Meeting with councillors

Michael Kluckner and Henry Hawthorn met with city councillors Geoff Meggs and Andrea Reimer yesterday and toured the Forest Centre. Both were very impressed by the quality of the building and its dramatic setting and were intrigued by the possibilities of repurposing it for a civic environmental or arts initiative. 

The kind of political leadership they can provide will, we hope, lead to some new investment in the building and a 21st-century use, making it a key part of the Greenest City 2020 campaign.

Stay tuned for future developments ... we haven't faded away!

Forest Education Centre #1 on Heritage Vancouver's Top 10!

Heritage Vancouver's annual Top 10 List of endangered sites has, as its #1 site, the Forest Education Centre at VanDusen Garden. From the Heritage Vancouver site:

Read the article in the Vancouver Sun by John Mackie.

Read the article in the Straight.

Here is the text from Heritage Vancouver's site:

Heritage Vancouver’s position

We strongly encourage the City of Vancouver and the Park Board to:

1. Put all immediate plans to demolish or partially demolish this building on hold.

2. Save and stabilize the building and conduct a feasibility study to determine the scope of work and costs of bringing the building back to its original glory.

3. Write a Statement of Significance (SOS) for the building to determine its heritage value. This would be reviewed by the City’s Heritage Commission and approved by City Council. The City requires that private owners follow this procedure if there is any question as to whether a building has heritage value and we would expect the Parks Board to follow this well-accepted procedure for its buildings.

4. Seek new partners who will create a use for the building in keeping with its unique design and historic role as a Forest Education Centre. In the words of Rick Jeffery, President and CEO, Coast Forest Products Association one of the panelists at a Heritage Vancouver event held on February 25, 2013, “Please give our industry and the public time to look for solutions to prevent what would be a terrible loss to people in Vancouver and throughout British Columbia.”

5. Create a philanthropy policy governing donations from individuals and private-sector organizations. Discarding one generations pride and joy is no way to build a mature city. In the words of Rich Jeffery:  “Philanthropy isn’t just for today. It is for today, tomorrow and for years to come.” and “We don’t like to see our gifts neglected and under the threat of being destroyed. Clearly this sets a poor precedent for any potential future donors.”

We strongly encourage the people of Vancouver to:

1. Communicate with your city government and let them know that you want a say in what happens to this building being held in trust for you.  Here are some suggestions from people we have heard from:
   
• An Urban Forest/Sustainability Centre for the City of Vancouver
• “The Greenest City” Centre for the City of Vancouver
• A return to its original use
• A Children’s Learning Centre
• Artist in Residence
2. Speak with groups that have a mandate similar to VanDusen Garden to create interest in a future new “Learning Centre.”
3. Visit VanDusen Garden and go to the far northwestern corner of the site to enjoy the beauty of this building. While you are there take the time to imagine what it was in the past and what it could be in the future. Ask yourself - does this building have a future in my city?

A Petition to Save the Forest Centre

Bonny Cooke, operating independently from this group, has launched a petition to urge the Park Board to save the Forest Education Centre. Sign it here.

The need for more time and a feasibility study....

A group of supporters of the Forest Education Centre met yesterday to discuss timelines and visions. For all of us who want to save and repurpose the building, we recognize the need to widen our audience and explore all the possibilities to find its best new use. This is going to take some time, and thus our advocacy is focusing on engaging the Park Board by outlining to them the immense value of maintaining this building as well as halting the decision for now so that they can explore other options. 

Any new use will increase the Forest Centre's value as a heritage building. Logically the building will become, once again, a "learning centre," the use for which it was designed 40 years ago. First choice for tenants of the major part of the building could be groups involved with environmental sustainability; a second tier could be arts or cultural uses that would complement VanDusen Gardens' primary role.

A feasibility study would give potential partners an idea of how much money it would take to reverse its current state of long-deferred maintenance. That would set the stage for a Request for Proposals, seeking new occupants.

Stay tuned ... (don't touch that dial!)

The next public event that will include references to the Forest Centre is the tweetup at EastVanLove Volume 8: Journey to Now, at SFU Woodwards on April 11. Michael Kluckner, who has been involved with the awareness campaign about the Forest Centre, is the co-host.

A terrific set of pictures of the interior of the Forest Centre can be viewed on Jason Vanderhill's photoset.

