Granville Street venue spruced up by $3-million renovation, offers live performances
Malcolm Parry
Sun
Dick Gibbons and son Matthew chose to renovate the Vogue ‘ beyond anyone’s expectations’ for live acts.
EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS APPEALING: So wrote Annie Get Your Gun composer-lyricist Irving Berlin in his show-stopping song, There’s No Business Like Show Business. It was certainly appealing to one-time civil litigator Dick Gibbons and the Whistler-based Gibbons Hospitality Group in 2005. That’s when they paid $3 million for downtown Granville Street’s shabby Vogue theatre. Their plan was to enhance the 1941-built theatre’s Art Deco style while redeveloping it as a 1,000-seat supper club like New York’s Tao or the Buddha Bar in Paris.
That dream foundered after three years of effort, when the group failed to acquire a liquor primary licence to match the many bars and clubs that surround the Vogue in Vancouver’s so-called Entertainment District. What it received was a restricted licence to serve from an hour before to an hour after live performances, but not past midnight. This is in an area where most facilities operate for up to three hours longer.
“The plain message that came to us from the city of Vancouver was that they wanted the Vogue to operate as a live theatre,” Gibbons said Tuesday. “So, we said: ‘Let’s do what they want, and upgrade it beyond anyone’s expectations.'”
That entailed a $3-million renovation, of which about $2 million has been spent already. Half went into sound, lighting and high-definition digital-projection systems. A total plumbing upgrade (including doubling washroom capacity) and what Gibbons calls Vancouver’s most fuel-efficient boiler cost $400,000. Purpose-woven Art Deco carpeting was installed and earlier fixtures renovated, including a long-painted-over chrome strip above the proscenium arch. Nine dressing rooms were renovated, along with offices for visiting production staff. A bar-equipped green room is nearing completion.
Outside, only minor tasks remain to restore the Vogue’s canopy and iconic neon sign. Walls will soon glisten under buff paint.
As work goes on, a half-dozen stage shows have sold out since July, and Gibbons said the annual budget for talent is $1 million. Productions will step up April 13, when the Burn The Floor show goes on for eight performances.
During the Olympics period, footsore folk pay $20 to watch the daylong Canadian Talent Showcase which, under agreement with the CTV network, includes hockey games projected brilliantly on a 42-foot screen.
“We’re not getting any handout from the city or government,” Gibbons said. “We’re going to operate profitably as a business enterprise without taxpayers’ money. But we do expect some modest cooperation from the city of Vancouver and the province when it comes to issues like [liquor] licensing.”
As for operating profitably, Gibbons has a rule. “We own all our real estate,” he said of the group’s 500-seat Longhorn Saloon, 330-seat Buffalo Bill’s club and 500-seat Tapley’s Pub in Whistler. That’s where Gibbons and wife Colleen moved in 1994, when son Joey and daughter Erika were ski-racing there. Joey and brother Matthew — a former 100-point centre with the Chilliwack Chiefs junior hockey team — later set up the London Tap House chain in London, Hamilton and Toronto, Ont. Including land, those facilities cost $2.5 million, $5 million and $6 million respectively. The group also owns Port Alberni‘s 50-room Hospitality Inn, which Gibbons Sr. built at age 30.
Still, owning a theatre and playing impresario is a different game entirely. As Irving Berlin also wrote: “Even with a turkey that you know will fold / You may be stranded out in the cold / Still you wouldn’t trade it for a sack o’ gold / Let’s go on with the show.”
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