Building February March 2009

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Volume 59 Number 1

february/march 2009

Editor

Peter Sobchak Upfront

Dave Gabriele Legal Editor

Jeffrey W. Lem Contributors

David Lasker, Rhys Phillips, Don Procter, David Reiner Art Director

Ellie Robinson Circulation Manager

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10. Legal: Tenant bankruptcies in the twenty-first century: The Preferred Claim / Recent changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act push landlords’ claims further down the priority ladder. By Jeffrey W. Lem and David G. Reiner

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Beijing Olympics, a headline-making Canadian presence remains in China. By David Lasker

17. Box living / A new residential-retail hybrid in Vancouver’s hip Fairview Slopes neighbourhood that weds high-end condos to an unusual bedfellow -- the big box format -- shows that a suburban mainstay now has its eyes on downtown cores. By Rhys Phillips

19. More than yellow lines on pavement / While parkade designs in Canada won’t be receiving any radical surgery, small changes may result in big improvements that fetch significant revenue for building owners. By Don Procter

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editor’s notes

Don’t bet against yourself As Pierre Trudeau once described it, “living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant – no matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Well, the elephant has certainly twitched and grunted; in fact it feels more like it has been shot in the head with an elephant gun and we’re under it as it falls.

As we all deal with the ramifications of the global economic crisis and its impact on every sector and every iteration of owners, developers and builders, we have a choice: we can believe half of Charles Dickens’ famous assertion that “it is the worst of times,” and wallow in fear and self-pity, or we can acknowledge that while these are indeed challenging times they won’t last long, and when we emerge from the end of the tunnel we’ll be better for it.

For example, while the S&P/TSX Composite fell 35 per cent in 2008, the largest calendar year decline since 1931, after every bear market when the TSX fell 20 per cent or more the Canadian market rebounded to its previous peak and subsequently rose to higher levels. And this isn’t classified information; it’s out there for anyone who wants to look at it. The trick: don’t listen to those pessimists who suggest, as pessimists always do, that this time is different and stocks and the economy won’t rebound. While there is no way to predict how long this will last, there are several reasons to believe this time won’t be any different than past ones.

For one, despite the severity of the global downturn, central banks

and governments are making bold moves to address the problems.

These moves may take some time to work, but progress is already evident. Also, interest rates are low, which historically have been a powerful force boosting the economy and stock market.

In this issue we look at new trends in retail developments, an industry that acutely feels the ebbs and flows of consumers’ shopping behaviour. Yet despite the constant reports of falling consumer confidence, retail developers are confident that things will rebound, and their optimism should be admired. “Many of the excesses that have caused our industry problems in past decades -- such as overbuilding by developers and unduly aggressive store rollouts by retailers -- have largely been reined in over the past few years,” says Mary Lou Fiala, chairman of the International Council of Shopping Centers and president of Regency Centers.

“The supply of new retail and shopping centre space coming through the pipeline is broadly in line with consumer and retailer demand -- in the U.S. as well as in Canada.”

“This is not a time for denial or delay. Do something. Give people confidence by showing confidence,” urged former U.S. president Bill Clinton during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Don’t give up. Don’t bet against yourself.

This is still a good time to be alive.” And he’s right, because how you handle this adversity will influence everything that comes to you down the road. B

Peter Sobchak

Building welcomes your opinions.

E-mail your comments to psobchak@building.ca

WATCH Toronto’s brownfield goldmine / Michael Lavelle, producer and host of the television series Going Green for Green, talks to Toronto Mayor David Miller about how the city is attempting to capitalize on its collection of vacant brownfield properties.

READ Bias Affects All People and Projects / J.F. McCarthy, author of the new book Choosing Project Success: A Guide for Building Professionals, discusses how to recognize and manage your bias, and put your experience to work.

ATTEND CanBUILD09 Canadian Brownfield Urban and Industrial Land Development Summit / April 1-2 / Toronto Managing Change in the Public Sector / April 22-23 / Toronto 12th Canadian Conference on Building Science and Technology / May 6-8 / Montreal National Green Builders Products Expo / May 27-29 / Las Vegas, Nevada

Life after the back cover...

what’s on BUILDING.CA

upfront

Global commercial property deals drop 59 per cent in 2008

NEW YORK — Real Capital Analytics, a global research and consulting firm with offices in New York City, San Jose, The Hague and London, released a report that shows a 59 per cent drop in 2008 global commercial property deals, sinking from $1.2 trillion (all figures U.S.) in 2007 to $495.9 billion. The credit crunch is the primary culprit due to the limited lending for global real estate purchases. Worldwide, hotel transactions fell 76 per cent to $30.9 billion, office sales dropped 60 per cent to $184.1 billion and retail deals declined 60 per cent to $79.9 billion.

Multi’s in-house architectural group, is responsible for concept development and creative coordination of all the Fund’s projects.

Infrastructure projects for 2009 top $61 billion

OTTAWA — Although the federal government is putting $12 billion into various infrastructure projects as part of the stimulus package, a projected $61 billion is further being spent on Canadian infrastructure in 2009. The investments are funding

Vancouver to borrow $458 million to complete Olympic Village

VANCOUVER — The government of British Columbia passed an emergency bill that allows the city of Vancouver to borrow at least $458 million more to complete the Olympic Athletes’ Village in False Creek, B.C., for the 2010 Olympics. The village, which is being developed by Vancouver’s Millennium Development, is a 1,100-unit housing project (pictured below). It was originally financed by Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based hedge fund, but cost overruns caused Fortress to stop supporting

the project last September. Vancouver responded with a $100million bailout to keep construction going and has proposed to take over project financing. The cost of the project, estimated at $875 million, coupled with the $200 million city-owned land, puts the development at about $1.08 billion. Vancouver is paying 11 per cent interest on its loan.

CPPIB invests $431 million in Turkey

TORONTO — The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is investing $431 million in the Multi Retail Turkey fund, a real estate development platform that consists of 21 completed, under construction or planned shopping centres throughout Turkey with a projected real estate value of $6.9 billion. The fund, operated by Multi Corporation, Europe’s largest retail developer based in The Netherlands, includes the 1.9 million square foot Forum Istanbul which, when opened in mid2009, will be the third largest mall in Europe.

The Multi Retail Turkey fund is focused on downtown locations in cities covering 70 per cent of the Turkish population.

