Steamworks Transcontinental to reflect elegant age
Ashley Ford
Province
Steamworks owner Eli Gershkovitch plans to open a period-style restaurant in the eastern wing of the former CP Rail station on Cordova Street in Vancouver. First in his plan’s agenda is cleaning the war memorial outside. Photograph by : Jon Murray, The Province
The golden age of travel is returning to its ancestral Vancouver home, the Cordova Street Canadian Pacific Railway Station — at least the food and beverage portion of that famous rail era is.
Vancouver businessman Eli Gershkovitch, president and owner of privately held Steamworks Brewing Co., plans a multimillion-dollar historically accurate remake of the eastern side of the station facing Cordova.
Gershkovitch has signed a long-term lease with the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund, the building’s owner, and plans a grand remake of the nearly 7,000-square-foot area into The Steamworks Transcontinental a mid-priced seafood/steak restaurant and bar that will reflect the building’s old glory.
The Transcontinental will be evocative of the golden age of rail travel, in particular the “deco-streamlined steam era when the grand public spaces were the great railway stations of the 1930s and ’40s,” he said.
“This was the era of when the journey was itself more important than the destination,” he said.
“We want to integrate the elegance, grandeur, history and lore of this place into a dining experience and create a heritage restaurant and railway lounge.
“But it is also our goal to make it a totally inclusionary venue where Vancouver locals, the business crowd and tourists can easily rub shoulders in comfort,” he said.
Although the golden era may have gone, the fact is the old station is doing what it was originally designed for, handling transportation and passengers, he said.
“It remains a transportation hub, what with SkyTrain, the new RAV line, heliport, buses and Westcoast Express, all virtually operating from within its confines.”
He says he rode on Europe’s famed Orient Express in 2002 and stations he encountered in Budapest and Bucharest that had “been unmolested by the Cold War” fascinated him.
He is painstakingly researching the building’s original look and is travelling to Paris, New York and Washington to view the old rail stations of those cities.
“We have had our corporate offices in this building since 1999 and every time I walked by this space — long boarded up — I thought the wonderful soaring ceilings deserved better than just providing cover for offices. This was one of North America’s signature railway stations and deserves to be restored to that grandeur,” he said.
Preparatory work is about to begin and one of his first actions will be to clean up the grimy, but grandly eloquent, CP Rail war memorial at the eastern side of the station.
“Unfortunately, the statue doesn’t appear to have been cleaned since the last CPR train departed the station about 40 years ago. It will be the first order of business,” he said.
He says construction will start in June with a late-fall opening contemplated. The next couple of months will largely involve taking inventory of the heritage elements.
“We have already discovered that part of the space was the main arrivals area, a sort of West Coast Ellis Island, if you will, and the first place many immigrants actually stood in Canada.”
Soren Rasmussen, a Vancouver architect who has won awards for previous heritage restoration work, is doing the design work.
Gershkovitch is seeking original artifacts and art from the 1930s and ’40s to incorporate into the final design that will likely include dining car, bar car and observation- deck themes.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
