Debris thrown off Granville bridge damages Improv Centre

Construction debris was thrown off the Granville Street Bridge on Saturday morning between 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., damaging parts of the Improv Centre at Granville Island.

Tom Lancaster, General Manager of Granville Island tells CityNews that this was an “act of vandalism,” and no one in the public has been injured.

He tells CityNews that there were a number of things thrown off the bridge.

“There’s several pieces of metal from the fencing. So they’re like those metal T-bars. Looks like a couple of tools that were thrown,” he said.

“Another iron implement, but it’s still sticking in the top of the improv centre. So we haven’t been able to really identify what it is yet.”

The Improv Centre has sustained some damages; Lancaster says “a really beautiful sculpture that sits on top of their glass awning” has been destroyed.

“Regardless of, you know, if it’s a $100,000 project to replace or a $15,000 project to replace the impact to their operations is going to be significant,” he said.

Lancaster confirms that this is not the first time something like this has happened.

“This is the first time that someone’s thrown something off exactly this spot on the bridge… but really, unfortunately, we’ve seen this in the past and in other projects that the city’s doing with the bridge,” he said.

“It’s almost entirely intentional … usually in the middle of the night. Sometimes in the early morning, finding things on the bridge and then purposely throwing them off the bridge.”

He said during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw an increase in this kind of vandalism, he estimated “probably four to six times a year.”

“In 2020, it was more on the east side of the bridge. So the children’s only building received quite a bit of this kind of damage,” he said.

Lancaster doesn’t know the motive behind this type of vandalism, but thinks it’s a consequence of the “downtown Vancouver party scene.”

“It’s people just maybe coming back from a night of drinking. People looking to cause damage, those kinds of things,” he said.

He says this is a big public safety matter. They have seen an increase in things coming off the bridge and have been working actively with the City of Vancouver for over four years now to try to get prevention fencing installed on the bridge.

No commitment from city to fund prevention fences on bridge

“[It’s] kind of like the bridge fencing that you see at the Burrard bridge, and it right now is just a matter of budget allocation, and the city is interested. We have mayor and council, generally speaking on the side,” he said.

Lancaster says they are trying to avoid a “catastrophic situation.” He tells CityNews that it’s just a matter of time before prevention fencing is installed on the Granville bridge, but budget constraints have stalled the project.

“We’ve been told by staff that it was in the plans about four years ago, but in the lead-up and then through COVID, because of budget constraints, that means prevention fencing was taken out of the project,” he said.

“What we’re seeing now is the rest of the project moving forward with the intention one day to do this, but we don’t have a commitment yet.”

Lancaster tells CityNews that he had a workshop with the mayor and council a couple of weeks ago where they discussed public safety, and he sees that there is a large number of counselors in support.