Turtle Place

Next up are some old-ish photos of VanWa's Turtle Place, a small plaza on 7th between Washington & Main. This had previously been the Vancouver bus system's downtown transit center, until the city decided it was attracting crime and they might be able to do without a downtown transit center at all. So in 2007 they turned it into a pedestrian plaza, with a gigantic mural and a couple of sculptures. The plaza was always meant to be temporary, until they found another transportation use for the place, and you can see they didn't spend a lot of money on the place except for the art and the mural. Since I took these photos, the plaza shown here (such as it is) has been torn up to make way for a terminal for The Vine, a shiny new Bus Rapid Transit line out to Vancouver Mall, which is scheduled to open a week from today (1/8/17). The photos show they kept the giant mural, and apparently they're keeping the plaza's fountain too, which is good since I have photos of it too, and I haven't gotten around to posting them quite yet, and I'd hate for them to be completely obsolete before I use them.