Woodwards: The Competition

Jim Green is the unofficial and unelected mayor of the downtown east side of Vancouver....one of the most desperate inner city neighbourhoods in Canada. In a few city blocks there are 6000 junkies, 4000 certifiably insane and a collection of poor and disadvantaged not seen in many other cities in North America.

In the middle of this madness sits an abandoned old department store, Woodwards, a former shopping icon in Vancouver. The store has sat empty and deserted for over a decade and has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the downtown east side of Vancouver.

During the last municipal election campaign, Green’s slate/party promised a referendum on the Olympics. The IOC had declared that if the city of Vancouver came out against the Games, it would affect their decision on who hosts them. Jim Green was remarkably quiet throughout the referendum and did not come out against the Games. He was selling his silence to the provincial government in exchange for the Woodwards building. By the time the smoke cleared, the city owned it and Jim Green was able to start the process of redevelopment of 600,000 square feet in the middle of his neighbourhood.The film follows the selection process until the final developer is chosen.

On one level this film is about the competition between four property developers chose by the city to be short listed for the Woodwards project. But on another level, this is film about the changing of the future of Vancouver’s downtown east side...not with protests but with architecture. Has Jim Green given the east side a chance for the future?