Park Board staff's position

(Some notes from a meeting held on Tuesday, during which we put our position to them on the value of the Forest Education Centre)

In deciding to move ahead with the new Visitors Centre, they undertook to make it a "living building," which resulted in extra costs. Shortfalls in fundraising and cost overruns resulted in a smaller building than was originally planned. Thus, they needed to keep the Floral Hall to provide the space not built in the new centre, forcing extra expenses including a new roof – maintenance which had been deferred because the plan had been to demolish it.

Park Board has developed 3 options for the Forest Centre:
1) abandon/demolish
2) keep the washrooms only
3) keep about 1/4 of the building functioning: washrooms, mechanical and some storage (probably the theatre space), strip out the windows but maintain the roof and (probably) add a railing along the pond edge so that it becomes a kind of viewing platform.

The third option is the one they're leaning to.

They estimate it would take about $800,000 to return the entire building to a functioning state, and about $30,000 per year in operating costs.

Park Board staff can't think of any programmatic reason to keep the Forest Centre, because it doesn't work well for any of the mandated VanDusen functions, and staff do not believe that the training/education/administration functions currently using the Forest Centre can't be accommodated in the other buildings.

The Park Board has no established policy about removing a square foot of building for every one built; however, they believe that every PB building is an "accessory to green space." So, buildings have to justify themselves programmatically or else be removed.

In the next couple of weeks staff and volunteer activities will move from the Forest Centre to the Floral Hall; within "a couple of months" they want to move forward on a resolution to the Forest Centre.

Park Board staff are open to the idea of partners, whether city (bringing with them other money from within the civic system) or private, subject to the use of the building being complementary to the PB mandate. An arts/culture use would be a possibility, but they 
would prefer environmental groups/programs as fitting more closely to the mandate.

Coast Forest Products Association's position on the Forest Centre

These are the speaking notes from last night's meeting for Rick Jeffery, President and CEO, Coast Forest Products Association

“Philanthropy isn’t just for today.  It is for today, tomorrow and for years to come.”

Good evening it is my pleasure to be here tonight.

My name is Rick Jeffery, and I am President of Coast Forest Products Association.

I am here representing 20 forestry companies which produce logs, lumber and pulp and paper on our coast.  38,000 people living in Vancouver and coastal communities throughout BC rely on the health of our industry for their jobs and livelihoods. 

I would like to thank the 3 previous speakers: Michael Kluckner, Roy Forster and Henry Hawthorne, an interesting and knowledgeable group.  Also thank you to Janet Leduc and her team for putting together this event tonight. 

When I think of philanthropy, I realize that it is something that isn’t just for today.  It is for today, tomorrow and for years to come.

The coast forest sector has a long history of philanthropy that has helped build coastal communities throughout BC including Vancouver.  As you may be aware there are a number of iconic and significant public buildings and art works around Vancouver which are gifts from our industry.  I will list a few tonight:

·      •The Bloedel Conservatory

·     • Knife Edge two Piece that Henry Moore gifted with Bloedel Conservatory and situated on its plaza

·    •  VanDusen Botanical Garden, Original Buildings

·      •HR MacMillan Space Centre/Planetarium…and finally, the reason why we are here tonight,  

·      •MacMillian Bloedel Place “A Walk in the Forest” (at VanDusen Botanical Gardens). 

There are others to be sure but estimates are that just this list (above) would likely total $200 million dollars in replacement costs today.

As you can see, these are important to Vancouver and this legacy of giving is one that our industry is particularly proud of….. even though coast forestry has changed significantly with the times.  We are now much different than what we once were when these buildings were constructed.   

Today coast forestry is a modern sector.  We are focussed on sustainability and follow some of the strictest forest regulations in the world.  Over 17 million new trees are planted by our member companies on the BC coast alone.  200 million per year are planted in BC.  We are growing our markets both here at home as well as globally.  We are high tech., innovative and finding new uses for wood…Even in today’s Vancouver Sun, there was a story about how Vancouver architect, Michael Green will be speaking at the upcoming TED conference regarding constructing tall towers from wood - this concept came from right here in our city.   

As you can see we are both proud of our shared heritage with the City of Vancouver yet speak to you today as a new and modern industry.     

When Coast Forest was advised of this situation with the Forestry Education Centre recently we were shocked - especially after having just witnessed a similar threat to the Bloedel Conservatory a few years ago. We don’t like to see our gifts neglected and under the threat of being destroyed.  Clearly this sets a poor precedent for any potential future donors.

