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“Battle for the East Van Cross: Kensington-Cedar Cottage and Grandview-Woodland Compete for Valued Landmark”
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Hastings-Sunrise and Mount Pleasant have a good-natured rivalry over who gets the iconic work of art if the town changes its mind
Construction around the East Van sign on February 6, 2023. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /00099702A
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Two East Vancouver neighborhoods are jostling to become the new home for the iconic East Van Cross, but the city said Monday it decided against moving due to its cultural significance in its current location.
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The 17-meter-tall sculpture, which depicts East Van in the form of a Latin Christian cross, was erected in 2010 on a scrubby patch of city-owned lot at Clark Drive and East 6th Avenue.
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While not on a busy arterial road and off the beaten tourist path, artist Ken Lum’s work has become a beloved and powerful monument of East Vancouver, emblazoned on countless mugs, bonnets, keychains, and other merchandise.
Its future on Clark Drive became uncertain due to the construction of a nearby 10-story building that would block views of the popular plant. Lum has said he thinks it should be postponed.
“It would look stupid with a building in front of it,” he said bluntly.
Neil Wyles is Managing Director of Mount Pleasant BIA. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
After considering moving it, the city of Vancouver confirmed Monday the cross will remain there.
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“Consistent with the cultural context, consultation with neighboring development, site assessments, expert evaluation, and background work to date, the most recent decision was to leave the Ken Lum memorial for East Vancouver in its current location,” the city said in a Preparation of Opinion.
There is no shortage of interested parties should the city change its mind.
The East Village Business Improvement Association, which encompasses two East Vancouver neighborhoods — Hastings Sunrise and Grandview-Woodland — launched its first salvo: a petition to move the Cross to their neighborhoods.
“Hastings-Sunrise is the only thing more East Van than Ken Lum’s East Van Cross, with its expression of hope and defiance,” the petition reads, outlining the vibrant community, breweries and “distinctly quirky grit.” of the region are mentioned as some of the reasons it deserves the cross.
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“We honestly consider ourselves the heart of the East Van,” said Executive Director Patricia Barnes. “It’s a great neighborhood with its shops and residents. It’s a real community.”
Hastings-Sunrise also includes Nanaimo Street, which was Vancouver’s eastern boundary until 1910, the petition said.
Not so fast, said Neil Wyles of the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Association.
“The perfect spot is to see it driving up Main Street from downtown and you see this beautiful iconic work and you know you’re in East Van,” he said, noting that Ontario Street, two blocks west of the Main Street, Vancouver’s official east-west divide.
Wyles said the cross could be positioned at the intersection of Main and Kingsway or at the corner of busy Kingsway and Broadway, where a replica streetcar stands on a small strip of city-owned land marking a disused bus stop.
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“As an East Van boy, born and raised, it’s always great to see it wherever it ends, even if it ends up staying where it is,” he said. “It’s a great piece. I don’t think the city realized how great it was when Ken did that. But now everyone is attached to it.”
In an interview from Philadelphia, where he chairs the fine arts department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Lum said Main Street was just one of the locations he originally considered the site of the cross had drawn.
Starting from a list of city lots, he created computer renderings of the work at various locations, including Mount Pleasant near 7th and Main, near Kensington Park at Knight Street, and near the Broadway Commercial SkyTrain station. But all locations presented problems, so he took a closer look at the Clark Drive location.
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“There’s this dirt strip on East 6th and Clark, and I said, ‘Can he be here?’ The city was not so benevolent that it was there, for what is this place? It’s a nothing page.”
But Lum, drawn to the nondescript semi-industrial pavement next to a busy road, thought it would be perfect.
“There’s a pathos, an emotional excitement,” he said. “It’s not a pretty place,” but one that reflects the city’s grim industrial history and nods to the area’s once-dominant Italian and Roman Catholic immigrant roots.
The city has been lax in protecting the art, said Lum, who would have liked to see the city lot next to the sculpture turned into a park instead of the new headquarters of organic food company Nature’s Path.
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Rendering for the new headquarters of Nature’s Path, a Metro Vancouver-based organic food company, right next to Ken Lum’s East Van Cross. PNG
“In a way, the building in front of it is a statement of what’s happening in Vancouver — that a work with symbolic resonance is taking a backseat to development,” he said.
When asked to strain the good-natured rivalry between the two neighborhoods, Lum gave Hastings-Sunrise an edge given the gentrification of Main Street in recent years and for sentimental reasons of his own.
“When I was a kid, outside of my area of Kingsway and Knight and Victoria, the other place I went to was Hastings-Sunrise – Nanaimo and Hastings with the Italian shops and cafes,” he said. “I have a personal biographical sympathy for this area.”
— with file of Joseph Ruttle
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East Van Cross will likely get a 10-story office building right next door
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East Van ‘Golgotha’ cross stokes pride and history
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