Shortage of doctors and incentives to work in family practice has cut walk-in clinics by a third to a half in B.C.
The NDP’s efforts to improve health care through a new payment model for family physicians and the establishment of urgent and primary care centres has had the unintended consequence of cutting the ranks of walk-in clinics across the province.
According to the medical mapping service MediMap, the number of walk-in clinics across B.C. has dropped between 30 to 50 per cent in recent years as clinics move to an appointment-only model or close their doors.
This has led some doctors to warn that there are fewer and fewer options for immediate care in the province as urgent-care-clinic appointments remain hard to book in certain communities and emergency room waiting times continue to skyrocket.
Dr. Rita McCracken, a family physician and UBC assistant professor in the family practice department, said part of the problem is the new payment model introduced by then-health minister Adrian Dix in 2023 that aims to retain family physicians through better compensation. The model encourages doctors to work in family practice instead of putting in hours at a walk-in clinic, she said.
She likened health care to the education system and wants the province to increase the capacity of primary care, arguing that neither walk-in clinics nor urgent and primary care centres are an ideal model.
“If we want people to have better access to primary care when they need it, we need to have clinics that have the capacity to be able to provide care to the people that live close by, just like we do for elementary schools,” McCracken said.
“I’m not saying that there aren’t many, many problems with education right now, but if we just kind of take a look at that model of access to public education, we’ve completely thrown that out the window when it comes to primary care.”
She said there needs to be a wholesale rethinking of how primary care is provided to people without a family doctor and that interested parties such as municipalities and community groups need to come together to figure out a solution.
Some physicians say they have seen first-hand the effects of the decline of walk-in clinics.
Dr. Kevin Mcleod, a North Vancouver-based internal medicine specialist, says people now come to see him for basic ailments, such as a bladder infection, that would be better dealt with by a general physician.
“They don’t need to see me as a specialist, but they have nowhere else to go.”
Mcleod said a walk-in clinic across the street from his office has papered over a sign saying “no appointment necessary,” indicating it has moved to an appointment-only model.
The company that owns the clinic, Well Health Technologies Corp., did not respond to a request for comment, but a representative of the North Vancouver clinic said it does still accept non-registered patients, those patients now need to make an appointment.
“I know the government gives their statistics that thousands of people are getting attached to a family doctor, but there’s still 800,000 people who aren’t and where do they go?” asked McLeod. “A lot of people don’t realize (that) if your family doctor retires or deactivates their college number, any outstanding refills or renewals of medications that you might have at your pharmacy are all automatically cancelled.”
Angie Gaddy, a spokesperson for the B.C. Pharmacy Association, said in an email this was not accurate, pointing out that in June the College of Pharmacists of B.C. adopted new protocols allowing pharmacists to take on and renew prescriptions from retired practitioners. The new protocols came into effect in August.
Josie Osborne, B.C.’s new health minister, said she is aware of the challenges in getting primary care.
Osborne says the main challenge is the shortage of health-care professionals in B.C. and believes the province’s efforts to recruit more physicians, nurse practitioners and other health workers fields will help.
As for treading the line between encouraging doctors to go into family practice and working at a walk-in clinic, the minister said it will be a matter of working with family doctors and health-care professionals in each community.
“The nature of the way primary care is being delivered is changing, and we’re seeing that in what physicians want, in terms of their work life, their work style, but also in needing to stand up clinics that work for communities and being able to tailor them well for what a community’s needs are,” said Osborne.
MediMap CEO Thomas Jankowski said solutions are needed in short order as the closures of clinics has made waiting times at remaining walk-in clinics rise by 60 per cent. Meanwhile, emergency room waiting times continue to worsen as more people lose access to other options for primary care.
According to the provincial government’s website, all or most of the walk-in clinics in communities like Victoria, Surrey, Langley and Maple Ridge are by appointment only. Nanaimo only has one walk-in clinic.
“Wait times at ERs are getting horrific right now, and this might be actually the first year that we’ll talk about ER waiting times more openly as we’re starting to monitor those across the country as well. We’re seeing now the first year in which it’s quite regular to see entire ERs close because of staffing issues because of doctor burnout,” said Jankowski.