I am here tonight to advise you we will be writing a letter to the Park Board and City of Vancouver asking them to reconsider the demolition of MacMillan Bloedel Place. 

Please give our industry and the public time to look for solutions to prevent what would be a terrible loss to people in Vancouver and throughout British Columbia.

I urge all of you here tonight to take the same action.

Thank you.   

Saving the Forest Centre

Monday evening, about 30 people met at the Arts Alliance on Howe Street to discuss the future of VanDusen's Education Centre, aka the Forest Centre, MacMillan-Bloedel Place and 'A Walk in the Forest.'

Comments from the panelists and the discussion after followed two streams:

1) that if VanDusen loses the Forest Centre space it will also lose a large number of its volunteers because it will not be able to run its education programs, train its volunteers, and maintain the city's Cherry Blossom Festival, etc. There is simply no space in the other buildings where these programs can be administered.

2) the principal objective must be to save and stabilize the building, in the short term to allow VanDusen's volunteer programs to continue, in the longer term to find new partners who will, perhaps, create a new use for the building more in keeping with its unique design and historic role as an environmental centre.

Comments recorded and synthesized from the panelists' presentations (apologies for the syntax):

Michael Kluckner, artist and author of historical books, gave a Powerpoint presentation of the history of the site, excerpted below:

... located in the nw corner of VanDusen Garden...

The building is part of a tsunami of philanthropy from Harvey Reginald MacMillan and his partner Prentice Bloedel, principals of the largest forests company in what was the largest industry in BC...

Two of MacMillan's bequests to the city in the 1960s; another was a gift of $2 million (huge at the time) to the UBC Library, allowing it to amass a significant set of rare books and manuscripts for its Special Collections division...

The MacMillan-Bloedel Building at Georgia and Thurlow, built in 1969, the same year as the second Bentall Tower and an early part of the revitalization of Vancouver's downtown office centre...

Seattle-area resident Prentice Bloedel's major bequest to the city narrowly escaped demolition a few years ago, and was saved by citizen action; it is now administered by the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association instead of by the Park Board, who wanted rid of it ...

... details of the building

... and its state-of-the-art displays

A Province newspaper article from 1976. The circled paragraph highlights the contribution of Dr. Vladimir Krajina, who developed the province's system of bio-geoclimatic zones that is admired around the world. Krajina recently died.... his contribution is significant for showing that "A Walk in the Forest" presented real science, real ecology, and wasn't just a piece of puff touting MacMillan-Bloedel's forest practices....

Brochures and newspaper articles from the early years....

To wrap up, questions for the city and Park Board as it contemplates destroying the building. It seems especially bizarre, in the wake of the Waldorf Hotel closing, that the city would not consider repurposing this space for a cultural use if no direct VanDusen or forestry/environmental use can be found. And the final question, more philosophically, concerns the city's stewardships of donations from individuals: one generation's pride and joy is discarded by the next. Is this any way to build a mature city? Can you imagine New York or Chicago behaving like this?

Roy Forster, the first and, for 24 years, director of VanDusen: "it would be a disaster if the building were lost." How would they run the education program?

Henry Hawthorn, architect and former chair of the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association (VDBGA): Thompson Berwick Pratt, known as TBP, was the leading architectural firm in Vancouver in the 1950s/70s, an "incubator firm." Among its alumni are Barry Downs, Dick Archambault, Zoltan Kish, Erickson and Massey (briefly), and Paul Merrick, who is credited with the design of MacMillan-Bloedel Place. The firm had two design gurus: Ned Pratt and Ron Thom (design spirit of TBP for a number of years, who was Merrick's mentor). Thom was deeply influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, his "polar star", and MacMillan-Bloedel Place is very much a Wrightian building, long horizontals anchored by the mass of the theatre at the end, very much Taliesen West, integrated with the site. One of the first organic buildings in Vancouver. It is a building that belonged in its place -- one of the major aspects of West Coast Modernism. The relationship of indoors and outdoor is a remarkable aspect of this building. The landscape is brought in through the glass into the interior; skylights bring in patterns of the leaves; even a simulated stream ran through the building, "anchoring nature."
All of this shows the California influence that came to Vancouver mainly through Richard Neutra (inspiration for getting the school of architecture here). Indoors and outdoors are unified by enormous sheets of plate glass. (Another Vancouver building, long since demolished, a Massey Medal winner in the early 1950s by Semmens Simpson, was the Marwell Building on Georgia/Alberni, which had a pond outside that flowed through into the interior.) The idea was to dissolve the difference between outside and inside.
You can also see the influence of Japanese architecture, expressing the heavy timber aspect of the Buddhist great temple buildings; Mac-Blo Place is flamboyant in its use of lumber, taking pieces of wood and joining them together to create its environment. An architecture of abundance, it reflects a time when we felt that the forests would never end.

