Straight Issues
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printLate-night mayhem on Granville Street
What goes through your mind when you hear police talking about late-night mayhem on Granville Street?
Raymond LouieVision Vancouver councillor who voted for extended bar hours
"It causes me great concern that there is, in fact, mayhem.…I don't want the mayor and NPA to overreact by just rolling back the hours because that doesn't solve the underlying problem, which are these people who never have the intention of going into the bars."
Sarah HeadFormer patron of bars and nightclubs in the Granville Entertainment District
"It's scary, but as a female I don't feel particularly threatened because I've never had anybody try and start a fight with me. In this day and age, I'm pretty used to crime going on in larger cities. I don't think it's really anything new."
Lynne KennedyFormer NPA chair of Vancouver Liquor Licensing Commission
"I know that it's true.…Police are being injured. That is quite frankly outrageous. That says something about our community that they have so little respect for police that they'll jump on them and attack them. They're probably drunk when they do it."
Ned JacobsConcerned citizen with a keen interest in city planning
"It would be better to have occasional bars in occasional areas of the city that are open late at night—and spread it around—and have those well-policed and well-observed, rather than having an entire district of it, thinking that you're somehow going to keep the problem away from other people."
> Number of licensed seats originally planned in 1997 for the Granville Entertainment District in the 700, 800, and 900 blocks of Granville Street: 1,000
> Number of licensed seats in the 900 block of Granville Street in 2001 after the NPA city council approved the conversion of the former Caprice Theatre and former Paradise Theatre into nightclubs: 1,240
> Number of "liquor-primary" licensed seats in the three-block Granville Entertainment District today: 2,892
> Number of days that Mayor Sam Sullivan gave Granville Street bar owners to achieve a "significant improvement in public disorder" in the Vancouver Entertainment District: 60
> At Georgia Straight press time, number of days that had elapsed since the mayor made this announcement: 115
> Amount of unpaid fines to the City of Vancouver in connection with bylaw- violation notices issued by the Vancouver police department since 2003: in excess of $860,000
Sources: City of Vancouver staff reports; "Project Civil City" report; motion introduced by NPA Coun. Kim Capri at a March 15 council committee.
There are now more licensed seats in the 900 block of Granville than were planned for the entire entertainment district.