“I just feel that health care is very much in a free fall right now, and we’re not really thinking of systemic solutions in a way that truly address this, as opposed to moving the puck from one place to another, which isn’t working.”
A lot of the time, paths to poverty reduction for autistic adults are the responsibility of the government, organizations, and non-autistic people who can do their part in filling support gaps. 💗
At AutismBC, we can provide resources on financial literacy, interviewing, and more to help autistic adults empower themselves with information, but many of the underlying issues keeping us impoverished are systemic and intersectional.
Complex problems require complex solutions, but we believe #equityisworthwhile regardless of the effort it takes to create a brighter future. 🌟
This video covers some of the suggestions made by autistic adults experiencing financial hardship in BC. It’s well-supported by some staggering statistics from our recent survey, which found many autistic adults who responded don’t make enough to comfortably support themselves.
The third world in the Death Gate universe proves to be very different from the first two. On Arianus, we met elves and humans at war, with peaceful dwarves maintaining some mysterious piece of equipment. There was one Sartan, Alfred, and he was clumsy and inept. However, when he discovered a Patryn nearby, he was able to take action, to a certain extent. There were no Sartan on Prian, the lush world of fire, except perhaps Zifnab. Humans fought among themselves, while elves supported them by selling arms, and dwarves were isolated. The world was being overrun by giant Titans, and the only hope for the Mensch was Haplo’s flying ship, which took some survivors to the ancient Sartan dwellings, where they could perhaps start a new life.
On Abarrach, Haplo probably expects to see more of the same. I don’t think he expects to find any Sartan, and is completely surprised to find only Sartan on this world. Without support from the intertwined worlds of Air, Fire and Water, the world of Stone could not thrive. The elves, humans and dwarves died out, and the Sartan had to use their magic to stay alive, instead of minding over the Mensch.
Adding perspective to the world, we get to see Alfred again. Somehow he managed to get through Death’s Gate on Arianus into the Nexus. A ripple in the worlds was associated his passing through; it was never fully explained, either. Regardless, Haplo is not happy to see his old enemy, just as he is about to pass through the Death Gate. In the passing, he and Alfred experience a scene from each others’ past. Alfred sees Haplo’s parents die in the Labyrinth, while Haplo sees Alfred awaken in joy, only to find his people all dead. Part of the reason for that, if not the full reason, lies on Abarrach.
As with all the other books in this series, we start from another point of view. This time, it is Baltazar, wizard to a King and Prince of Cairn Telest. While I was anxious to see Haplo again, I liked the introductory fifty pages that told of their people leaving the land of their ancestors. Baltazar was more scientist than most others, reading ancient books, learning of the Death Gate, and exploring beyond his realm to find out why the river was drying up, and the heat-giving Colossus were growing cool. It turns out the world-surrounding ocean had turned to ice, and he believed the realms closer to the magma center of the world were stealing the heat. Thus the remaining people of Cairn Telest make a long journey down the tunnels to the cavern nearest the fire sea. There, a fire-dragon kills the king, but Prince Edmund leads them on. It seems rather pointless to include the king in this tale, especially given the attitude of the fire dragon later on.
The Sartan of Abarrach behave like the mensch on the other worlds. Where Alfred states that his people had never been to war among themselves, and Haplo states that “we don’t kill our own”, these Sartan have devolved enough to behave medievally. These are the people Haplo and Alfred meet when they arrive from Death’s Gate, across the fire sea, to Safe Harbor and Necropolis.
The Sartan have done worse than that, though. In order to save themselves, with the poisonous atmosphere and the toll it takes on their magic to survive, they have discovered the way to raise the dead, in order to make the dead work for them. The dead plough the fields and serve the living, but it takes necromancers to maintain them. In the first wave, it is the dead who form the armies that fight against each other.
