Pantages Theatre at risk . . .

[Denis Salter]

Dear Colleagues, if the photo doesn't come through, go to
http://www.theprovince.com/Vancouver+Pantages+Theatre+among+Canada+endangered+historic+buildings/1768400/story.html
There is a photogallery of other endangered historic buildings in the country.
Denis.

Vancouver's Pantages Theatre among Canada's Top 10 endangered historic buildings


By Laura Stone, The ProvinceJuly 8, 2009




Pantages Theatre, 152 East Hastings St., Vancouver. After three years of negotiation, a redevelopment plan for this historic theatre was scuttled last September when Vancouver City Council rejected a deal allowing the developer to transfer bonus density to another site. Now for sale, the potential purchaser appears uninterested in retaining the building.
Photograph by: Patrick Gunn, Heritage Vancouver
Tony Pantages was sitting in his 100-year-old house in Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood when he heard the news about the 101-year-old theatre he has fought his whole life to save. 

The Pantages Theatre - built by his great-great-uncle, Alexander Pantages, in 1907 and opened in 1908 - is tenuously holding on to its title as the oldest vaudeville theatre in North America. 

It was listed Tuesday on the Heritage Canada Foundation's list of 10 most-endangered historic Canadian buildings. 

The list's goal is to bring national attention to sites that are neglected, lack funding, have development problems and "weak legislation." 

Which only reminded Pantages of what he may have already lost. 

"I've got a two-year-old daughter, and my dream was that, by the time she was 10, I could walk her from Strathcona to Main and Hastings for her to go to theatre classes at the Pantages," said the 45-year-old filmmaker. 

"And that requires more than just saving a theatre. It requires revitalizing a neighbourhood." 

The heritage list comes about a year after plans to revamp the theatre - which once hosted Charlie Chaplin and Jack Dempsey before turning into an art-house cinema in the 1970s - fell through. It was last used in 1994. 

The Pantages Theatre Arts Society formed four years ago, with the goal of renovating the building into a 650-seat theatre, with a 99-seat rehearsal space, two new lobbies and an art gallery. 

There would have also been 136 units of new affordable housing attached. 

Brent Toderian, Vancouver's planning director, called the $40-million-to-$60-million draft plan "too rich for our blood" and said it was never formalized. 

Penny Ballem, Vancouver city manager, said there are no current commitments to fund the theatre. 

"We're looking into it. We know it's important and these things are very, very costly. So the city is exploring what options there are," she said. 

Pantages isn't sure when, if ever, the theatre will be used again. 

"There's this real sense of Vancouver having forgotten to knit its history through its architecture," he said. 

"Our theatre is something that's probably the last touchstone to the old Vancouver and the old entertainment world of Vancouver." 

The Pantages family, which once had 72 vaudeville theatres across North America, has not owned the building for more than 50 years. 

Current owner Marc Williams has done "everything he can to help us out," said Pantages. 

He doesn't know who would buy the property for a theatre. 

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service




Pantages Theatre, 152 East Hastings St., Vancouver. After three years of negotiation, a redevelopment plan for this historic theatre was scuttled last September when Vancouver City Council rejected a deal allowing the developer to transfer bonus density to another site. Now for sale, the potential purchaser appears uninterested in retaining the building.
Photograph by: Patrick Gunn, Heritage Vancouver




 

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"In my work, there are only my expectations and I can't let anybody in, even though I am writing for you, hoping that you come in and help me with this book. That's the only way I can do it. It's the liberation for me, it's the freest place I know. You know, the freedom of the mind." Toni Morrison. 
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"Our devices for mincing human flesh are part of an international machinery. The whole society is militarized, the state of exception is made permanent, and the repressive apparatus is endowed with hegemony by the turn of a screw in the centers of the imperial system." Eduardo Galeano
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Denis Salter
McGill
853 Sherbrooke St. West
Montreal, QC
H3A 2T6



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