THE CITY I Icon will be refurbished or replaced, but it will be back
John Mackie
Sun
The ‘W’ was lifted from its tower Friday and brought down to the ground on Abbott Street. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
They took the Big W sign down off the Woodward’s building Friday. The old Woodward’s is now officially gone; the new Woodward’s is on the way.
Taking the Big W down took several hours of careful preparation and a $2-million crane, fully extended to almost 100 metres. Just after 3 p.m., the crane lifted the nearly 2,000-kilogram civic icon up, swung it over, then gently lowered it down to the street. Then it was trucked to the Pattison Sign Group, which built it back in 1956.
If it’s in good enough shape, the sign will be restored and lifted in 2009 back onto the roof of the original 1903 Woodward’s building on Hastings. If it’s too far gone, it will be replaced by a replica.
“I feel like crying,” said Dee Dee Nelson, one of about 100 people who watched the Big W come down. “It looks like a spaceship. Oh golly, it’s awesome. I hope they can bring it back.”
The Big W does look a little rough up close. Five decades of exposure to the elements has bleached its red paint orange, and in some spots the paint has worn off altogether. But it still looks quite solid, and totally cool.
It also didn’t want to come off. The sign was originally slated to come down at noon, but it was too well-attached.
“When they tried to lift it the first time, it didn’t come off the way the mechanical contractor thought it was going to,” explained Bob Fairbank of Eagle West Cranes. “The pin that was holding it up there was binding the bottom section, and they had to undo the 24 bolts that were holding it on to the tower. They had to cut all the bolts off.”
It cost about $100,000 to take the five-metre-high sign down.
The removal marks the start of a $4-million demolition of most of the Woodward’s building.
The original-six storey building at the southeast corner of Hastings and Abbott is being retained, the rest is being demolished. A former owner spent $2 million restoring the brickwork on the parts of the building that are being knocked down, but no restoration work was done on the 1903 building, which is now the only part being saved.
The new Woodward’s site will cost $300 million to build. It will include four buildings: new 43- and 32-storey towers on Cordova,a new nine-storey building and the heritage building.
All 536 condos for sale in the development have already been sold, and there will be another 200 non-market rental units. Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Art will move into the new Hastings building, and there will also be retail space on the main floor of some buildings, plus some offices above.
Former city councillor Jim Green was a key figure in the redevelopment. He feels its success shows how the Downtown Eastside can be renewed without displacing area residents.
“I think this is the way development must be done in the future,” Green said. “It’s no longer either/or, or ‘these win and these lose.’ It has to be reciprocal development.”
Architect Gregory Henriquez thinks the Big W remains a potent symbol for the city. The department store that built it may have closed in 1993, but when the sign returns to Hastings Street in 2009, it will signify a new life for the Woodward’s site, and its neighbourhood.
“The Big W is a civic symbol of an institution which once represented a very special part of all our lives,” said Henriquez, whose firm designed the new site. “I think what’s neat here is that we’re really trying to replace [Woodward’s department store] with a new economic anchor, a new social anchor, a new cultural anchor for this neighbourhood, which is something all of Vancouver hopefully will be able to enjoy and embrace.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006