Article content

A five-storey building on Main Street emptied of artists 12 years ago is being called an example of the city’s failure to protect studio space in Vancouver, says a new report.

In 2007, a developer wanted to turn 901 Main St. into 10 luxury condos. Although all 30 artists moved out, they formed a co-op and negotiated a new lease for another studio. Since then, the building on Main has remained vacant.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Almost 400,000 square feet of Vancouver studio space for artists lost in 10 years: report Back to video

In a report released Friday by the Eastside Culture Crawl Society, 901 Main is cited as an example of government indifference toward artists’ studio space in the city. The kind of displacement of artists that took place at 901 Main continues today throughout the city, said Esther Rausenberg, the artistic and executive director of Crawl.

“(Nine-zero-one) tells me that there was a failure at the hands of the city,” she said. “It’s not ensuring that artist studio spaces are protected. There was a failure at that time and some of that continues today in terms of the lack of policy to address this issue.”