Five of the shopping centres are already opened and fully leased, while eight others are under construction. Multi Turkmall, Multi’s wholly owned Turkish subsidiary, is the developer and T+T Design,

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february/march 2009

over 100 construction projects with about one-third slated for completion this year. The five highest-priced projects are within the energy sector except for the fourth position which falls to the transportation sector.

At $6.5 billion, the Romaine Hydroelectric Complex Project in Havre-Saint-Pierre, Que. (pictured above) is Canada’s largest investment for 2009. The second largest project, the Bruce A Nuclear Generating Station Restart in Kincardine, Ont., carries a price tag of $5.25 billion. In third is the $5 billion Eastmain-1A/Sarcelle/Rupert Project in Quebec which consists of building a 768-MW generating station near the existing Eastmain-1 powerhouse, and diverting part of the flow of the Rupert River.

In the transportation sector, the $2.63-billion expansion of the Spadina Subway line in Toronto is the next largest infrastructure investment. The fifth largest is the Alberta Clipper Project, a $2 billion pipeline to be built to carry 450,000 barrels of oil per day from Hardisty, Alta. into the American mid-west at Superior, Wisconsin.

Alberta had the most projects in the top 25 in terms of funding, followed by British Columbia, while Ontario has the highest number of projects overall, with 41, including 15 hospital or health-care facility expansions.

Canada repairs Afghanistan’s war-torn Dahla Dam

KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan — SNC Lavalin of Montreal is leading a $50-million project that is repairing Dahla Dam, 34 kilometres north of Kandahar City, Afghanistan, as well as a series of irrigation canals. The dam, Afghanistan’s second-largest, is in need of maintenance due to decades of war. The decrease in the capacity to regulate water flow from the dam to surrounding districts has negatively affected the irrigation of farmland and crop production.

The repair project, scheduled to be completed in 2011, will replace and repair key components to improve water flow, fix

upfront gates to control flow from the Arghandab River into the canal system, and repair the dam and canal system. The project, funded

by Canada, will provide irrigation for 10,000 hectares of land and thousands of jobs for the local population.

Niagara Region boasts two new Golds

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Two recent projects in Ontario’s Niagara Region, Southbrook Vineyards and The Ball’s Falls Centre for Conservation, have received LEED Gold certification, both firsts for the area.

Southbrook Vineyards (pictured below), a certified organic winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., recently achieved LEED Gold for its new winery building. The winery, designed by Toronto’s Diamond and Schmitt Architects in association with Enermodal Engineering of Kitchener, Ont., has already received the Award of Excellence for Architectural Design and an Award of Merit for Green Buildings from the Canadian Institute for Steel Construction.

The building’s design reduces conventional water consumption by 87 per cent and energy use by 62 per cent. This level of efficiency is achieved in many ways, including three large tanks for a rainwater capture system, on-site sewage treatment, and extensive landscaping using local plant species to eliminate the need for irrigation, a ground source heat pump system for heating and cooling and non-polluting materials, finishes, and furnishings.

Aecon to buy Edmonton’s oldest company

EDMONTON — Toronto-based construction and infrastructure development company Aecon Group is to acquire developer Lockerbie and Hole of Edmonton for $220-million to expand its operations in Western Canada, including the Alberta oil sands. The deal values Lockerbie shares at a 30 per cent premium or approximately $8 a share. The acquisition is expected to close in April.

“We believe this is a unique opportunity for Aecon to secure a leading position in the mechanical/electrical and water/wastewater markets in Western Canada, and to further build on our strength in Western Canada’s industrial markets, including the ongoing maintenance requirements of existing oil sands infrastructure, all of which we believe have significant long term growth potential,” said Scott Balfour, president and CFO of Aecon.

Founded in 1898, Lockerbie and Hole is Edmonton’s oldest company and one of the largest mechanical construction contractors in Canada, with $1.2 billion in projected future work, including $448.2 million in delayed oil sands projects.

Vancouver’s Port Metro plans $4.25 billion in expansions

Southbrook winery features a 9,600-sq.-ft. wine production facility and a separate 9,100-sq.-ft. hospitality centre which includes a special events room, a retail store and a private tasting room.

Through energy and water conservation methods, the winery will cut its energy expenditure by half and drop its water consumption by 42 per cent in comparison to conventional practices. The methods of conservation include lighting controlled by occupancy sensors, ventilation controlled by carbon dioxide sensors, increased production efficiency and well-insulated walls and roof.

The Ball’s Falls Centre for Conservation in Jordan, Ont. (pictured above) has also received LEED Gold certification for its efficiency innovations. The facility, designed by MacDonald Zuberec Ensslen Architects of St. Catharines, Ont., also in association with Enermodal Engineering, features an extensive interactive exhibit that demonstrates human impacts on the environment as well as how the building mitigates those impacts.

VANCOUVER — Port Metro Vancouver (PMV), created in 2008 with the amalgamation of the Vancouver Port Authority, the North Fraser Port Authority and the Fraser River Port Authority and one of Canada’s largest seaports, has approximately $4.25 billion worth of construction and investment planned. The largest project, which is already under construction, is the $2 billion Terminal Two, along with 250 acres of shipping container space. Slated to be completed in about eight years, Terminal Two is being developed by APM Terminals North America and Montreal-based SNC Lavalin.

A third berth at Deltaport Terminal is being developed for $450 million and planned to be in operation later this year. A $370million upgrade of the shipping facilities of the Saskatchewan potash export agency Canpotex is also underway.

Another $300 million is being spent on removing grade-level rail crossings from the township of Langley, B.C. to Deltaport and replacing them with overpasses. Other expenditures include: a $180-million facility upgrade of Canexus, a chemical company from North Vancouver; a $42.1 million expansion of The Richmond Logistics Hub, a 700-acre development where ships, trucks and trains exchange cargo; and an upgrade of the container terminal Surrey Fraser Docks for $20 million.

Trade through the port generates 132,700 total jobs across Canada and port-related activities are responsible for $10.5 billion in gross domestic product, $22 billion in economic output and $6.1 billion in wages. building

february/march 2009

legal

By Jeffrey W. Lem and david G. reiner

Tenant Bankruptcies in the Twenty-First Century: Part I, The Preferred Claim Recent changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act push landlords’ claims further down the priority ladder.

These authors will not come across as prognostication savants in “predicting” that Canada is in for a wave of retail bankruptcies.

