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Losing the Hudson's Bay building would be absolutely catastrophic for downtown. The area east of there is already struggling thanks to the ongoing construction at Glenbow, Stephen Ave and the Arts Commons/Olympic Plaza, and losing the most significant heritage asset on the street would be yet another blow. The office market is still shit, and the residential market is oversaturated, so it would likely end up being a parking lot for many years, which is simply not acceptable if we are to maintain a healthy, thriving downtown.
 
Even if they want a parking lot in the interim (policy says there is supposed to be no new parking lots downtown, but as I have ranted before, policy seems pretty fluid), hopefully they do something like that that I saw in Providence, Rhode Island with the facade:
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MichaelS said:
Even if they want a parking lot in the interim (policy says there is supposed to be no new parking lots downtown, but as I have ranted before, policy seems pretty fluid), hopefully they do something like that that I saw in Providence, Rhode Island with the facade:
www.google.ca

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www.google.ca www.google.ca
Click to expand...
Ah yes, the "Poland 1946" treatment...

Just kidding, it's better than knocking it down completely, I agree.
 
I'm sure renovating the Bay building would cost a lot of money, but I'm sure there are options that would allow it to be cheaply done. It's an old building, but until the Bay's bankrupcty, it was still a functioning department store.

Maybe there's an option to keep it as is and turn it into an 'Art Central' type building? Maybe another option is gutting the interior and turning it into warehouse type loft space?

I'm not an architectural expert, but I'm confident there are solutions that won't cost 100's of millions, they might be simple ones, but they'd be better than a tear down.
 
I think if the city doesn't buy the property it's most likely getting demolished. I would hope that if it does get demolished though, that the city would require the facade including the arcade and pillars to be retained. Perhaps then a more ambitious proposal for the site can be built including the old facade into it's design.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I'm not an architectural expert, but I'm confident there are solutions that won't cost 100's of millions, they might be simple ones, but they'd be better than a tear down.
Click to expand...
Keeping the building up can be done for far less than hundreds of millions. The cost scale is determined by how developed the new build needs to be. A new Alberta university of the arts campus would be a probably in hundreds of millions. Converting to simple loft space would be far less.
Even a Ruby Liu retail type plan would probably be a lot less. When they’re talking hundreds of millions they are talking about a complete redevelopment.
 
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