John Mackie
Sun
The Venus (formerly the Imperial Theatre) on Main street may be torn down for a condo project. Photograph by : Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
One of Vancouver’s oldest theatres may be torn down for condos.
The Imperial Theatre was built in 1912, and is the only old theatre left in Chinatown. For the last two-and-a-half decades the theatre has been known as the Venus, and has shown porn films.
A nine-storey condo development has been proposed for the site at 720 Main St. The market condos are part of a larger plan that would see developer Porte Realty restore three heritage buildings at the southeast corner of Main and Georgia and retain them for non-market housing.
The plans are still in the development stage, but David Porte of Porte Realty says currently the company is looking at 78 condos plus one floor of retail in a new building and 40 to 50 non-market units in the heritage buildings at 208-212 East Georgia, which is now the Hotel Pacific.
Heritage expert John Atkin says the Imperial/Venus is one of the last remnants of Vancouver’s original theatre district, which was based around Main and Hastings.
The other old theatre in the neighbourhood, the Pantages, is about to undergo a full restoration and will once again become a live theatre. The deal hasn’t been finalized, but developer Worthington Properties is planning to spend $7 million and $10 million to restore the Pantages, for which it will receive heritage density transfer it can use at other sites.
Atkin is dismayed that the city didn’t work out a similar deal for the Imperial.
“Nobody did the research [to realize how old it was],” he said.
“All they saw was a pink stucco porno theatre. The mindset was ‘Let’s get rid of it,’ instead of thinking ‘Wait a sec. This might be something.'”
The theatre has had an interesting life. It was built for $60,000 by Canadian Amusement Theatres, then leased out to the Seattle-based Sullivan-Considine vaudeville chain, a rival to the Pantages theatre empire.
The Imperial opened on Oct. 14, 1912 with the Sheehan English Opera Company (“chorus of 40, orchestra of 40”), which performed Il Trovatore, The Chimes of Normandy and The Bohemian Girl. Tickets were 50 cents to $2, at a time when you could get into other theatres for 10 cents.
But the timing for a live theatre was bad. Movie theatres soon became the main source of public entertainment, then the First World War was declared, sending Vancouver into an economic recession.
The Imperial never really recovered. It was known as the Garden for a while, then the Emmanuel Temple, but sat vacant for almost a decade before it was converted to Walsh’s Auto Wrecking in 1938. Walsh’s moved out in 1967, and in 1970 it was converted back to a theatre.
David Porte says his company looked at any heritage value the theatre had, but concluded it had been so badly renovated over the years it didn’t have much architectural merit left.
“We looked at it, investigated it inside and out,” he said. “Certainly inside it’s fairly grungy, and architecturally there’s nothing left inside. Whatever there may have been is long gone, and the exterior, the pink stucco, sort of speaks for itself.”
Porte says his company is planning to do a heritage restoration of the Pacific Hotel site, which is a bit older and has more of its heritage character intact. But in order to make the Pacific work as non-market housing, there had to be a market housing component, which will be built where the Imperial/Venus stands.
The entire site is spread over six lots on Main Street, which Porte Realty assembled earlier this year for $5.168 million. Porte says when everything is said and done it will be a $25 million to $30 million project. Atkin thinks the condo project will likely go ahead. But he laments that the city didn’t recognize the potential for a refurbished Imperial Theatre.
“You’ve got cultural facilities screaming for space, you’ve got the Downtown Eastside screaming for revitalization, and you’ve got the [city’s] Coal Harbour Arts Centre floating around in space with $23 million [to spend on a live theatre],” he says.
“To my way of thinking it seems silly to knock down a facility that could be a boon to that neighbourhood. Because I think the last thing Main Street needs right now is more condos, in terms of street life and what it would bring.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