Present circumstances: once MacMillan-Bloedel's commitment to the building ended in 1986, ten years after its opening, it was taken over by the VDBGA, which runs all the programs, recruits the volunteers; in recent years the building has been filled with these necessary people, and also makes room for the cherry blossom festival; Park Board has announced its intention to gut the building, maintain only the washrooms; the glass will be removed, leaving it as a shell, largely because they realize it would be expensive to demolish. A "scorched earth policy." The VDBGA is saying, we do not have space for the programs we are mandated to provide; the proposed volunteer office-admin space (the former library) in the old Floral Hall Building, is inadequate for what we have today, let alone the future; there is no place to put volunteer activities.

Rick Jeffery, Coast Forest Products Association, represents coastal businesses including the successor company to MacMillan-Bloedel. It is a trade association, and cares deeply about the building; "these buildings have become icons for us in the industry, showing us where we've been, where we've come." In the days of MB, we did think the forests were limitless,  but we've adapted to the need for sustainability. On behalf of the CFPA, Mr. Jeffery travels the world selling lumber from sustainable forests. Wood is a sustainable, durable, architecturally pleasing, low-carbon footprint way of building. It would be "a travesty to pull this building down." Wood has seismic properties, life-cycle efficiencies; China e.g. could offset some of their ghg footprint. That's the inducement to build 6-storey wood-framed buildings here, as so many of the ones being built in China are 6-storey walkups of concrete and steel and we have to demonstrate here what China could be doing with wood.

Comments from the floor:

•The city defaulted in not being able to construct the new building to house all the staff and programs. [The new Visitors Centre is considerably smaller than what was originally planned]

•SFU has a top notch environmental education program. Get the students who are on the way to Bamfield [Vancouver Island] to study marine biology and have them study botany in the Forest Centre.

•Cllr Adriane Carr, the "greenest building is the one that's left standing." The PB rule is not losing a square inch of public park space. Think about reasons why the rule doesn't apply here. Child care space and/or artists space would show cooperation between city and PB in the same way park buildings and field houses are used elsewhere in the city.

•I would like to see the building saved ... current use will probably have to endure because the space can't be spared for new uses. Take down the 12 x 12 log cabin in the heritage garden instead! [this was said in jest]

•Need a space for light testing for the $1.6 million-profit making light display. This is the only place on VanDusen where that can take place.

•Tony Dumoulin, chair of the 'committee to keep these buildings from being torn down.'  PB thinks it would be okay to shut down programs/work out of homes, in order to stop spending money on it. That strategy won't work and we will lose volunteers.

•Kids garden of 4 or 5 acres needed.... Longer term, the original purpose would be the best.... if sponsors can be found to honour that original idea that came from the forest industry itself; ecology-related, not industrial-related. One of the drawbacks is the lack of parking.


•The idea of making it a working ecology centre would work better than a kids' education place because kids don't learn the same way now, they're on the net etc. etc.
•I want my kids to get their hands dirty, to learn by doing, not by reading it on an iPad

•Must use social media to get to the politicians...
•Is there another building within the PB system that could be torn down instead??
•Come up with really strong, clear reasons to save it.
•East Van Love [sp?]is going to have a tweet-up about it.

•City has to get its hands on the issue because it affects the people. The VDBGA represents a very motivated group of people and the city should be listening. These people vote...

•It's about money... but the Park Board should realize It's impossible to raise that 845K per year [from the Christmas lights festival] without having the space for volunteers. If there's no space they won't come.

•If the building is to be gutted, then it defeats the argument about putting land back to park space.

•Save the building first, then look at long term.
•Save the cherry blossom festival. If this space goes, the festival will collapse because there's no space anywhere to administer it.


