North Vancouver's worldrenowned Presentation House Gallery took a critical step closer to its new home at the foot of Lonsdale, where the city has a massive, multimillion dollar facelift planned.
Council reviewed the gallery's plans for the site and charted out the rest of the surrounding plaza Monday night.
Gallery and city staff can now go to work on detailed designs and come back to council with a rezoning application, like any other development project.
The main building is projected to be 24,000 square feet on two levels aligned with the west side of the 100-block of Lonsdale Avenue. That includes 3,500 square feet of retail space, a cafe and bookstore.
The extra retail space in the building will allow the gallery to generate enough revenue to help cover the operational costs of running the gallery.
"If and when we are lucky enough to be an occupant of that building, we won't have to come back to the City of North Vancouver taxpayer for additional operational revenue," said gallery director Reid Shier.
Today, the gallery occupies 6,000 square feet in its aging building at Third Street and Chesterfield Avenue.
The new gallery's architecture threatens to upstage the artistic photos inside, with an outer facade made of crumpled and unfolded stainless steel, designed to reflect as much light as possible during the low-light months of the year. The main level will have predominantly glass walls, allowing the public at ground-level to see through. To the east of the proposed building is a public plaza and water feature, which can act as a fountain, reflecting pool or dry, open space.
The city is putting up the land and $ 2.5 million of the total $ 15 million needed for the gallery, which Shier said he was very confident would be covered by gallery fundraising. The building will remain a city asset.
While council mostly beamed at the sight of design drawings depicting people using the waterfront and plaza, Coun. Pam Bookham cast a dissenting vote over the gallery's size, design and location, which has been a treasured place to look out on Burrard Inlet for centuries, she said.
"I don't feel the design of this building - the scale of this building, reflects that public view and for that reason, among others, I won't support it. I'm concerned about the lack of recognition of the historic nature of the site that this gallery is proposed to be on," she said, adding she remains a supporter of the gallery.
While the reflective steel facade wasn't universally fawned over, the project as a whole won council's support.
"I love the design," said Mayor Darrell Mussatto. "I like the way staff have done some amazing work. I like the access to the Spirit Trail - the way they've treated the water, the way they've treated the public between the Coppersmith Shop and what you've done here. It keeps the view corridors open down Lonsdale and I think it would be a great addition in that area."
What the new foot of Lonsdale design does not include, however, is the Pacific Great Eastern Railway station, which was recently moved from the site to a temporary home on Alder Street.
Heritage advocates had been lobbying the city to bring the railway station back to its original location as a nod to its historical significance on the site; however, only Couns. Don Bell and Pam Bookham were in favour of bringing it back to the Cates deck at a cost of $ 1.4 million.
Instead, staff will report back on possible new uses for the centuryold building on the other side of Lonsdale Quay, in Waterfront Park.