The current economic carnage (and yes, hyperbole is allowed) will see to that. Early commentators likened our current economic crisis to the dark days of the early 1990s, but more recently, you’d be hard pressed to find any of the so-called “experts” comparing the current economic situation with anything milder than the Great Depression itself. We take little comfort from the supposed “de-coupling” of Canada’s economy from that of our neighbours to the south, and like many others, we are expecting retail to be the next big shoe to drop.

The next few editions of the legal column in Building will look at the modern law of tenant bankruptcy in Canada, starting in this article with the absolute worst case scenario -- the complete bankruptcy of a tenant (and the landlord’s resulting “preferred claim”). Part II of this series will then canvass the various strategies available to the landlord who wants to recover more than the preferred claim in bankruptcy. Part III in the

series will cover those insolvencies where the tenant continues operating as a going concern under bankruptcy protection in restructurings, proposals and plans of compromise. The fourth and final instalment of this series will cover the assignment of the lease in bankruptcy and what can happen if the lease survives the bankruptcy even though the tenant does not.

When a tenant either declares or is petitioned into complete bankruptcy, the landlord’s recourse is limited by Section 136(1) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (the “Act”), regardless of how much the landlord is actually owed by that tenant and regardless of how much economic damage that bankruptcy will cause to the rest of the retail complex. This is the provision of the Act that sets up the “cash waterfall” that controls how much of the remaining net worth of a bankrupt tenant each class of creditor is entitled to priority over. It is analogous to a totem pole, with secured creditors of the bankrupt tenant, all of whom get to be paid in full to the extent of their security before any other class of creditors can even get into line for payment. If there is more than one secured

Jeffrey W. Lem, B.Comm. (U of T), LL.B. (Osgoode), LL.M. (Osgoode), practises in the areas of commercial real estate and finance with the law firm of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, and has been called to the bar in Ontario, England and Wales. He is an executive member of the Real Property Section of the Ontario Bar Association and is editor-in-chief of the Real Property Reports, published

by Carswell Thomson Professional Publishing.

David G. Reiner, B.Comm. (Concordia), LL.B. (Osgoode) is an associate practising in the area of commercial real estate at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP and is called to the Bar in Ontario.

This article provides general information only and is not intended to provide specific legal advice.

Readers should not act or rely on information in this article without seeking specific legal advice on their particular fact situations.

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legal

creditor, then they will share their collateral in accordance with the priorities among them. Regardless of how they rank between each other, they will all be paid out in full to the extent of their security (which could be some or all of the assets of the tenant) before the other creditors will be able to collect a single dime.

After the secured creditors are all paid in full, the “preferred creditors” will then carve up the remaining assets. Preferred creditors are referred to as such because they enjoy a “preferred” status over the unsecured creditors below them. Section 136(1) of the Act actually divides preferred creditors into a series of sub-levels, with each rank having priority over those following it. Landlords, unfortunately, rank near the bottom of the preferred creditors. Greatly paraphrased, landlord claims get beat by claims for: (a) funeral and testamentary-related expenses; (b) bankruptcy administrative expenses and fees; (c) the levy payable on payments by the trustee by way of dividends or otherwise on account of the claims of any creditors; (d) unpaid wages, salaries and commissions that were not paid as secured claims; certain displaced claims arising from wage, salary and commission priorities and changes in pension and wage priorities; and certain alimony and support payments; and (e) certain unsecured municipal taxes from the two years preceding the bankruptcy. The landlords’ preferred claim, which is set out in Section 136(1)(f) of the Act, does, however, beat out preferred claims for: (g) certain legal fees that have been or are being garnished; (h) workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance and income tax withholdings; (i) certain moneys received relating to injuries to employees to which workers’ compensation legislation does not apply; and (j) all other Crown claims.

The unsecured creditors are the bottom feeders in the cash waterfall, sharing proportionately with each other in any moneys left over after all of the secured claims and all of the preferred claims have been paid. If the cash coming over the waterfall is not sufficient to pay off the secured claims and all of the preferred claims, then the unsecured creditors get nothing.

At first blush, none of this is that much different from the bankruptcy distribution scheme that existed during the last retail crash in the early 1990s. In fact, however, the priority position of the landlord is much worse now in a tenant bankruptcy than it was in the early 1990s. Since July 7, 2008, super-priority status has now been given, in respect of any federally or provincially regulated pension plans, to any unpaid: (i) deducted employee contributions; (ii) required employer contributions to a defined contribution plan; or (iii) other “normal costs” that an employer is required to pay relating to such pension plans. Collectively, these unpaid pension plan contributions will now have priority over both the secured creditors and the preferred creditors, leaving the landlord with that much less to satisfy its preferred claim.

During the last recession, such pension plan contributions (even if subject to a deemed trust under provincial pension benefits legislation) would have ranked behind the landlord’s preferred claim in a bankruptcy.

Even if there is money left to satisfy the landlord’s preferred claim, Section 136(1)(f ) imposes very severe limits on what the landlord is actually entitled to claim in preference. The landlord’s preferred claim is often referred to colloquially as the “three and three,” being the aggregate of: (i) three months of arrears of rent for the period immediately preceding the bankruptcy; and (ii) accelerated rent for up to three months following the bankruptcy (so long as accelerated rent is provided for under the lease -- but almost all modern leases do provide for accelerated rent on insolvency).

The unsecured creditors are the bottom feeders in the cash waterfall, sharing proportionately with each other in any moneys left over after all of the secured claims and all of the preferred claims have been paid.

As if to add insult to injury, the total amount payable to a landlord in preference is further limited in two other ways. Firstly, the landlord’s preferred claim cannot exceed the total value of any goods that were on the demised premises at the time of the bankruptcy. Presumably, this link between the preferred claim and the value of goods on site was intended to make the preferred claim a proxy to the levying of distress (so, if the demised premises were physically empty when the tenant went bankrupt, the landlord would not have been able to distrain anything anyway, so the entire preferred claim is nil). Secondly, if the trustee in bankruptcy occupies the demised premises for a while before disclaiming it (this interim occupation and the disclaimer/assignment process is dealt with in a subsequent instalment), any occupancy rent actually paid by the trustee is offset against any accelerated rent forming part of the preferred claim.

