Vancouver Board of Parks & Recreation , 1996
Hastings Park building re-use study
(with Proscenium Architecture + Interiors)


Since the early days of the twentieth century, Hastings Park in Vancouver's east end, had been the home of the Pacific National Exhibition, British Columbia's annual provincial agricultural fair. Over the course of its life there, the PNE (the name eventually came to mean the event, the organizing body and the site itself) developed the site to serve both the annual exhibition and year round activities. These came to include professional horse racing, football, soccer and hockey as well as a large number of trade and consumer shows and entertainment presentations.

In the early 70s governance and management of the PNE was transferred from a not-for-profit agricultural exhibition society to a provincial crown corporation and for the next twenty years, the ownership, management and use of the site was the object of a political tug of war between the provincial and city governments. In 1994 the Province capitulated, conceded ownership of the land to the City and established a timetable by which the PNE (both the event and the governing body) would vacate the site. The City of Vancouver gave its Board of Parks and Recreation the authority to plan the restoration of the site to park status.

To accommodate the annual fair and the year-round activities, a significant numbers of buildings had been constructed over the PNE's eighty-plus years on the site. The Park Board had determined that a number would stay, at least until their useful life was complete and a number would be demolished to make way for parkland. The fate of three buildings, the Forum, Rollerland and the Garden Auditorium, all built in the 30s, was in limbo. There were notions as to how these buildings might serve useful purposes within the context of the services to be provided in the park, particularly from the sports and arts & culture proponents on the community advisory committee established by the Park Board to give the local neighbourhood input into the park development process. The Park Board decided to seek professional help in determining the adaptive re-use of these three buildings and selected Proscenium Architects + Interiors and Lamont Management to undertake the work.

We established that the outcome would be determined by demand rather than supply. Knocking them down was an option unless the demand for facilities to house activities appropriate to a park was convincing. We set criteria for uses and user groups based on need, management competence, financial reasonableness and compatibility with Park objectives. An extensive survey of existing facilities in the City and potential users of the buildings was undertaken and analyzed to assess demand in relation to supply. The validity of a number of options for the use of the three buildings was determined in conjunction with the architectural firm responsible for overall site development and the most sensible uses were presented. Finally, we made two key recommendations; that the Park Board use the "Request for Proposals" process to select user groups to program the buildings; that the Park Board establish a mechanism to ensure that youth have an effective mechanism by which to provide input into programming activities in the park.

Our work was incorporated into the Park Board's planning, which was subsequently approved by the Board after receiving the blessing of the community at large and the neighbourhood through an extensive consultative process. The three buildings will be incorporated into the park to provide facilities for recreational sports and arts & culture activities.