From the ashes of the Ramsey Building, Rice Howard Way could rise to new heights
Todd Babiak
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Sculptor Louis Munan, standing before his artwork Gigi and the burned-out Ramsey Building, hopes Rice Howard Way will not be left to rot, but instead rejuvenated as a new pedestrian mall.
CREDIT: Brian Gavriloff, The Journal
Sculptor Louis Munan, standing before his artwork Gigi and the burned-out Ramsey Building, hopes Rice Howard Way will not be left to rot, but instead rejuvenated as a new pedestrian mall.
Rice Howard Way is one of the oddest places in an odd city.
It's somewhere in between an automobile meet-up and a pedestrian plaza, with 1920s buildings and street-level restaurants facing unpleasant and unimaginative towers. At certain angles, you can see the balustrades of the pre-Depression set against the rushed boxy-ness of the oil booms. In the middle of it, across from a rock sculpture with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree on top, there is an above-ground multi-level parking garage, every city planner's sweaty nightmare.
The towers were designed and built, preposterously, with few entry points on the ground level; in the last few months, the strictly pedestrian corridor of Rice Howard Way could offer nothing more to an evening stroller than a dimly lit compromise between a shuttered French restaurant on one side and a corridor of glass on the other side -- a hair salon and a dentist's office plastered with advertisements for itself.
Now, a river of glass and litter twinkles in the sunlight of the restaurant's terrace. The upper floors of the Ramsey Building are either burned-out (the Fred Astaire World of Dance floor) or water-damaged.
"I'm a little devastated, discombobulated," said Louis Munan, sculptor of Gigi, a 2005 piece of whimsical public art that oversees the ground floor of the Ramsey. He turned away from the fire damage and gestured eastward. "Whoever did this, I don't think they understand how many lives they've impacted." He talked of artists' studios and waiters who cannot work. "But it does offer an opportunity to think about what this place could be. I visualize this crossroad as being even more central to our lives than Churchill Square. Our arcade."
On Monday morning, it was warm and jolly on Rice Howard Way. Munan talked menacingly of losing the Ramsey Building, which is entirely possible -- even though it has been declared structurally sound. Other buildings that were declared structurally sound immediately after a fire, like the Arlington, also torched by an arsonist, were later demolished.
Two women sat at a bench, with muffins and coffee Monday morning. The hotdog vendor was setting up. A group of toddlers, from a nearby day care, walked in tandem.
"You see, that's exactly what we need. Life downtown. Even some trees." He motioned to the brick below us. "This, where we're standing, could be an open-air cafe. There could be a canopy over us. This is the time now, in the wake of this, to push, promote, organize, develop a society of Rice Howard Way -- something! -- that could prevent the deterioration and disappearance of a beautiful centre. This could be a marvellous little cocoon in the middle of the city, with great architecture and design. A garden."
Munan grew up in Manhattan "quite a while ago" and arrived in Edmonton in 1984. A hint of a New York accent remains in his voice. He lives and works downtown, and regrets that at the end of a fine concert, or play, or festival day, the crowds pile into their cars and leave as quickly as possible. "This is a very participatory city, in one sense. People get out to things. But at the end of a show like Carmina Burana last night -- did you see it? -- how can you not walk to a cafe or restaurant and discuss it?" It is not, and probably should not be, a pedestrian mall. A stroll down Stephen Avenue in Calgary or Sparks Street in Ottawa demonstrates that what should be vibrant and wonderful places in the middle of a downtown core can sometimes feel artificial, depressing, even spooky. The angle-parking on Rice Howard Way seems to work well enough, and creates a sense of movement. But Munan is right. Of Edmonton's many sites of wasted potential, this is perhaps the most resonant. The fire in the Ramsey Building is an opportunity for the city, for real-estate owners and tenants in the area to develop a vision for Rice Howard Way that matches the ambitions of a grown-up city.
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© The Edmonton Journal 2009
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