A report going before city council today (January 20) paves the way for the Vancouver Art Gallery to move to a new, purpose-built facility but puts a damper on the facility’s desire to be the sole occupier of the three-acre block at 688 Cambie Street.

In the report, staff recommend reserving just two acres of the land for cultural use and giving the VAG two years to deliver a viable plan for a new gallery on the land behind the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, formerly Larwill Park.

The remaining acre on the site is earmarked for office towers and would be used to help pay off the $40 million encumbrance on the site. In a news release, the VAG noted that private supporters have pledged an additional $40 million, but the city’s general manager of community services, David MacLellan, insisted the office towers were non-negotiable. “We’re not looking at them [the VAG] to solve our financial problems,” he said.

The report also strongly endorses a shared cultural complex, renewing the hopes of the Vancouver Concert Hall and Theatre Society, whose members believe a purpose-built concert hall and theatre could be integrated with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s plans for a new facility.

“I think it’s all still in play,” said Ron Stern, chair of the VCHTS, of a plan to build a shared cultural facility. According to Stern, the VAG and VCHTS were close to forging a deal in 2008. “There were months of meetings that took place with the assistance of Partnerships B.C., and there were massive studies and experts in terms of the need for the concert hall and for the gallery.”¦An agreement was to be signed for the sharing of the site,” he said. According to Stern, that agreement fell by the wayside later that year when Premier Gordon Campbell offered the VAG space on False Creek, which was ultimately deemed unworkable. “The gallery came back [to the former Larwill Park site] and has moved forward on a basis of just the site for themselves alone,” said Stern, “and I think things are coming back around.”

While Michael Audain, chair of the VAG’s relocation committee, told the Straight last March that the gallery was “dead set on obtaining the exclusive use of that block”, David Aisenstat, the VAG’s chair, is now voicing a more collaborative attitude. “The arts and culture community in Vancouver is pretty small and pretty tight,” said Aisenstat. “We certainly don’t see ourselves as competing or in conflict with Ron and his colleagues.”

Originally planned as the Coal Harbour Arts Complex, the proposed concert hall and theatre were funded in 1991—the city has a $20 million endowment for the project—but were bumped from a prospective site at the north end of Burrard Street by the Vancouver Convention Centre.

MacLellan said the city is hopeful that the VAG and VCHTS might reach an agreement on the site. “What we would like to see is if these two organizations, and possibly others, could come together to decide on a program and a building that accommodates as much of the cultural activities that we can put in there to enhance the precinct as much as possible,” he said.