The Fraser Warehouse and the Caire and Grancini Warehouse (also known as the Northern Junk Buildings).
The Architect's vision for the Northern Junk Buildings as seen from Wharf and Pandora.
FACADISM IN OLD TOWN VICTORIA
We have heard that at next week’s meeting of the Committee of the Whole, the Victoria City Council will again consider setting a date for a Public Hearing regarding the rezoning of the Fraser Warehouse and the Caire and Grancini Warehouse (also known as the Northern Junk Buildings).
The question of holding a public hearing had been brought up at the meeting of June 11, 2020 and the Council was not satisfied with the proposal and send it back to the Planning department and the Developer. Council had concerns with the treatment of the historic façade and the developer has now tried to deal with these concerns and has resubmitted the project to the Committee of the Whole.
Unfortunately, neither Council or the developer has dealt with our concerns which are the placing of a four-story modern building on top of two of the oldest buildings in downtown Victoria.
The developer hopes to convince Council that this addition is justified as:
The city will gain 47 rental units. These are not affordable units, as a matter fact, the developer has conceded that these units will be rather expensive due to the waterfront site. These will be market price units
In their proposal, the developer frequently comments upon how, if this proposal is accepted by the Victoria City Council, the heritage building will be restored. This is a heritage designated building that, for the past 10 years, the developer has failed to maintain properly. All heritage designated buildings should be regularly maintained and upgraded. This building has broken windows, water entry, and layer upon layer of graffiti.
The development will allow the extension of the David Foster Walkway. While this is true, such an extension will also benefit the developer as additional access to commercial space will be created in conjunction with the walkway.
In Truth:
The proposal makes a mockery of the City of Victoria Old Town Design Guidelines by placing a four-storey addition on the top of the heritage buildings. The proposal ignores the recommendations for height and set-backs.
The developer states that “Whereas, a typical addition to a heritage building might be smaller in scale, the context of the buildings within the generally 5-storey Old-town fabric suggests that a one or two-storey addition would seem out of scale with the surroundings.”
This ignores the disruptive scale of a four-storey addition on top of historic one-storey buildings.
The developer wants a height variance. The property sits within the Inner Harbor Heritage District which stipulates that “No building may extend more than 8 m above Wharf Street.” The developer proposes that, for their building, this be increased to 17 m above Wharf Street. Instead of being about 26 feet high above Wharf Street, the developer wants the rehabilitated building to be more than 48 feet high. This is rather a large variance and should not even be considered.
As we all know, there are, along the west side of Wharf Street, buildings of varying heights, a variation that exists throughout Old Town. But each new development of addition to an existing building wants to build up to the maximum thus obscuring the one of tshe defining characteristics of the area – a variance of height.
Council must send this back to the Planning Department. This site warrants a restoration, not the sacrilege of facadism.
OLD TOWN A NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
Even as we express concerns about the proposal for the Fraser Warehouse and the Caire and Grancini Warehouse (also known as the Northern Junk Buildings), the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has erected a commemoration plaque at Government and Wharf Street honouring Victoria’s Old Town as a national historic site.
The text reads “OLD TOWN VICTORIA. – Old Town took shape during Victoria’s rise to prominence in the mid-19th century when it was an important point and commercial gateway that link the Pacific Rim to the interior of British Columbia. It was built within the Coast Salish territory of the Lekwungem and W̱SÁNEĆ nations, on the grounds of a former Hudson’s Bay trading post. Old Town encompasses the oldest surviving Chinatown in Canada, the waterfront warehouses and wharves that evoke the enterprise and rapid growth that followed the gold rush era, and the richly designed brick buildings that give the old commercial area an air of permanence.”
One of the more popular videos from the Capital Commission is this about another National Historic Site - Chinatown
A commitment to heritage preservation is not facadism. Facadism is merely a token - it almost says history was once here - see the debris left behind. If the building represents our history, if it reflects why the buildings matter, then it is worth saving in its entirety.
Christopher Cheung,
The Tyee, January 25, 2019