When the army of Cairn Telest meets the army of Necropolis, Prince Edmund narrates the battle to Haplo. Here lies my greatest complaint about this book. Edmund and Baltazar (at first) believe the two visitors are from another Cairn, yet they explain things to them as if it was their first time seeing them, which of course it is. Edmund simply thinks things must be very different in their Cairn. Baltazar realizes that they came through Death’s Gate. When he realizes what he has seen, Haplo knows it is wrong, and feel revolted, yet also promises himself to bring the secret of necromancy to his Lord.
The more he learns of necromancy, the more he is revolted. Yet he continues to delude himself that he will bring a necromancer with him into the Nexus.
When Edmund calls a truce to the battle, they meet the Necropolis necromancers Duke Jonathan and Duchess Jera, who take them to the Dynast. Edmund is incensed at having to bow to another lord, yet he goes willingly, only to beg permission to enter the city as refugees.
The conflict that causes the most problems for the characters actually starts with Haplo’s dog. Alfred claims to “know all about the dog”, presumably a disassociated spirit of some sort –I don’t recall at all. Beasts are not permitted in the crowded city, so Haplo is told to leave his dog behind, but refuses. When a dead soldier throws the dog into a burning pit, Haplo goes crazy attacking the cadaver. Why he didn’t go after the Chancellor instead? The Chancellor was the one who gave the orders. Haplo could not touch the dead, and was thrown back from his encounter. I don’t quite understand the reason. When the dead are told to kill Haplo, Alfred steps in the way and “kills” the cadaver. That is, he disassociates the spirit from the body, allowing the spirit to go free, becoming dead, while the corpse could not be reanimated.
For Alfred knows the terrible price of necromancy. I don’t understand why he doesn’t share it with anybody other than Haplo. He has plenty of opportunity to explain to Jonathan, yet all he does is cower and rage against them, without giving any reasons. Few would have believed him, anyway, but he might have convinced a few.
Because of the crowded streets and the mindless dead who are guarding them, Haplo and Alfred are separated. Haplo goes with Edmund to the Dynast’s castle, while Alfred is taken to the Duke and Duchess’ lands, where they can explore Alfred’s role in “the prophecy”.
When it becomes known that Edmund has been murdered and Haplo poisoned (because Dynast Kleitus wants his rune-covered skin to join Sartan and Patryn magic and rule the worlds), the Duke and Duchess plan a rescue. Unfortunately, their contact in the palace is a double-agent, allowing the Dynast to set a trap, which they blunder into. The Duchess is killed, and the Duke resurrects her –turning her into a lazar, where the spirit did not have enough time to leave the body. This makes her into an intelligent cadaver, with powerful magic and the ability to do as she wishes with her own body –not just slave labor. She turns from a rebel into an obsessed “dead”, intent on punishing the living by killing them all and turning them into lazar. How is this “freeing” them, as she states? She is enslaving them all in revenge, but doesn’t allow even the old dead some peace.
Alfred, meanwhile, heals Haplo, who is anything but grateful. They flee into the catacombs, where Alfred discovers a room with a table made of pure white wood. The table was brought from the old world –our world –before the Sartan remade it. There is no explanation of why it was brought through, except that it might make communication easier between the multiple interconnected worlds. Instead of communicating with the other worlds, however, in order to ask them to help, they find they can communicate with a higher power, a god to the Sartan, who always thought they were gods themselves.
Jonathan understands immediately, though Alfred deceives himself, and Haplo refuses to believe. They are forced to flee as Dynast Kleitus enters the room, but is killed by the dead, who rally to Jera’s cry to punish the living for their crimes against the dead. Kleitus, however, becomes more dangerous, now that he can command the dead. Jera seems to join him, for unexplained reasons, as she wanted to punish the living, and now she is aiding the most powerful of those she wanted to punish.
The dead go on a rampage, killing all the people in Necropolis, making it into a true city of the dead. Then Kleitus takes his army across the fire sea to attack the remnants of the Cairn Telest. Haplo, Alfred, Jonathan and the cadaver of Prince Edmund try to cross using the fallen colossus that spans the sea, broken into pieces. The battles that destroyed the colossus are what caused the heat to leave the outer regions like Cairn Telest. The timing here is way off. If they expected that they could cross in time to beat the dead army, and climb onto the back of the unexpectedly-generous fire dragon when the army is halfway across, then how did they arrive at the same time as the army? It took the fire-dragon the same amount of time to cross halfway as the army, when it was said to be so much faster. Even given that it had to move upstream a little, the timing doesn’t make sense.
