8 December 2010

Legal Scrap Brewing Over Signs on Vancouver Heritage Building

Vancouver British Columbia - City officials have ordered a restaurant in one of the city's best known and busiest heritage buildings to apply for a permit for signs put up without permission or risk a court fight.
 
But the owner of Rogue at The Station, the 97-year-old former CPR building at the edge of Gastown, on Tuesday vowed to fight City Hall to allow more contemporary signs on the iconic building.
 

Eli Gershkovitch stenciled four pillars with large colourful logos, attached two banners to its brick facade, and decorated an awning with the name after the city rejected his proposals to put up more noticeable illuminated signs.
 
"That's temporary signage," he said. "The city can do whatever is in their rights and we will consider our response. We're challenging them on this."
 
The city will also order Gershkovitch to remove the gold lettering spelling out "The Transcontinental", his previous restaurant that failed in that location more than six months ago, ruling it has no "heritage value" under city laws.
 
Gershkovitch said he had a permit for that sign, which he considers "decoration" that pays homage to the building's railway past and has no plans to remove it.
 
He argued city bureaucrats are imposing a sterile notion on old buildings.
 
"I don't believe for one minute that the men and women who built the station in 1914 intended it to be the equivalent of Lenin's tomb, and that's what it had almost become," he said, noting the area was vacant for years before he opened his restaurants.
 
Gershkovitch also accused City Hall of applying the ciy's heritage sign bylaw inconsistently in the city, calling a sign the city approved for a heritage building on Dunsmuir Street that's the home of the Shore Club an "utter monstrosity."
 
The city's licensing inspectors in September issued a 30-day enforcement order to Gershkovitch to apply for the permit, which restricts size, colour, and style of signage, and mandates how they're affixed, said inspections director Will Johnston.
 
"We are now in the process of sending (the restaurant) a 14-day legal order" to take out the proper permit or "legal action will be taken," he said.
 
Don Luxton, president of the Heritage Vancouver Society, said permits ensure buildings are protected and that signage is compatible with the architectural style, although he's not opposed to signs.
 
"We need to monitor what's attached to buildings so that the attachments aren't drilled into the original material," he said.
 
But architecture consultant Trevor Boddy said the existence of the signs "painted right on the limestone columns" of The Station "indicate the rather low status heritage has in this town. People get away with so much because we let them. Could you imagine someone going up to Penn Station (in New York) and putting a little stencil on the front?"
 
He said when he worked on a project in a heritage building in London's Trafalgar Square, "we couldn't put as much a screw in anything."
 
But Gershkovitch said, "The city's got to stop imposing their own individual tastes and take a broader, more holistic view of heritage buildings so they can be more organic and evolve, rather than making them into mausoleums.
 
"What people most enjoy is the juxtaposition of the old and new," he said.
 
Nora Jamal, 24, of Burnaby, agreed, saying she liked the contemporary sign on the older building.
 
But Sheila Baker of Chilliwack said, "They're obscene. They're not encouraging (businesses) to maintain the heritage value or the heritage look. They have no respect at all for any of the heritage buildings."
 
Susan Lazaruk.