It will come as no surprise to Building readers that, when all of the restrictions on the preferred claim are fully factored in, the actual amount of the landlord’s preferred claim against a tenant in bankruptcy is often nil, nada, zip, donut… So much for the “preferred” claim. B building

february/march 2009

11

Images courtesy of Perkins Eastman Black

By David Lasker

Bethune would be proud

Canadian athletes made headlines for going stronger, higher and faster at the Beijing Olympics. But another Canadian team has been quietly going about its business in China in a different kind of recordbreaking enterprise, one that will have a longer-lasting impact.

To paraphrase Horace Greeley, “Go east, young man.” These days, China is where the architectural mega-project action is. Herzog and de Meuron’s “bird’s nest” National Stadium, which anchored the Beijing Olympics this past August, will likely win a spot in The Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest steel structure.

Another Guinness title will doubtless go to Shanghai International Medical Zone (SIMZ), which at 11½ square kilometres (4½ square miles) ranks as the largest medical complex in the world.

Toronto-based Perkins Eastman Black Architects led the team that won the international competition to master plan it.

The plan, inspired by tree rings, is a metaphoric medical garden conjuring up the life-giving forces of nature. The complex will comprise two 1,000-bed teaching hospitals, seven specialty hospitals and clinics, a medical school for 7,000 students, a major rehabilitation centre, a centre for medical research and development, and a large medical equipment manufacturing zone with associated research-and-development facilities. Housing for medical students and a neighbourhood for families will include town centres with children’s daycare and early-education facilities.

“SIMZ exemplifies China’s bid to seize the lead in healthcare and medical manufacturing in Asia,” says Susan Black, principal and director of Perkins Eastman Black Architects. “SIMZ represents a new model for bringing hospitals, schools, medical manufacturing and business together. The proximity of the different disciplines will help them break out of their silos. People will meet and engage in serendipitous conversations. This will foster collaboration and synergies that lead to new solutions.”

Her firm is the Toronto studio of New York-based Perkins Eastman Architects, the 10th-largest architecture firm in the world (according to British e-journal World Architecture) and one of the 25 largest interior design firms in North America (according to Interior Design). Perkins Eastman employs over 900 staff in offices

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in Arlington, Va.; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Oakland, Calif.; Pittsburgh; Stamford, Conn; and Dubai and Shanghai. Its projects range from residential and commercial conversions, hotels, retail, mixed-use and corporate offices and interiors to schools, hospitals, museums, senior living and public sector facilities.

Over 250 of Perkins Eastman staff work on healthcare design.

Black’s own innovations in the design of patient rooms for Ontario’s Trillium Health, for whom she has been designing and master planning since 1996, update the traditional semi-private and hospital ward settings to enhance privacy and amenities for patients and efficiency for caregivers.

“SIMZ is an order of magnitude bigger than anything that has come before. You just don’t see this scale of new build-out in the West,” says Black. Typically, large world-class North American medical centres such as the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., or Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, have grown incrementally and haphazardly in relatively dense urban environments over many decades.

In 2005, after two rounds of an international competition sponsored by the Shanghai municipal government and China’s Ministry of Health, Perkins Eastman Black won the commission to master plan SIMZ. The competition brief called for a design that would be “groundbreaking and of exceptional quality.”

Its lofty goals called for a world-class medical campus that would make Shanghai a destination for care, education and research; be the leading manufacturing hub for medical equipment in Asia; reverse the brain drain of Chinese doctors and scientists practicing in the West; embrace “universal design” to permit easy access by all populations and age groups; be the first very large medical campus to be planned as a coherent unit, rather than gradually expanding in a random, higgledy-piggedly sprawl; and be environmentally sensitive by incorporation bike paths,

mass transit, green roofs and other energy-saving measures.

“SIMZ is probably the biggest P3 ever imagined, providing multinational consortiums.” Black is referring to public-private partnerships, the primary means used by governments, notably Ontario and Great Britain, to build massive new infrastructure projects without racking up commensurate levels of public debt.

Indeed, some of the world’s leading medical-equipment companies are helping to fund construction of SIMZ’s manufacturing zone. Dräger Medical, for instance, a leader in anaesthetic equipment, breathing machines and infant incubators, broke ground for its 120,000-sq.-ft. facility in July. The $40-million Siemens Medical Park, combining space for 1,000 staff in R&D, manufacturing, service, sales and marketing under a single roof, has already opened. “Siemens can test its prototypes in an environment that puts specialty hospitals, doctors, medical students, and research and lab facilities at their fingertips,” Black says.

As of August 2008, roads and highways for the core area, comprising healthcare, education, manufacturing and research, were complete. Core-area buildings will be completed in 2009.

Construction on the rest of the site should finish by 2020.

Appropriately for a community based on health and wellbeing, the SIMZ master plan is a metaphoric medical garden that conjures up the life-giving forces of nature. Its concentric zones evoke growth rings in a tree. Arcs of woodland, parks, orchards, gardens and other natural features symbolically and functionally link the identity of SIMZ to nature.

Strategically placed woodlands and parks will serve as windbreaks, helping to create better microclimates within the site. The green zones will help maintain good air quality, absorbing carbon dioxide, giving off oxygen and filtering air pollution. These large

areas of open space will also provide built-in flexibility to absorb increases in growth and density without compromising the zone’s functional or design concept.

A multi-layered composition of existing canal networks, expanded waterways, lakes and road networks is incorporated in an open, flexible matrix. Whether viewed from the air, from a tall building on the campus or on the ground, the plan will offer impressive vistas.

SIMZ, adjacent to one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, symbolizes how China meets the unfamiliar challenges of modernization. For instance, since antiquity, China’s elders were always cared for as part of the extended family. But with many of the younger generation living abroad, seniors are beginning to live independently. To that end, the rehabilitation centre incorporates an 800-unit retirement centre with long-term care services and independent-living housing units. A 240-bed rehabilitation hospital will accommodate short-term stays. A spa-wellness club will provide non-clinical health and wellness programs.

Although just beginning to take shape, SIMZ is already exerting an international influence. “As one of the first conceptual medical cities in the world, our model is now being critically looked at by other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Thailand,” says Black.

“It is an ideal platform for developing nations in the Middle East and Far East that want to catch up to the Western world as quickly as possible. They want cutting-edge medical services in their own country. They want to reverse their medical and academic brain drain.”