In any case, they wouldn’t have been able to escape because of the size of the army. While Haplo, Alfred and the dog run for the ship, Jonathan allows himself to be killed, then takes his place as a lazar. He knows he is the chosen one, who can bring death to the dead. And in the expected battle that follows, Jonathan’s lazar “kills” Edmund’s cadaver, instead of fighting the living. He uses Alfred’s spell to do this, and continues to offer death to the dead, while protecting the living.
By the end of the book, Kleitus and Jera are regrouping, and Jonathan waits for his time of prophecy to come, as the Death Gates will open within the next two books. I have no recollection of what happens at that time!
Haplo goes into a healing trance as they prepare to enter Death’s Gate back to the Nexus, and he offers Alfred a chance to escape while he sleeps. The Lord of the Nexus seems to know some of this, as he does not believe Haplo’s report, which simply states that Abarrach is a dead world. That is true, to a certain extent…
All throughout the book, Haplo has been having doubts, and it seemed to start when he lived a few moments in Alfred’s body. He manages to convince himself that he will bring his master the most valuable prize –the ability to create an army of the dead. Yet as the book progresses, it takes more effort to convince himself that it is what he wants to do, the right thing to do. He is realizing that the Sartan are no longer the enemy, and that the hate that sustained him through the labyrinth was not entirely justified. The fact that he can’t even face his master after the journey to Abarrach says that perhaps he doesn’t believe in his master anymore, even though he can probably convince himself that he does.
This book gives us a short history of what happened to the world before the sundering. After the dark ages and renaissance, which resulted in the death of magic and the rise of science, the pendulum swung back and man nearly destroyed himself with science. I object to giving a specific date to this, especially in a standard year numbering system like the Christian calendar. If anything, it should have been left very vague. “End of the twentieth century” would mean nothing to “present day” Sartan, who are generations removed, and it isolates the story. The mutations that followed the war allowed a subset of people to develop the rune-magic, and became Sartan. The balance to that were the Patryns, who came later. The war between them led to the sundering. As Alfred states, the sundering was the height of criminal arrogance if a higher power truly existed.
We will hear more of that in the next book, in the world of water. As for the world of stone, while it seemed like a horror movie, with the walking dead all over the place, I think it was less interesting because of the lack of mensch. But since the Sartan were so much like the mensch, with their castles and swords, it had a certain appeal of its own. Still, I didn’t find that it was written as well as the previous two books. It represents an essential part of the Death Gate worlds, and the evolution of a people isolated from all they knew and living in a world that tests their strengths in the ultimate way, to the ultimate extreme.
Roughly one year after Nintendo closed the e-store for the 3DS the company has now caused the leading 3DS emulator, Citra, to cease development, creating a vacuum for the console’s game preservation and access. The end of Citra is collateral damage resulting from the latest of Nintendo’s aggressive litigation decisions. This is an inarguably tragic result for game preservation. Fans with the resources to purchase increasingly expensive 3DS hardware and game titles on the secondary market do nothing to financially benefit either Nintendo or the original publishers. Nintendo has harmed access to games it has no financial stake in.
Emulation is critical for game preservation. Even the official sources for prior generation games primarily make use of emulation rather than duplicating the original hardware, as seen with everything from the officially licensed games on the Evercade console series to Nintendo’s own Switch Online service. Fans of older generation games can use the Steam Deck for emulation, a PC, or even dedicated emulation portables. Citra was not flawless, and it still had a way to go before achieving the goal of full compatibility with the entire 3DS library, but thanks to Nintendo, 3DS game preservation has been set back immensely.
