"I don't know why I thought it would be
inevitable that we would be able to just con-
tinue on... it makes no sense that we [pulled
off the new location]. It's ludicrous," Con-
stantine says. "If this was someone's actual
full-time job and they really depended on
it, their life would be ruined."
And yet despite all of those headaches,
Constantine recognizes that Little Moun-
tain is somewhat of a fortunate outlier in
the larger arts picture: the delays allowed
him to apply for the necessary grants to
subsidize most of the project; the build-
ing is owned by BC Housing, so the group
was able to secure a favourable lease and
a reliable landlord; Constantine himself
has a master's degree in planning; and he's
paying roughly $14 per square foot annually
compared to the approximately $70 other
commercial tenants in the neighbourhood
are paying.
"I feel bad for small business owners,"
Constantine says. "Imagine someone who's
trying to open a barber shop and they have
it in their mind that in a couple of months
they'll be cutting hair and then it turns into
such a process. This is bonkers."
Bonkers is an apt description when
examining Vancouver's arts landscape dat-
ing back to before the 2010 Olympics.
A 2019 report prepared by the Eastside
Arts Society estimated that 400,000
square feet of arts space was lost between
2009 and 2019, an amount that translates
to two and half times the size of BC Place.
That same report noted that, of the 1,612
artists with studios in the study area, 1,332
faced imminent threat of displacement
due to rent increases or redevelopment.
A City of Vancouver report in 2020 found
that two-thirds of the cultural spaces
surveyed had leases for less than five
years, offering little to no rent stability or
security of tenure.
45
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
J U LY/A U G U S T
2 0 24
"WHEN YOU ARE AN ARTIST, YOU DON'T
NECESSARILY WANT TO RUN A SPACE, YOU
JUST FALL BACKWARDS INTO IT BECAUSE YOU
DON'T WANT TO
SEE IT DISAPPEAR."
LMG executive director
Brent Constantine
ON THE RISE
According to executive director
Brent Constantine,
LMG's comedy
calendar is booked up to December