70 years ago, Canadian surgeon Dr. Norman Bethune went east to spread the influence of Western medical awareness, and in the process became regarded as a national hero in China. Now that influence is functioning like a circle, going out and coming back. B

Previous page: SIMZ is rising on what was farmland in the Nanhui District of Shanghai. Above: The plan, inspired by tree rings, expands from its starting point in the northwest quadrant.

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february/march 2009

13

Get out and shop!

By Peter Sobchak

New retail hybrids are emerging across the country in centres that mix lifestyle and open air elements to try and gain a little edge. Are these just variations on a theme, or a new urban paradigm shift?

There are many configurations that represent the current face of the retail experience, and they are hard to pin down, running the gamut of enclosed malls, open-air plazas, big box centres, factory outlet centres, destination retail, shoppertainment, town centres, and mixed-use centres.

Recently there has been almost unrestricted suburban expansion of the big box formats such as Wal-Mart superstores and Costco warehouse clubs that operate on one level, require huge parcels of land and carry the stigma of gruesome behemoths.

But ironically, it is largely experts that seem bothered by them.

Architects, town planners, landscape architects and environmen-

talists criticize their ugliness, absence of discipline and order, waste of space, destruction of landscape, and claim that town centres are being bled dry as a consequence. On the other hand, the mayors, the inhabitants of the space-consuming housing developments and the customers of the large shopping islands, grocery megastores, DIY hypermarkets and beyond seem quite happy with the situation. At least one can park there easily.

But with times becoming leaner and consumers more fickle, the fight to become a destination retailer has grown intense, and the increasing pressure for more intelligent land use and greater connectivity between public transport and retail projects is also

Movin’ on up Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most ambitious lifestyle centre projects under development in Canada is occurring on Vancouver Island, a place known for being blissfully sheltered from the characteristic ravages of a clichéd Canadian winter – snow, cold, and, oh yeah…more snow.

But the ambitions of Uptown – a massive redevelopment of the Town & Country Shopping Centre in Saanich, the largest suburb of Victoria -- are more grandiose than just capitalizing on the island’s consistently good weather to design Main Street-oriented retailing around a public plaza and open space. The 1.3 million square foot mixed-use village-style urban neighbourhood will be built to LEED-ND (Neighbourhood Development) Gold standards (it’s currently being certified as a Pilot Project under the U.S. Green Building Council as there is no LEED-ND certification process available in Canada yet) with a number of the buildings receiving LEED-CS (Core & Shell) Gold or Silver certification.

Uptown may be the first lifestyle centre of its kind on Vancouver Island, but the island’s renowned weather doesn’t mean this format is unsuitable for the rest of Canada. “Successful open-air shopping and mixed-use projects exist across the northern U.S. states, not to mention that many of the most successful retail streets on the continent are found in the harsh climates of Boston, New York and Chicago,” says Geoff Nagle, director of development with Uptown owners Morguard Investments Limited. “Locals know how to live in their climates, and adapt

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their clothing accordingly. It is true that the temperate climate of southern Vancouver Island is exceptionally liveable, but the concept of true mixed-use urban neighbourhoods and streetfront retail is applicable across Canada. It is how we all lived until the 1950s, and makes sense from so many perspectives.”

Uptown’s budget is in excess of $300 million for the full buildout of retail and commercial space, with the proposed residential

leading to the development of more live/work/play developments. “The drive for more intensive land use is encouraging the development of mixed-use projects, as opposed to the traditional single-use retail properties,” says René Tremblay, president and CEO of Ivanhoe Cambridge. “People are tired of sitting in traffic during long suburban commutes to work and shop, giving up precious time that they feel they should be spending more productively.”

These mixed-use projects have been branded with an easierto-sell moniker – lifestyle centres -- and are being looked to as the new shopping paradigm. The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) defines this format as most often located near affluent residential neighbourhoods and catering to the retail needs and “lifestyle” pursuits of consumers in its trading area. It has an open-air configuration and typically includes at least 50,000 square feet of retail space anchored by one or more conventional or fashion specialty department stores. Other elements differentiate the lifestyle centre in its role as a multipurpose leisure-time destination, including restaurants, entertainment, and design ambience and amenities such as fountains and street furniture that aim to encourage casual browsing.

Although resoundingly popular in the United States, some argue that lifestyle centres won’t get going here, claiming outdoor concepts don’t work well in wintery climes. But there are several noteworthy projects, both completed and on the horizon, that defy this attitude. The Village at Park Royal in Vancouver is an early and successful example. Owned by Larco Investments Ltd., the project opened 35 stores spread over 244,000 square feet on 17 acres in autumn 2004, and has been a hit with customers. The Shops at Don Mills (Building, February/March 2008) in Toronto, owned by Cadillac Fairview and slated to open in April, has been drawing a lot of attention and others such as Park Place in Barrie, Ont., owned by North American Development Group, and the grandiose plans for Woodbine Live! on the north-western fringe of Toronto, owned by The Cordish Group, have generated a lot of buzz about a Canadian version of the lifestyle centre format.

“If landlords are willing to address the challenges faced by retail tenants and capitalize on the proven advantages [of lifestyle and hybrid open air centres], retailers and customers will respond favourably,” said Jeri Brodie, partner at Toronto-based Orange National Retail Group, at the ICSC New Urbanization Forum in September. “There is premium value in the mixed-use non-retail

Left & above: Uptown is a 1.3 million square foot mixed-use urban neighbourhood combining retail, office and residential attractions around a Main Street motif.

Images courtesy of Chandler Associates Architecture

space in addition to that amount. Phase one will be opening in early 2010 and full completion is scheduled for 2011.

Anchored by a redesigned Wal-Mart Supercenter, Uptown’s tenant mix will include category dominant retailers in home electronics, grocery, cosmetics, and home décor, a distinctive bookstore concept, six full-service restaurants and smaller scale increment retail stores. In addition there are nearly 3,000 parking

stalls planned, which is a retail ratio of approximately four stalls for every 1,000 square feet. This is all oriented around a grand stairway that connects the two main retail levels of Main Street and the upper Blanshard Street level.

Community features such as lush landscaping and a central open-air public plaza with an outdoor fireplace and a waterfall place emphasis on providing a broader range of leisure activities including building

february/march 2009

15

components,” said Yaromir Steiner, CEO of Ohio-based Steiner + Associates, at the same event. “The open-air component is necessary to create true public spaces and legitimize the leisure time destination role.”