The death of Citra resulted from Nintendo’s lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the developers of both the Switch emulator Yuzu and the 3DS emulator Citra. As is typical with lawsuits from a large company with massive financial resources against a smaller group, Tropic Haze lacked the resources to afford to battle the issues out in court and opted for a settlement wherein Nintendo is owed $2.4 million, and the developer crew has also ceased development and distribution of both of its emulator projects. Past legal precedents consistently show that emulation software is legally safe and protected, however.
During the original PlayStation era, Sony sued the makers of the Virtual Game Station for Macintosh computers and Bleem for PC. These events established a pattern where the courts confirmed the legitimacy of emulation software, even for a console that was currently in production, the PS1, but a gargantuan company like Sony could instead outspend the makers of these products. Sony failed in its lawsuit against Connectix, as well its appeal to the Supreme Court, but in 2001, Sony simply purchased VGS from Connectix and discontinued the product shortly thereafter. Bleem similarly won its suits, but the costs grew unmanageable.
Despite Sony losing every suit against Bleem, the massive costs associated with defending these cases led to the company’s closure. These precedents have carried over to the litigious patterns of modern Nintendo. It ultimately does not matter if Tropic Haze could have been declared legally in the right because the developer team lacks Nintendo’s deep war chest to afford to be proven right. Switch Online initially emulated N64 badly, at a time when third-party N64 emulators were far more advanced. The closure of an emulation project like Yuzu likely hurts the future of Switch game preservation.
Yuzu faced some different threats from the PS1-era lawsuits since Nintendo’s focus was on the emulator’s ability to break encryption. Legal precedents support the notion that reverse engineering gaming hardware through emulation is protected, but a workaround to DRM could be viewed as a different issue. The emulator did not include Switch product keys, which would be a legally risky move, but Nintendo’s argument points out what Yuzu’s official guide provided instructions on how to extract those from Switch hardware. This focus on encryption and methods to defeat DRM does distinguish the Tropic Haze lawsuit from earlier suits.
Nintendo also challenged a game owner’s right to copy a game into a different format or play it on anything other than officially licensed hardware. This weaker argument circles back to challenging a consumer’s right to make backup copies of their own purchased media, but it does set the suit against Yuzu apart from the PS1-era lawsuits. Emulators like Bleem and Virtual Game Station worked by playing actual PS1 discs using their emulators. The court noted emulators could actually benefit Sony’s PlayStation software sales. Yuzu differs, as there is no simple method to use a Switch cart on a PC.
There is more room for debate regarding both the ethics and legality of software like Yuzu, which emulates the current-gen Switch console. Such an argument, ideally, could be decided in court, but the reality of the U.S. legal system is that most civil cases are settled out of court based on weighing the costs to defend against the penalties of a settlement. Civil justice typically works out like a poker game, where a wealthy party like Nintendo can simply raise the stakes until all others are forced to fold, even if Nintendo is aggressively bluffing and Tropic Haze could have won.
Citra ceasing development is an even bigger concern, as it hurts 3DS game preservation and accessibility in the here and now. The 3DS was active for more than a decade, and over 1,500 games were released in North America alone. Tropic Haze had a stated goal that Citra would continue updates until the full 3DS library had perfect compatibility with the emulator, but now that dream will not be realized. The settlement could also frighten other emulator development teams against continuing their efforts, further damaging the preservation of Nintendo’s legacy consoles and their gaming libraries.
The anti-preservation stances taken by Nintendo have become emblematic of the entirety of entertainment media. Shows and movies that were exclusive to streaming platforms are being pulled without ever seeing a physical media release, giving consumers no means to access these products legally. Nintendo is taking legal action to make games inaccessible, perhaps with consideration of someday releasing full-priced remakes or its own emulation services, like Switch Online does for older consoles. Switch Online contains only a fraction of the games for each console it supports and leaves entire chapters of Nintendo’s history absent.
Regardless of the rationale for Nintendo’s litigation, the impact on gaming fans is a negative one. CitraVR, a port of Citra for Quest VR devices, allowed fans to experience 3DS titles like never before, giving new life to many prior-gen classics. Now that the primary Citra is ceasing updates, CitraVR will also lose out on much of its potential. Emulation typically offers benefits like Save States (the ability to save anywhere, even in games that did not originally include that feature) and translation patches for games that were never officially localized.
