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The Squamish First Nation is going to reclaim its ancestral village in the heart of Vancouver by putting up two major condo towers that will block views to English Bay and the mountains and dramatically change the city skyline.

An early draft of the development proposal features 35-storey and 28-storey condo towers on the south end of the Burrard Bridge, exactly where a giant billboard was erected by the first nation a few months ago. It will fundamentally block the view corridor the City of Vancouver has preserved for decades.

The development, which also dramatically ramps up the density of Kitsilano, will bring an additional 2,000 parking spots and offices that will house thousands of workers. It’s a real-estate play that could near the $1-billion range and generate massive profits.

It’s hard to fault the Squamish for thinking big. Like any developer, they want to squeeze as much profit out of the land as possible, which means density and height…

Posted by: Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
Date: May 20, 2010

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At 7 p.m. on Thursday, a two-hour symposium was held in the subterranean Robson Square theatre to discuss the burning civic question of, Whither the Vancouver Art Gallery? Two mind-numbing concept-filled hours later, nothing had been settled except I definitely had a headache. For this, I missed 30 Rock.

Here’s an important fact about that evening:

It was exactly 46 minutes into the proceedings before one of the five panellists deigned to mention the issue of money, and then only in passing — which was odd because, as we all know, art is about money.

In this case, the VAG’s desire to relocate to the block just east of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre would demand a whack of it, somewhere in the range of $350 million, give or take a king’s ransom.

Is such a sum problematic? No, we have been told. A couple weeks ago, developer Michael Audain, chair of the art gallery relocation committee, assured the editorial board of The Sun that raising it was not at all a difficulty; that with the $50 million the provincial government had already promised for a new gallery, and the $40 million the committee had lined up in pledges, the rest could be made up by private donation. Audain travels in rarefied company…

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Posted by: Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
Date: May 22, 2010