But the face of modern retail hasn’t just been given a cosmetic touch-up with the lifestyle format. “Today, we describe our industry as one of retail real estate rather than just shopping centres,” says Michael Kercheval, president and CEO of the ICSC. “Undeniably, retail is the necessary and sometimes even sufficient catalyst for successful real estate development. From humble roots of stringing together a line of stores, our industry is the acknowledged leader in developing and redeveloping our towns and cities into viable commercial centres.”

The densification of existing shopping centre properties through the addition of non-retail uses such as office space and residential units has certainly become a trend, but what this

evolution seems to represents is a paradigm shift in how the industry looks upon itself. “We are discovering that far from being a simplistic bundling of land uses a successful mixed-use project embodies a thoughtful tailoring of consumer lifestyle needs within a structure that maximizes the value of its location,” says Kercheval. “A mixed-use project is more than the sum of its parts. It is a complex algorithm with compounding properties and potential pitfalls. One wise person said, ‘A project of multiple uses also means there are multiple ways for it to fail.’

A failing hotel, office, residential, or even retail component in a mixed-use development can and often will bring down the whole project. The other reality borne about by experience is that every successful true mixed-use project must have retail as its core. So rather than seeing mixed-use as a threat to the retail property business, it is the next opportunity.” And that next opportunity may change the way you shop at Wal-Mart for good. B

Left & below: Uptown’s central outdoor piazza is the knuckle connecting two levels, and is designed as a social gathering centre.

a children’s walk-through water fountain, grassy areas for sitting, a fireplace to gather around, water feature to sit next to and places for care tables, all the telltale signs of a lifestyle centre at full throttle.

Vancouver-based Chandler Associates Architecture made some selective design choices to the façades of some buildings in the interest of upgrading the palate of materials chosen. These minor changes focused on broadening the architectural styles chosen with less emphasis on historical references and a bit more modern style.

In addition, an extensive lighting design concept was developed to light the architectural façades of the buildings both on Main Street as well as on the public streets to avoid light pollution and

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light trespass, which would have been problems for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory only seven kilometres away.

But obviously combining retail, office and residential components into a framework that meets LEED standards required some creative designing and a group of stakeholders committed to the goals. LEED points for both ND and CS will be reaped by adding green roofs to several of the buildings (only one is planned to be accessible to the public) and many green walls around the perimeter of the project, particularly on some of the higher walls on the streets. Vancouver Island’s infamous heavy rainfall made implementation of rainwater harvesting a no-brainer. The plan involves storing the water from the roofs of three of the buildings on Main Street and utilizing this harvested water for landscape irrigation on Main Street. An improved pedestrian walkway network on the Blanshard Street level and additional bike storage, locker and bike facilities and more employee bike shower and change facilities are part of a larger transit system plan.

Furthermore, those tenants located in LEED-CS buildings are being encouraged to fit out their space with LEED CI (Commercial Interiors) interiors within the landlords standard lease documents. “The highly efficient HVAC, lighting, and mechanical systems being put in as part of the landlord’s work will provide financial and environmental benefits to all tenants on the site,” says Nagle. “Morguard is working with all prospective tenants to ensure they recognize the benefits of more sustainable development practices.” This has led to willingness on behalf of tenants considering locating within a LEED-CS certified building to step-up and follow through with LEED-complaint tenant improvement. A lifestyle centre that improves our life beyond just the superficial way we buy products is certainly worth having more of in this country, snow or no snow. B

Box Images courtesy of Grosvenor Canada

By Rhys Phillips

A new residential-retail hybrid in Vancouver’s hip Fairview Slopes neighbourhood that weds high-end condos to an unusual bedfellow, the big box format, shows that a suburban mainstay now has its eyes on downtown cores.

The recent completion of Grosvenor America’s The Rise, a blocksized complex that mixes three big box stores with boutique retail, design-focused residential and green building principles in the heart of Vancouver’s celebrated urban core, may set a new design standard for retail’s rapidly changing world.

This fledgling urban twist on the big box “power centre” as the preferred model for retail’s suburban built environment that itself displaced the once ubiquitous mega-mall is part of a curiously circular trend. When Canada’s first shopping centre, Ville de Saint-Laurent’s Norgate Shopping Centre (1949), opened in the post-war period, it was a glorified strip mall with parking focused on store entrances. The Don Mills Shopping Centre (1955) was the first to orient store entrances around a car-less but still open, landscaped courtyard but this was followed a year later by today’s suburban proto-typical shopping mall, a pseudo-market village characterized by hermetically sealed stores around enclosed quasipublic gathering spaces adrift in a sea of asphalt parking lots.

By 1962, even visionary Canadian urban planner Humphrey Carver accepted the inevitability of regionally scaled shopping malls in his Cities In the Suburbs, an otherwise poetic prescription for how we could construct suburbs “that make excellent places to

be remembered with warm affection.” Just over a decade later, Neil Harris in a The New Republic article used words like ambiguous, homogenous, discipline and control, but concluded that “in joining modern pleasure in large, unadorned surfaces to older, baroque theatricality, the best of these buying machines remind us, once again, that the commercial spirit has natured much of our most interesting American design.”

Those urban theorists who did see the mall as the nadir for secular public space did not foresee the emergence of the big box format and its most recent iteration, the power centre. If, as Joel Garreau generously maintains in Edge City, “malls usually function as the village squares of [the] new ‘burbs,” a defining element of the big box is the stripping away of the non-commercial, enclosed “public” galleries and interior streets that characterize the village-like mall. Often excluded from malls at the insistence of anchor department stores, big boxes emerged as stand alones featuring a broad range of discounted products (Wal-Mart or Zellers) or so-called “category killers” that sought to control specific product markets (Toys ‘R Us, Home Depot, Best Buy, Loblaw’s Real Canadian Superstore).

Robert Spector has summarized the big box as Spartan operabuilding

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17

Previous page, insert & above: Taking up an entire block on the south shore of Vancouver’s False Creek, the lofts, townhouses and “sky flats” of The Rise surround a large rooftop garden and sit above traditional big box stores like Home Depot.

tions “…located in undeveloped or underdeveloped areas with plenty of open space for parking. The store interiors were no-frill zones in cookie-cutter, single-floor buildings.…. The strategy was simple: Pile it high and sell it cheap.” But, he continues, retail Darwinism means no successful model is permanent. With U.S. mall closures since 1995 predicted to reach 800 by 2010, some big box retailers have upgraded with improved signage and product presentation as well as expanded product lines. Most important perhaps has been the emergence of retail power centres in Canada where both general and category killer big boxes have joined with restaurant chains, movie theatre chains and smaller specialty stores to create a new retail model. So-called “lifestyle centers” are now emerging with freestanding, up-scale stores and services often linked by exterior pedestrian streets and squares replete with bistro terraces.