Yuzu allowed Switch game fans to play their Switch games in 4K, a feat the aging Switch hardware cannot match. In many respects, these benefits make gaming via emulation more enjoyable than the original hardware. Whatever a person may feel regarding the ethics of emulation, in the current legal landscape, questions of legality or right and wrong are irrelevant. If one party has far more disposable income for legal fees than the other, they will have their way. Nintendo has notoriously deep pockets. If it turns its ire towards any small development team or fan project, it wins by default.
Playing current-gen games via emulation is harder for a developer like Tropic Haze to justify, perhaps, as Nintendo’s suit referenced anecdotes of players using Yuzu to play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before its official release date. Killing off Citra, conversely, is harder for Nintendo to justify. Without an e-store to buy 3DS games, fans are forced to buy secondhand copies or resort to emulation. A niche title like Yo-Kai Watch 3 that sold for $39.99 USD on the e-store before its closure now costs upwards of $300 for a copy of the cartridge alone without a box.
When Nintendo frames the argument with a focus on a title that is still actively for sale, being leaked before its release and played via emulation on Yuzu, like Tears of the Kingdom, the lawsuit’s failure may have seemed less assured for Tropic Haze. Nintendo’s stronger arguments certainly center on Yuzu, and the fact that one team made it, as well as the strongest 3DS emulator, could be seen as a happy coincidence for the company. It is unfortunate for fans, as Nintendo ended 3DS e-sales and then shut down Citra, a reasonable alternative to massively inflated secondary market prices.
Due to the fall of Citra, all of the best 3DS games ever, and niche cult classics alike, are now inaccessible to most fans. Those who support Nintendo as a corporate entity may rejoice at the settlement, but some fans of Nintendo games, including the entirety of the 3DS library, now suffer for it, as myopic corporate litigation once again harms the preservation of the video gaming hobby’s past and access to a decade’s worth of titles.
Richards Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, is a key north-south corridor in the city’s downtown core, known for its blend of commercial, cultural, and historical significance. Richards Street runs through the heart of downtown Vancouver, stretching from the waterfront near Canada Place in the north to False Creek in the south. It’s a bustling urban artery in a highly walkable area.
969 Richards Street has a Walk Score of 100 out of 100, meaning it’s a “walker’s paradise.” Daily errands don’t require a car, with amenities like restaurants, shops, and parks within easy reach. The street is well-served by public transit. For example, 969 Richards Street is a seven-minute walk from the Vancouver City Centre Station on the Canada Line (Platform 1), a major SkyTrain line connecting downtown to Richmond and Vancouver International Airport. Nearby green spaces include Yaletown Park, Emery Barnes Park, and Helmcken Park, offering residents and visitors spots for relaxation amidst the urban setting.
Richards Street has played a role in Vancouver’s evolution from its early days. At 422 Richards Street, the Bank of British Columbia building stands as a historical landmark, one of the first commercial structures built outside Gastown, Vancouver’s original commercial hub. According to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, this building housed Vancouver’s first Aboriginal Friendship Centre from 1952 to 1963. Today, it hosts a mix of commercial businesses, coffee shops, food outlets, and shared workspaces, reflecting the street’s modern vibrancy while preserving its heritage. Vancouver Heritage Foundation, a registered charity, highlights Richards Street as part of its efforts to conserve and promote the city’s heritage places. The buildings on its Heritage Register, like those on Richards, are not owned by the foundation but are significant to the city’s cultural fabric.
Richards Street is a hub for entertainment, particularly at venues like the Red Room. The Red Room (398 Richards Street), an independent nightclub and entertainment venue, as per its website, is a cornerstone of Vancouver’s nightlife. Known for its state-of-the-art PK Sound system and world-class intelligent lighting, it hosts a variety of events, including EDM, Latin nights, and live music. It’s been a staple for bass music through its SUBculture events (featuring Drum & Bass, Dubstep, etc.) and has hosted Vancouver’s longest-running Latin event every Friday for over 18 years. The Red Room also hosts diverse events like comedy nights. On February 1, 2025, it featured a comedy show with Vancouver-based comedian Rory Dunn, who has toured Canada and been featured at JFL Vancouver. The venue’s open floor plan and excellent sightlines make it a popular spot for such performances.
