Work began Saturday to demolish a more than a century-old building in downtown Vancouver, condemned because its dilapidated condition had become a threat to public safety.
Vancouver city council ordered the demolition of the building at 500 Dunsmuir Street in December 2024 after an inspector found that a lack of maintenance had led to leakage from the roof and severe rot throughout the building.
The ground floor in the southeast corner had also collapsed, raising concerns of catastrophic structural failure. City councillors had asked engineers to try and save heritage features, but staff determined doing so would have taken over a year, an amount of time that was not safe to wait.
“Unfortunately, we can’t save anything,” Vancouver chief building official Saul Schewbs said Saturday morning.
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“We will get it down safely and I will be happy that the risk to the public has been mitigated, but the fact that we are losing this building today is not a good outcome for the city.”
Crews cordoned off sidewalks around the building and ordered the precautionary closure of businesses on the north side of Dunsmuir Street on Saturday, following a last-minute order from WorkSafeBC.
The city also closed Dunsmuir Street between Homer and Seymour streets and Richards Street from West Georgia to Pender streets for the work.
Schwebs said the demolition would begin at the northeast corner and move across the north facade, then to the northwest corner, working to the southwest.
Crews were unable to access the building to remove hazardous material ahead of time, but Schwebs said dust suppression and air quality monitoring were in effect to reduce any risks.
“We are hoping that it will take about 36 or 40 hours of continuous operation to knock the building down, so we should be completed sometime late Sunday night, early Monday morning,” he said.
“The goal is to have things return to normal as much as possible for the Monday morning commute.”
The city is now exploring its options for legal recourse against the property’s owner, Holborn Properties.
“It’s incredibly important that the city drives a hard bargain for any rezoning application that Holborn brings forward,” Vancouver Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung said.
“It’s really crucial that they don’t get a free pass on this because they allowed this building voluntarily to decay and we’re seeing the removal of a historic 100-year-old building here in the city of Vancouver, and so for them to come forward without any compensation or acknowledgement of what has happened is really troubling.”
Holborn has said it sought to redevelop the property but was held up by delays and red tape at city hall.
