto of the City of Victoria. 

Or in Latin:

CERTO CONCLUDERE PERVENTUM

 

 

Daily Colonist
May 1, 1980

...Talks have begun on partial amalgamation of services provided by Greater Victoria's five municipal police forces.

Whoo-hoo! Less than a year until we can celebrate the 40th anniversary of those talks. 

It was a simpler time on the quiet streets of Victoria:

 

Daily Colonist
November 3, 1979

Tragedy averted at shop

A 21-year-old-man who threatened self-immolation early Friday morning in a coffee shop was stopped by two cool but quick-thinking Victoria police officers.

The constables... grabbed a lighter from the gasoline-soaked man after a tense conversation which lasted about five minutes failed to break a stalemate.

The incident began at the Gorge Mohawk self-service gas station at 510 Gorge Road East about 1:40am when the man bought 83 cents worth of gasoline and casually poured it all over himself...

He then went to Coffee Mac's at 617 Gorge Road East, where he took a seat in a rear booth.

...(constables) Stiff and Tugwell arrived to find the man sitting with a butane lighter in his right hand, thumb on the flint wheel...

There were about 20 other customers who watched in silent horror...

...Stiff manoeuvred his arm around the man, grabbed his hand, and managed to push his thumb off the lighter.

I'd be interested in hearing more about The Adventures of Constables Stiff and Tugwell.

Edited by Rob Randall, 11 June 2019 - 10:43 AM.

... the man bought 83 cents worth of gasoline and casually poured it all over himself...

You couldn't afford to self-immolate these days.  Have to electrocute yourself at an EV charging station instead.

I'd be interested in hearing more about The Adventures of Constables Stiff and Tugwell.

A Chuck Tingle police procedural novel...

It's interesting how boosting the population of downtown itself was never on the radar. Even now it's only just beginning to register with many people.

Note yet another one of those predictions that we still see today: "If this happens then downtown is dead for certain."

 

Daily Colonist
May 3, 1980

 

Old Town shops on line -- Bawlf

If Saanich goes ahead with its plans for two major shopping centres, Victoria might as well push a bulldozer through Old Town, because what little economic strength and vitality it has now, will be sapped from it.

That gloomy prediction comes from Victoria developer Sam Bawlf...

"...I can see the undoing of at least 10 years of work," Bawlf said.

That undoing... includes the vociferous opposition to the proposed Wharf Street convention centre, Saanich's plans for major shopping centres at Tillicum and Broadmead, and the lack of intelligent response by Victoria to the threats.

He said the two shopping centres... would kill not only Old Town but threaten the very survival of the city's economic core.

"...900,000 square feet. That's the equivalent of the retail space of the entire downtown area," Bawlf said.

He recalled having warned the Victoria Chamber of Commerce three years ago of the threat to the city core by outlying shopping centres.

"...the economic vitality of the city centre will be bled off and with it the cultural vitality," he said.

"Old Town has struggled to succeed and the only redeeming feature has been the magnetism of the downtown department stores," he said.

"...the moment the two major department stores open branches in outlying shopping centres, they'll alter the area's trade pattern radically."

"People will go shopping in the new outlying stores. They won't have that meal downtown. They won't buy anything at the smaller stores in the downtown core," he said.

"And the people who want to create a Beacon Hill Park on the waterfront don't understand that a city's economic, cultural and historic demands can't be met by a Beacon Hill Park," he said.

Edited by aastra, 11 June 2019 - 11:12 AM.

 

the vociferous opposition to the proposed Wharf Street convention centre...

Well this must have worked, since we still have those vibrant heritage parking lots along Wharf Street today.