[Viva] Fwd: FW: Paint the Pantages for 100% Social Housing! Action this Thursday, 3pm

Wed May 11 14:07:39 PDT 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ross Harvey <rossh at positivelivingbc.org>
Date: Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:43 AM
Subject: FW: Paint the Pantages for 100% Social Housing! Action this
Thursday, 3pm
To: Positive Living BC Group <group at positivelivingbc.org>

FYI

Ross Harvey

Executive Director

Positive Living BC

1107 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor

Vancouver, BC   V6B 5S8

t. 604.893.2252

f. 604.893.2251

c.604.788.9111

1.800.994.2437

www.positivelivingbc.org <http://www.bcpwa.org/>

*From:* Carnegie Action [mailto:carnegie.action at shawlink.ca]
*Sent:* May-10-11 7:22 AM
*To:* 'Carnegie Action'
*Subject:* Paint the Pantages for 100% Social Housing! Action this Thursday,
3pm

**please forward widely**

Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council community action alert for social
housing and against condo gentrification

PANTAGES IS OURS!

Paint & Petition the Pantages Theatre for 100% social housing now!

THURSDAY MAY 12

3PM

Outside the PANTAGES THEATRE

(150 E. Hastings)

*Paint, brushes, petitions, and pamphlets provided! Bring your dreams,
ideas, and community creativity!*

Rumours and worries about the future of the Pantages Theatre site are flying
wildly around the neighbourhood. The theatre site is bigger than than
already significantly sized theatre itself. One developer-investor owns all
the sites between the Regent and the Brandiz Hotels -- almost all of the 100
block of East Hastings! This owner, Mark Williams of Worthington Properties,
has twice tried to sell the Pantages sites to the city and the city has
twice refused the offer. Williams has recently been granted a demolition
permit and has had all but the frontages of the adjoining buildings
levelled. He said he plans to knock down the Pantages itself soon.

The Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council is concerned that after the
demolitions will come the condos. We believe it is very important that we
come together to say clearly that the Pantages Theatre site is an asset of
the low-income community in the DTES and that we demand the city buy it and
designate it for 100% resident controlled social housing. When we come
together on this clear demand -- especially if agencies can support
residents and refuse to work with developers on a "social mix" project here
like the model at Woodward's -- we can win this site for resident controlled
social housing for the community.

On Thursday DTES community residents will gather at the Pantages Theatre to
paint its walls with visions of what the building should be and how it can
further enrich our community…  because Pantages belongs to the DTES, not
developers!

WHY THE PANTAGES SITE ONE OF DNC'S 10 SITES FOR 2011

In the fall of 2010 when we chose 10 SITES in the DTES for the city to buy
and designate for 100% social housing before the next municipal election we
put the Pantages Theatre on our list and said it is one of the most
important. There are three major reasons that we consider Pantages to be
important:

1) Condos at Pantages would be a gentrification bomb in the heart of the
DTES

We DTES residents often feel like we live on a chessboard in a game of real
estate development. The Woodward's development sparked a front of
gentrification in the western part of the DTES and gave a burst of
confidence to developers that they could make a lot of money by building
along Hastings from Cambie. The ripple effects of their gentrification drive
there has crept along Hastings and Cordova in the form of hip restaurants
and fancy boutiques that have displaced low-income serving stores. City
Hall's recent passage of heights increases in Chinatown has opened a front
in our struggle against gentrification to the south. The 100 Block of East
Hastings is a symbolically important area in the fight for our community and
we have to do everything we can to keep it as a low-income friendly area
that is free of condos and yuppies. We suspect that's why the city refused
to buy the Pantages site when it was offered to them; they think market
condos at Pantages could encourage market condo development in the DTES.

The symbolic importance of Pantages (in the eyes of the city as well as of
the low-income community here) is also why DNC feels that we have to fight
for Pantages to be 100% resident controlled social housing and not a "social
mix" project like Woodward's, or an "affordable condo" project like at 60 W.
Cordova. Developers have agreed to work with the city on "social mix"
projects and experiments like 60 W. Cordova (which city councillors called
the "future" of "affordable housing in the DTES) especially when they think
they could not sell a normal condo project in the area. Although it might be
tempting, and city council and others will definitely tell us that we have
to be "realistic" and accept whatever we can get, we cannot afford to settle
for anything less than 100% social housing at the Pantages site. *Any*
market condos on the 100 block could open the rest of the 100 block and the
rest of the neighbourhood to market condo speculation.

2) Pantages is part of the low-income community's historic claim to the DTES

Like Woodward's before its development as a "social mix" condo project, the
Pantages Theatre is a symbol of the low-income community's place in the
Downtown Eastside. Cultural groups have rallied for years to demand the
Pantages reopen its doors as an arts centre in and for the neighbourhood
while the owner, a non-resident investor, has sat on it and let it decay to
the point where it has become beyond repair. In a familiar story for DTES
residents, after making the building condemnable, the owner is seeking to
profit from its condemnation. The low-income community has been excluded
from the Pantages Theatre for years by a real estate speculator that has
made it empty and "abandoned". Can we allow the same site to be used to
exclude the low-income community from the 100 block through gentrifying
condo development? We think that it is wrong that anyone other than the
low-income community should be allowed to live in the space that has been
left empty and decrepit in our neighbourhood for so many years. If the city
buys the site and designates it for 100% social housing it can again be a
cultural asset for the DTES community

-- a happy ending.

3) Condos in Pantages could set off condo development throughout the eastern
DTES

The Pantages Theatre is in the city's "Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer"

(DEOD) sub-district of the Downtown Eastside. DEOD zoning is important
because it is "inclusionary," which is some of the most progressive zoning
in the country. City planners we have met with say that the DEOD
inclusionary zoning is the best protection we have against the vicious
hunger of real estate developers in Vancouver. (Not their wording exactly…)
"Inclusionary zoning" in the DEOD means that any new development has to
include 20% social housing -- there can't be any pure market condo projects
in the DEOD. The result? There has not been a single condo development in
the DEOD, not even through the heights of the real estate investment boom.
If Pantages was successfully developed as a mixed condo-social housing
project it would be a model for further condo developments in the DEOD and
could unleash market development on the most sensitive and (until now)
protected area in the city.

More background info on the Pantages Theatre and the fight for social
housing:

"Pantages Theatre marked for 100% social housing," Social Housing Here,
Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council site (January 10, 2011)
http://dnchome.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/pant/

"The petition for 10 sites campaign takes off in front of Pantages Theatre,"
Tami Starlight, Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council site (January 16,
2011) http://dnchome.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/301/

"Vancouver’s historic Pantages Theatre being demolished," Georgia Straight
(April 13, 2011)
http://www.straight.com/article-386376/vancouver/pantages-theatre-demolished

*The statement from the Pantages Theatre Arts Society explaining their
vision for the theatre and why they have given up on a theatre restoration
project:

"To our many supporters," Peter Fairchild, Chair Pantages Theatre Arts
Society. (December 27, 2009) http://www.adamabrams.com/ptas/

*DNC resolution of January 8th 2011 against market development in the
neighbourhood until there is no more homelessness:

"DNC Resolution: No Market Development in the DTES," Downtown Eastside
Neighbourhood Council site. (January 16, 2011)
http://dnchome.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/308/

---

Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council (DNC) http://dnchome.wordpress.com
|  dtescouncil at gmail.com  |  604-781-7346
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/viva/attachments/20110511/ef4936f4/attachment.html>