Richards Street is lined with a mix of businesses that cater to both locals and tourists. The area around Richards Street, especially near 422 Richards, is home to coffee shops and food outlets. This makes it a convenient stop for professionals and visitors. The presence of offices and coworking spaces at 422 Richards Street reflects the street’s role in Vancouver’s modern economy, catering to freelancers, startups, and small businesses.
Richards Street is easily accessible by car, with real-time driving directions available. It’s a busy street, so traffic updates are useful, especially during peak hours or events. The street’s design and the surrounding infrastructure make it bike- and pedestrian-friendly, aligning with Vancouver’s emphasis on sustainable transportation. You can explore how far you can travel by foot, bike, bus, or car from spots like 969 Richards Street.
Richards Street lies in a part of Vancouver that balances historical roots with modern development. The Yaletown neighborhood, where much of Richards Street is located, was once an industrial warehouse district but has since transformed into a trendy area with boutique shops, restaurants, and high-rise condos. The street’s proximity to Gastown and the downtown financial district further enhances its role as a connector between Vancouver’s past and present.
Richards Street in Vancouver is a dynamic urban corridor that encapsulates the city’s heritage, accessibility, and vibrant entertainment scene. From historical landmarks like the Bank of British Columbia building to nightlife hotspots like the Red Room, it offers a mix of cultural, commercial, and recreational experiences. Its perfect Walk Score, excellent transit links, and proximity to parks make it a highly livable and visitable part of the city, appealing to a wide range of people—from history buffs to partygoers.
Opened in 1967, Marina City presented a high-profile, architecturally evocative alternative to the suburban ideal many wealthy Chicagoans pursued in the second half of the twentieth century. The five-building downtown complex, with its expressive paired apartment towers and whale’s mouth theater presented an idiosyncratic but compelling vision of vibrant metropolitan life in miniature, prefiguring the urban renaissance of the early twenty-first century.
In 1960 Chicago posted its first ever population loss, beginning four decades of population decline for the city, as many residents of means opted for houses in outlying suburbs. Fearing the consequences of this loss, and acknowledging that the Great Depression and World War II had stalled decades of public investment in the city, Mayor Richard Daley launched a multitude of major urban redevelopment projects in an effort to draw middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers back to Chicago, including elevated highways and large new hospital and university campuses. In 1959 William Lane McFetridge, president of the powerful Building Service Employee’s International Union (BSEIU), built on this momentum to begin planning for a major urban residential project funded by union dues. There was precedent for unions to develop residential buildings for their own members, but publicly minded real estate financier Charles Swibel persuaded his friend McFetridge that a wiser long-term investment would be an upper-middle-class residential complex that could charge rents beyond what most union members could afford.
McFetridge commissioned Bertrand Goldberg, who had designed several earlier BSEIU projects, for what was preliminarily called Labor Center. A Chicagoan, Goldberg left Harvard to train under Mies van der Rohe at the Berlin Bauhaus in tumultuous 1932. After he completed additional engineering training at the Armour Institute, Goldberg apprenticed with several Chicago firms, including the office of George and Fred Keck, known for their experimental residential work. In 1937 Goldberg opened his own office and his early work earned him a reputation for problem solving, technical expertise, and careful space planning. A founding partner of Standard Houses Corporation, from 1937 until the mid-1950s Goldberg split his energies between his firm’s small modern residential and commercial commissions and the design and manufacturing of prefabricated housing. When McFetridge engaged his services, Goldberg’s small office was designing its largest work to date—Astor Tower, a thirty-story hotel on Chicago’s north side. The exaggerated height of the ground floor, raised above the street on pilotis, emphasized the structural core and transformed it into a design element. McFetridge’s project, however, represented a significant increase in scale for the firm.