But the real cutting edge -- and battleground -- is the attempt by big box stores to move downtown. Despite persistent and often effective resistance by residents and city planning departments, approximately five per cent of big boxes are now in urban areas. In Vancouver, never a city to go with the flow, successful opposition has resulted in The Rise’s bold mutation of the big box.

Raising the retail format bar The Rise is a 2.2 acre, full-block complex that boasts three big box stores cohabiting with street-based boutique stores over 582 underground parking spots and crowned by 92 work-live rental condos arranged around a village green in the sky. Located in the trendy Fairview Slopes neighbourhood on the south shore of False Creek at Cambie Street and 8th Avenue, it also sits adjacent to the latest addition to Vancouver’s Skytrain system (underground at this location despite its name). Designed by local firm Nigel Baldwin Architects, The Rise boasts 278,785 square feet of retail wrapped in solid modern architecture with animated volumes and crisp detailing in brick, metal and glass.

The three big box retailers include Home Depot (78,577 square feet), Winners (61,354 square feet), and B.C.’s own Save on Foods (44,777 square feet). An 18-foot change in grade permitted the insertion of three large retail plates while also internalizing loading and waste management functions. Prior to initiating The Rise, says Michael Mortensen, senior development manager for Grosvenor, the developer had already established a relationship with the latter two companies and understood the needs of big box retailers. Home Depot, having faced successful

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opposition in other downtown areas, soon followed.

Smaller, street-accessed retail units include, among others, Starbucks, Telus and EB Games. To provide appropriate animation on the treed sidewalks, an artist was contracted to design venting grates that take their shape from the profiles of the Coast Mountains. While the nearby but earlier built Best Buy also has underground parking and the adjacent Canadian Tire provides roof top parking, it is the 91,148 square feet of stacked flats, townhouses and lofts perched on top that makes the project truly urban. Pushed out to the building’s perimeter along with inner units arranged with ingenuity along mews to exploit views, this roof-top town has its own 20,000-sq.-ft. village green replete with community garden plots.

Grosvenor “is strongly committed to greening its projects to conserve energy, water and materials, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve indoor air quality,” says Mortensen. The sustainability steps implemented in The Rise are expected to reduce building energy use by 31 per cent, reduce potable water use by 67 per cent, and generate 52 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions in terms of the national Energy Building Code. In terms of what Grosvenor calls “social sustainability,” the units are all rentals, unusual for Vancouver, and one unit has been provided below cost to the city to be leased inexpensively to artists on four year cycles.

The London, England-based Grosvenor considers itself a specialist in mixed-used projects since its founding in 1677 and subsequent development of 300 acres of what is now some of central London’s most prized real estate as well as its more recent Liverpool work. Its move to North America in the 1950s originated in Vancouver. “Mixed-use models like The Rise,” says Mortensen, who originally worked with Larry Beasley’s innovative city planning department, “is an important template for our future direction.” He adds that in today’s volatile development market such non-single-function projects mitigate the inherent risks of “the old single commodity product.” In response to intense pressures to densify and create more “urban” settings in the Vancouver area’s squeezed suburban landscape, Grosvenor has three other projects in development based on extensive streetbased retail below residential mid-rise units.

The Rise provides a viable model for intensive development that can still offer urban dwellers the same shopping convenience and prices normally available to suburbanites. In some ways, it completes the circle by returning to the first mall, Chicago’s mixed-use, car-based Market Square (1916). As proof of the project’s current cache, brags Mortensen, international industry visitors are already lining up for tours. B

Location: 485 West 8th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. Owner/Developer/General Contractor: Grosvenor Americas General Contractor: PCL Constructors Westcoast Inc. Architect: Nigel Baldwin Architects Ltd. Landscape Architect: Durante Kreuk Ltd. Interior Design: False Creek Design Group Ltd. Structural Consultant: Jones Kwong Kishi Consulting Engineers Mechanical Consultant: Cobalt Engineering Electrical Consultant: Falcon Engineering Ltd.

More than yellow lines on pavement

Images courtesy of VINCI Park

By Don Procter

In the sphere of office and residential construction, the design of adjoining parkades — invariably underground — has traditionally played a bit role. Architects have put their best design foot forward on the building above grade, paying little attention to what is underneath. But that mindset is changing. Parking developer/managers like VINCI Park see a more cooperative relationship forming that gives them a voice in the complexities of parkade design.

Roy McCormick, vice-president of VINCI’s Toronto office, says building designers are starting to turn to parking professionals like VINCI for assistance at the preliminary building design stage. VINCI’s contract for the 1,100-stall parkade at EnCana’s 58-storey Bow office tower in Calgary is a case in point. The architect has worked closely with VINCI on the complex bowshaped design, and VINCI provided input on such aspects as column location and the separation of public parking from EnCana employee stalls for optimum traffic flow. “The City of Calgary has new bylaws for developers to have a certain percentage of ride/share stalls,” says McCormick. “Those are some of the examples of the types of issues we had to deal with.”

McCormick says when parking professionals get a hold of plans early in a building’s design stage, they can also make recommendations for automated equipment, better lighting, painting, higher

While parkade designs in Canada won’t be receiving any radical surgery, small changes may result in big improvements that fetch significant revenue for building owners. building

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Two of VINCI Park’s Montréal parking properties, MontréalTrudeau Airport (previous page) and Cité Internationale (right) utilize an automated pay-on-foot system.

access and egress clearances and security. One form of security is simply having staff on hand, even at fully automated parkades.

“Their job is to walk around and help people with packages, for example. Essentially they are customer relations people.”

VINCI Park, which has 300 parking sites across Canada, specializes in management, short- and long-term site rental (up to 25 years), design consultation and parking staffing. It is a subsidiary of VINCI, one of the world’s largest parking concessions, construction and related services companies. A division, VINCI Concessions, was involved in both the construction of the Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, the Fredericton-Moncton Highway and the extension of Highway 5 in Quebec’s Gatineau region.

