The city will explore whether public art can pretty up a staircase on Front Street.
The staircase, dubbed by some folks to be “the stairway to nowhere” as it doesn’t yet connect to the building at 642 Columbia St., cost $200,000 and was part of the Front Street mews and parkade-removal projects. When the city decided to remove the western portion of the parkade, it needed to replace the building’s emergency exit.
“There’s no doubt the stairwell generated a bit of conversation over the summer months when the Front Street Mews was opened up and people started come down and experience that,” said Mayor Jonathan Cote. “I think it’s important to recognize the staircase does have an important functional, utilitarian purpose to be a fire escape, which did need to be replaced.”
While council members were surprised by the scale of the structure, Cote said it’s what needed to be built from a building code perspective. He’s pleased that the city’s public art advisory committee will consider how the structure can be enhanced to better fit the city’s vison for the Front Street mews.
On Monday, city council approved a recommendation that the fire escape stairs be enhanced through a combination of design/public art intervention.
“I can’t count myself in the fan camp of this staircase,” said Coun. Mary Trentadue. “I did admit that to the public art committee when they all spoke glowingly in favour of the staircase. I have to admit I was pretty inspired by some of the ideas that they came forward with with regards to how to encourage this piece of infrastructure to look more imaginative. In fact, there were comments at the table that there were some people that already thought that it was public art.”
In response to concerns about the appearance of the fire escape, staff considered enhancing the structure’s appearance with public art or removing the staircase and using it at another location on Front Street. Staff has been exploring preliminary options such as decorative metal screens, artistic projections and lighting.
Coun. Jaimie McEvoy said the city spent money to take down the parkade and reveal beautiful heritage on Front Street, and the staircase distracts from that a little bit.
“Heritage can be enhanced or be detracted from depending on what’s around it. Even a good piece of modern public art can really enhance. I think that given the best way to save heritage is for it to be actively used, and the building owner has done that and really brought that building to life and filled it up with tenants,” he said. “I think that we can find a win-win here, where we have a solid piece of public art that also serves a utilitarian purpose as a fire escape.”
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said he’d prefer to hold off on doing a public art feature on the staircase for now.
“It is sure a far sight better than what we had there with the parkade,” he said. “I am quite happy with it.”
According to a staff report, final connection of the stairway to the building is awaiting removal of the existing overhead electrical and telecommunications cables. That work is expected to be done in October.
