Gastown’s famed “sawtooth” streetscape – which boasts a variety of roof heights – is also under threat as developers build up to the historic area’s maximum building heights.Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail
Vancouver's meteoric real estate market is hitting all-time highs and the push to cash in, or the inability to keep up, is threatening some of the city's landmark buildings and neighbourhoods.
Heritage Vancouver is about to hit the road with its 2015 Top10 Watch List bus tour, and among the most endangered stops are Gastown, Commercial Drive, East Hastings, Point Grey Secondary School, St. Paul's Hospital and more.
According to Heritage Vancouver's George Challies, high property values, shrinking congregations and reduced incomes are pushing church organizations to sell some of their properties, and the difficulty of adapting heritage churches to other uses has put buildings such as Oakridge United – where there's a proposal to build a six-storey residential building – under threat of demolition.
Gastown's famed "sawtooth" streetscape – which boasts a variety of roof heights – is also under threat as developers build up to the historic area's maximum building heights. At the same time, Commercial Drive, which owes much of its eclectic flavour to its quirky mix of buildings and businesses, is under threat as unremarkable low-rise condo buildings slowly take over.
Other decisions are more directly political, with St. Paul's Hospital once again facing an uncertain future and slim education budgets threatening historic schools.
"The real poster child for this year is Point Grey Secondary School, which is a pretty impressive poster child, and people probably thought it would be safe," says Mr. Challies, who adds that the schools are neighbourhood cornerstones, and represent a time when impressive levels of funding were devoted to public education.
"But frankly nothing is safe from the school board, which has a bad habit of letting heritage buildings deteriorate until they are more difficult to renovate, and then arguing it would cost too much money to both renovate and seismically upgrade."
Led by heritage expert Donald Luxton, the four-hour bus tour also takes participants to residential stops including the innovative Marine Gardens townhouse complex – considered a model of both dense and livable design – and talks about the vanishing legacy of architect C.B.K. Van Norman, who was known as one of the fathers of modern architecture in the city.
Other stops include Vancouver's disappearing industrial heritage along Terminal Avenue and two stretches of East Hastings, which are under threat as the city continues to move east.
"Vancouver is very new in the history of the world, but it is still over 125 years old and the roots of the city can get lost in the rush for development," says Mr. Challies. "And there is more to a city than condominiums."