$26M plan would restore Vancouver’s aging Pantages Theatre
Built in 1907 at East Hastings near Main Street. The Pantages Theatre is Canada’s oldest surviving vaudeville theatre. There are plans to fully restore the Pantages Theatre.
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A group of Vancouver artists and community activists has unveiled a plan to restore the aging Pantages Theatre in the city’s Downtown Eastside as a performance space.
Built in 1907, the Pantages is showing the effects of age and neglect.
But the Pantages Theatre Arts Society has plans for a $26-million renovation that will turn it into a home for the City Opera of Vancouver, the Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Vancouver Moving Theatre.
“I have to say, as you look around, it’s rough,” society chair Peter Fairchild said this week, looking at the peeling paint and the rotting boxes and balcony of the old theatre.
“It will either be restored or it will be torn down. This is our last, best opportunity to restore it and make it work for all of Vancouver, so I’m really counting on support to make that happen,” he told CBC News.
Someone threw a parking meter through the roof of the Pantages recently, causing $60,000 in damage.
At an event featuring some of Vancouver’s finest performers on Wednesday, the audience had to sit on folding chairs on the plywood floor.
But the plan is to both restore the former glory of the Pantages — the oldest vaudeville theatre in Canada and the second of 72 theatres built by Alexander Pantages in North America — and to bring it up to date.
Under the proposal, it would have a 650-seat main house, a 99-seat black-box theatre and rehearsal space, an art gallery, and a new lobby and elevators. The plan also calls for modern wiring and lighting, a movie screen and back-of-seat titling in English, French and Chinese, with the capacity for five more languages.
The owner of the building, developer Marc Williams, is backing the project, which he describes as a way of restoring a neighbourhood in a troubled part of the city.
The plan includes creating 136 housing units, built on adjacent land also owned by Williams. He wants to turn those over to a non-profit housing group.
“I’d like to emphasize that no one, not one single person, will be displaced by this project,” Williams said. “No one lives here now and we want to contribute housing and a theatre to this neighbourhood and the city.”
The city of Vancouver has yet to approve Williams’ business plan for the site.
The project would be partly financed by bonus density transfers — by donating this property, Williams could build bigger projects elsewhere in the city.
But the restoration is dependent on getting substantial funding from all three levels of government and having a successful public fundraising campaign.
Arts groups point out that Vancouver needs performance space, especially with the development of new arts projects that will accompany the 2010 Olympic Games.
At the Wednesday soiree, bandleader Dal Richards recalled the days when his family would come downtown on a Saturday afternoon to shop at Woodwards and take in a show at the Pantages Theatre.
“I loved what I saw on stage when the house lights when up and the orchestra started in the pit. I thought that was heaven, and it was probably the beginning of my career,” he said.
Fairchild said he realizes he has a big task ahead, but he said it could be good for the city.
“As you know, historically, this is the heart of Vancouver. This is where Vancouver started, so both historically and geographically we want to make this the centre of Vancouver again,” he said.