I Am Skooter	«07. 3.10 . home . 07. 4.10»
So here's us, on the raggedy edge.

Vancouver’s Pantages Theatre will Disappear

Vancouver’s Pantages Theatre will be torn down, a victim of the savage environment that this city’s Downtown East Side has become.

Roof damage caused when thieves dropped a parking meter from the neighbouring building has allowed water to seep into the theatre, causing much of the interior to rot.

There was some hope to restore the theatre, though even without the current damage the cost would have been prohibitive and it’s hard to imagine where the audience might have come from. The Firehall Arts Centre is just around the corner: a tiny venue, it attracts a dedicated crowd of live theatre lovers. The restored Rickshaw Theatre now operates as a live music venue in the same neighbourhood, but the acts are far from the mainstream. Neither of these audiences would have been large enough to support a costly renovation such as the Pantages.

Advocates for the DTES like to point out that it’s a neighbourhood, a community like no other where people help take care of each other in a place where no one else will. It’s also a neighbourhood that continues to eat itself. It’s hard to imagine a solution to this. It’s hard to see the end.

People cite the Woodward’s building as an example of what can work, and how great buildings can can help build neighbourhoods. The problem is Woodward’s doesn’t work: it’s a falacious example. A seemingly impossibly tall tower of glass and concrete is not a part of the neighbourhood. The residents may walk its streets but that’s all they do: they aren’t part of the community, sheltered in their half million dollar accommodations while people below them live in tents and out of shopping carts.

It would have been nice to have another theatre venue in town. It would have been nice to have another beautiful restoration in the Downtown East Side, because there are (or were) beautiful old buildings in the Downtown East Side.

It wouldn’t have mattered though. The theatre is too close to the street, and neighbourhood would have eaten it again eventually.

Posted by skooter at 3:20 PM This entry is filed under Vancouver.
This entry is tagged: Downtown Eastside, Homelessness, Pantages Theatre, Vancouver

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