Sears Canada's plan to close its flagship store above Vancouver's Pacific Centre in October has unleashed a flood of ideas for the best use of one of Vancouver's most central and accessible sites.
Cadillac Fairview has thus far been silent on its plans for the property, which, together with part of Pacific Centre, has an assessed value of $288.3 million. Ideas for how the site could best be used include:
•allowing the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) to expand from its Robson Street site via sky-bridge to either upper floors of the current Sears building or to a new art gallery on part of the Sears site;
•using a winning concept in the Vancouver Public Space Network's recent people's choice award contest that used the southern half of the Sears site as part of a public square and added density to the northern half;
•renovating the site to make way for street-facing shops and splitting the current structure into two parts to allow for a department store on lower floors and the University of British Columbia on the upper floors as an expansion of its Robson Square campus; and
•replacing the building with a higher density mixed-use office and residential tower built in exchange for community amenities.
"I would be disappointed if the existing building, as is, just received new tenants," Toderian UrbanWORKS owner and former city planner Brent Toderian told Business in Vancouver.
"I've heard it referred to as one of the worst buildings in the city, and I would agree with that. It's not just the blandness and whiteness of the architecture. It's how the building relates to its context. It's a very non-urban building."
Rennie Marketing owner Bob Rennie said Cadillac Fairview should be encouraged to think creatively about redeveloping the site, but not just by city staff.
"The business community and the VAG could be proactive," he said. "I'm sure, at some level, someone at the mall is saying, 'Gee, if the Four Seasons Hotel is going to rebuild, what if they did it here?'"
Rennie added that the VAG's aspirations to get enough public funding and enticements such as free rent at a facility built at Larwill Park are untenable given the global economic climate.
"Governments don't have the money that they used to," Rennie said.
He wants city and VAG staff to "exhaustively" consider having VAG occupy part of the Sears site along with other options.
So does Geller Group president and real estate consultant Michael Geller.
"You always have to have fallback options that are in the interest of the city," he said of the VAG potentially moving to the Sears site.
VAG director Kathleen Bartels confirmed to BIV that her gallery contracted California architect Michael Maltzan in 2004 to investigate the idea of a sky-bridge in addition to other concepts for expansion. But Geller said other developments, such as two towers, could also be built on the Sears site given that there has been a long-term trend of increasing downtown density.
Bonus density could be granted to Cadillac Fairview to build an office and a residential tower in exchange for upgrading the way the site integrates with the street.
Urbanics Consulting Ltd. president Phil Boname told BIV last year that if Sears left its Granville Street site, Cadillac Fairview would opt for something similar to the multi-tower, mixed-use Telus Garden development slated for the block bounded by Robson, Seymour, West Georgia and Richards streets. •