In the parkade world, while more emphasis may be placed on design, don’t expect radical changes in how they look, points out Philippe Princet, vice-president of VINCI Park’s international operations. A move to automation, however, will be a trend.

Cash-free check-outs where customers pay on foot are commonly seen in Europe and represent a growing market segment in Canada. A number of major developments, including airports such as Terminal One at Toronto’s Pearson International have opted for the pay-on-foot design.

VINCI, which was recently awarded the management of Canada Place’s 770-stall parkade for 10 years plus two five-year extensions, will retrofit the Vancouver parkade by starting with an automated pay-on-foot system. The move is expected to eliminate lengthy queues, always a problem when major functions such as conferences end, says McCormick. Automated cash-less operations also offer better accounting for landlords and parking managers.

The retrofit at Canada Place also includes lighting, music, painting and way-finding signage for pedestrians and vehicles.

Automation doesn’t stop at the parkade. Princet, who oversees VINCI’s operations in 13 countries, sees a huge market for it in street parking where pay-by-phone systems allow customers blocks away from their vehicles to top up the meter. The city of Montreal has such a system in place and, Princet says, expect more Canadian cites to adopt similar systems as existing parking management leases expire.

Another trend in Canadian cities — especially where public financing is tight — might be public-private partnerships (P3). For example, VINCI is involved with the Plenary Group consortium in the bid for Bridgepoint Health, a hospital in Toronto’s east

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end. Under the P3 arrangement, the winning consortium will be required to develop, build and operate the facility. “P3s are a longer term investment for us, upwards of 50 years,” says McCormick.

But while P3s are a significant part of VINCI’s European portfolio, they aren’t yet a major segment of its Canadian market. “We are working on probably a dozen of those types of deals but they take six to eight months just to put together,” adds McCormick, noting that major projects, be them P3 or private, are years in the development stage before the first shovel hits the ground. “In this economy we expect projects will take even more time.”

Princet says sustainable design is a priority at VINCI. As a matter of course, many of the company’s European parkades provide electrical plug-ins for vehicles that are powered by electric batteries. It only requires minor parkade modifications. Other sustainable design features include a specialized pollution-absorbing paint which is applied inside car parks near exit ramps where vehicle exhaust is at its worst. The coating has proven successful on VINCI’s test car parks in France but has yet to make it across the Atlantic.

One of the biggest hurdles for parking professionals in Canada is that many Canadian cities discourage the development of big new parkades in an effort to promote public transit, says McCormick. Making matters worse, in cities like Calgary where the heated downtown office development market has set all-time records, most surface parking lots have disappeared and the city’s parking authority, which receives money from office developers for parkade development, hasn’t been able to acquire enough land to accommodate the growing parking requirements.

In parts of Asia, such as South Korea and Taiwan, one of the solutions to parking shortages has been mechanized garages that feature vertical stacking car racks. However that trend isn’t heading east to Canada or the U.S. anytime soon because, despite Calgary’s situation, land for parking has not become such a rare commodity. Furthermore, McCormick adds it is difficult to rationalize stacks in the short-term parking world of North America.

While parkade designs in Canada might not require radical surgery, small changes may result in big improvements that bring significant revenues for building owners. “We always go on the adage that in these mixed-use towers the garage is the first and the last impression of the owner’s building,” says McCormick. “It’s a message we’ve been trying to get across to them for years and it is finally starting to sink in.” B

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BY DAVID LASKER

Bigger, but better?

Like Obama the Messiah, Frank Gehry and his newly unveiled renovations to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) have enjoyed worshipful treatment by the press. But in their rush to praise Gehry, critics have become uncritical.

For instance, in his November 15, 2008 review, The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called the previous 1993 renovation by Barton Myers “cheap and tawdry” and a “mess.” Gehry’s AGO is certainly bigger than Myers’. But is it better?

Juggling a tight $58-million budget, Myers made a coherent whole out of a higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of galleries spanning nearly two centuries of architecture. Gehry, with nearly six times more money to spend, had the luxury of bulldozing whatever didn’t jibe with his grande projet.

Yes, Gehry’s new bowed Douglas fir-and-glass façade evokes the Graf Zeppelin floating gracefully above Dundas Street. Only now it’s a long hike—almost a Manhattan city block—to the front door.

Myers had located the entrance near McCaul Street, close to the parking and the subway and streetcar stops. This move also brought traffic directly to the previously ignored Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, the world’s premier collection of the British sculptor, and to the Zacks Gallery and its travelling blockbuster shows.

As a pioneering figure in urban-infill architecture (Dundas Sherbourne Housing, 1976; York Square, 1978), Myers has always been sensitive to neighbourhood context. His dark brick façade alluded to the brick row houses across the street, and the peaks of their gables determined his 40-foot-high cornice line.

Inside, Myers’ original scheme for the entrance hall included a grand staircase that the client vetoed on grounds that it would limit

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the hall’s flexibility for entertainment or fund-raising events. Never mind about fundraisers now. In Gehry’s new entrance hall, a spiralling birch walkway—a wood counterpart to Richard Serra’s towering steel sculptures in Bilbao—commandeers the floor space.

Myers’ entrance, by the way, improved over the previous 1977 iteration by John Parkin, which was the only museum in the world where the grand staircase led to the washrooms in the basement.

At the rear, Myers’ five-storey library and administrative addition respected the cornice line of the historic AGO component that faces it, the Georgian-style 1817 Grange, Toronto’s oldest brick residence. In an interview, Myers told me, “I didn’t want to totally dominate the small Grange and make it look like a Mickey Mouse piece,” which Gehry’s humungous, titanium-clad, ninestorey modern-art tower does.

Sadly, Gehry demolished what were Myers’ and the museum’s greatest spaces, the barrel-vaulted Contemporary galleries on the second floor. Their cornice- and shadow-free walls combined with their very even light lent the galleries a unique, magical feeling of dematerialization.

Finally, Myers preserved Darling & Pearson’s Walker Sculpture Court from 1925, framed by its chaste, abstracted colonnade, as the museum’s hub and as a beautiful room for events. It’s Gehry’s hub, too, but now there’s an elephant in the room, a cartoonish Wow Factor gesture typical of Gehry. He has inserted a gigantic corkscrew stairway that is surrealistic in its wildly improbable juxtaposition and change of scale. An act of homage to the AGO’s René Magrittes hanging nearby in the European galleries, perhaps? B

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