The site McFetridge, Swibel, and Goldberg selected for the project was a three-acre rail yard occupying most of the block on the north bank of the Chicago River, between State and Dearborn streets. Surrounded by warehouses, adjacency to the river was the site’s major advantage, but it lacked residential amenities, and the development team determined those must be included in the project. A summer 1959 scheme for Labor Center, now rechristened Marina City, included two round, forty-story residential buildings and a round, ten-story office building. Goldberg’s office continued to develop the scheme, and by December the design largely resembled the final project.
Trained as a modernist, Goldberg found in reinforced concrete a rational yet expressive material that was utterly unlike the celebrated ferro-vitreous residential buildings Mies had designed at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive a decade earlier. A marina occupies the lowest level of the site, allowing seventy boats to dock directly beneath the building. Topped by a one-story restaurant and service level, the marina serves as a platform for the entire project. The paired and rounded towers, offset along the riverbank to maximize views, are each composed of a nineteen-story open parking ramp and a tall glazed transitional story, topped by forty stories of apartments. Each bay of the towers terminates in the hemicyclic balconies that have earned the building its “corncob towers” nickname. Along the parking ramp, spaces are arranged so that cars pull to the edge of the building making them visible from the exterior. Services for each building are clustered into the central shaft, which Goldberg conceptualized as the building’s essential core, accommodating all stairs, elevators, systems, and structure. While circulation and systems are contained within this core, the structural engineers, concerned about the stability of a fully cantilevered system, added columns at the perimeter. Perceptible at the base, at the transitional level, and extending several stories above the roof, each core anchors its tower. On the residential levels, a hall rings the core to produce a round floor plan; this is divided into individual units, studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, with acutely angled walls. Bathrooms and kitchens are clustered toward the center; at the perimeter are floor-to-ceiling glazed walls with doors leading to the rounded balconies.
At the north end of the site, visually dividing the complex from the industrial district to the north, the commercial building has a two-story glazed lower story, topped by a two-story retail and leisure zone. Finished in concrete panels, this was designed to house shops, a bowling alley, and other amenities for use by Marina City’s residents and office workers. The ten-story office building stands astride the commercial structure, on spindly vaulted concrete legs. Nestled into the center of the complex, the saddle-shaped theater roof rests on low walls, largely glazed at the entry. Walls and roof are finished with standing-seam lead panels, and oversized round cast-concrete eaves mark the transition between roof and walls.
Construction at Marina City began at the end of 1960, and once foundations were completed, an innovative climbing crane allowed workers to complete one tower floor per day. The first tenants moved into the east tower in October 1962 and both buildings opened fully in early 1963. Office tenants occupied that building in late 1964, and the contractor finished construction of the theater in 1967.
Marina City commanded considerable attention when it opened. Goldberg’s office worked closely with the owners to market the commercial and residential leases, producing promotional materials and full-scale mock-ups of apartments and offices. These efforts proved successful and demand allowed the owners to raise rents for both apartments and offices. Goldberg’s paired towers became immediate and enduring Chicago icons, appearing in countless articles and ads, in the opening to CBS’s Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978), the movie The Hunter (1980), where a car famously plunges from the parking ramp into the Chicago River, and on the cover of Wilco’s album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002).
In the last decades, minor changes have done little to alter the appearance of Marina City. In 1977 the apartments were sold as condominiums; in 1994, the office tower was converted into a hotel and a restaurant was built on the site of the ice skating rink at the southeast corner of the complex. The scale, complexity, and audacity of the architecture at Marina City proved Goldberg’s skill and unique vision, and he went on to design such major complexes as Boston’s Affiliated Hospitals (1964–1971), the Chicago Housing Authority’s Raymond Hilliard Homes (1963–1966) and Chicago’s Wilbur Wright College (1986–1992). From cylinders to clover leafs to pyramids, Goldberg’s designs defy the street grid and enclose complex programs and technical requirements in dramatic concrete forms. Among Chicago’s most significant late-twentieth-century architects, Goldberg pushed the Miesian modernism in the direction of a more personal and gestural architectural expression.
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