• Letters from Patricia Luk:

"In case I am unable to get into tonight’s session downtown I have come up with another idea for an alternate use of the Education Centre that is under discussion. I‘ve heard some rumblings that the Ryerson Church Hall at 45th and Yew will be bought and at least two pre-schools presently renting out that space will be displaced. The Van Dusen building may be a possible solution for those displaced children.  If the present Education Centre is preserved, I’m sure with public discussion involved, there could be viable use options found for the site. With the current mega building policy there will be many groups who will be in search of new home alternatives. There should be no hurry to tear down a building without looking at other opportunities for use. It simply isn’t in keeping with green policy."

...and


Dear Park Board and City Councillors,


I became aware of this heritage issue over the past week and came up with an idea that the Parks Board may want to consider. Perhaps a review of alternative uses for this notable piece of architecture may include a study of converting this space into a Wedding Pavilion. Wedding venues with garden backdrops are obviously in high demand given the number of weddings groups booked in advance yearly. Both Queen Elizabeth Park and Stanley Park have such venues in place to host these occasions. Even without a formal Pavilion presently, I am sure Van Dusen hosts many wedding groups yearly for just garden photo backdrops. It may make good economic sense to preserve the existing Education Centre and through conversion turn it into a lucrative income stream for the Park. With a little imagination and a strong sense of preservation, many happy memories can be created and one less building bull-dozed.

Thanking you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Patricia Luk

February 25th panel discussion...

Thanks to everybody who attended the event today at VanDusen, and to Jason and others for tweeting it and blogging about it.

Monday evening (February 25th), Heritage Vancouver is hosting a panel discussion on the future of the Education Centre aka "A Walk in the Forest" at the Arts Alliance downtown: see the HVS site for time and registration, which is required, although the event is free.

Panelists include Michael Kluckner, who will give a historical overview; architect Henry Hawthorn, who will speak about the building's architectural pedigree and the botanical garden association's recent dealings with the Park Board; and VanDusen's first director, Roy Forster. There will also be a speaker from the Coastal Forest Alliance (not sure if that's the group's formal name). The evening begins with a Powerpoint presentation that will be posted here afterwards.

Please submit any artwork/photographs that have been inspired by your visit to the site!

Untitled (Sarah Jane Allen)

"Youth on age (the stump)"

Pencil drawing on a wintry afternoon

(Michael Kluckne)r

Welcome to 'A Walk in the Forest'

The event is in partnership with Heritage Vancouver.
Media contact: Michael Kluckner (604 251 3353) or mkluckner@gmail.com
  
(Not surprisingly, this campaign is not endorsed by the Park Board or VanDusen Garden staff. Many volunteers and members of the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association do support the retention of the building.)

The building known as the Education Centre (also the Forest Education Centre) is a modernist masterpiece lost in the forest of an untended section of VanDusen Garden. Built in 1976, it was originally known as MacMillan-Bloedel Place, named for its donor, the largest forestry company in what was then the largest industry in British Columbia. Its unique educational displays, including a 50-seat theatre, were called "A Walk in the Forest."

Architect Paul Merrick, working then as chief designer for Thompson, Berwick & Pratt, set the pavilion into a small hill on the edge of a lake in the northwest part of the gardens. Its green roof was one of the first in the city, and its unique internal columns used some of the finest wood in British Columbia. It won the Canadian Architect Yearbook Award of Excellence Award in 1974, and was constructed by Halse-Martin of Vancouver. It was once an object of pride for the city, VanDusen Garden and the Park Board.

Swans on the lake in the 1970s

Vintage brochure

As it was last autumn (photo by Christine Allen)

Why demolish it? The Park Board has a policy whereby a building must go once a new one is completed, which seems fair enough on the surface. The "new building" in VanDusen's case is the splendid new Visitors Centre on Oak Street. However, "A Walk in the Forest" cries out for a creative reuse, as an environmental education centre, an artists' space, a ... ? Erasing it would eliminate a piece of the city's architectural and cultural heritage just at the point when the city (in the wake of the Waldorf Hotel closing) is casting about for existing buildings that could be repurposed and supported.

Please come out on Saturday (the weather forecast is promising!), take some pictures, make a piece of artwork and share stories with others. We'll get the message across that the Education Centre is too important to lose.

I will try to post all pieces of artwork submitted here pertaining to the building and its surroundings.

Michael Kluckner