Who put the giant tombstone in downtown Vancouver?

My first visit to Vancouver in five years began ominously.

Along Sixth Street, the cardrooms and flophouses just memories now. In their place is urban decay that reminded me of growing up in Detroit. That’s surely not the impression Vancouver wants to give visitors arriving at the snazzy new Hilton.

I don’t really know how snazzy the Hilton is, because my eye was drawn instead to the monstrosity across the street: A parking garage topped with hideous HVAC devices. I’m reminded of the movie “Brazil” and its omnipresent wiring, symbols of a society rushing ahead without a vision of how growth and change can be assimilated with humanity.

By that point, had I not been eagerly arriving for Lisa and Mike’s wedding, I might have turned and fled. Had I done so, I would have missed more than a ceremony. I also would have missed the magnificent new Esther Short Park hidden behind the comical HVAC Towers. I saw the early stages of the renovation and expected the result to be beautiful, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It’s a masterpiece.

There’s one major problem. Someone put a hulking tombstone of a building across from the park. It’s the newly old Columbian building, a perfectly bland and boring metaphor for what the paper has become. Like the paper, it’s not ugly or bad; it’s just a cookie cutter replica of countless buildings next to faceless suburban malls across the country. From the outside it gives me no reason to want to venture inside.

Of course I couldn’t venture inside anyway on this cold and rainy Saturday. The building, and the streets around it, were dead. I was able to stop my car on Sixth Street to look, knowing there was no danger of obstructing traffic.

I rolled down the window and could hear only the pages of a discarded newspaper dancing like tumbleweeds in the swirling wind of the vestibule. I had seen enough. I moved on down Sixth, past the roundabout and toward the old-new-again building and another trip down Metaphor Lane.

Metaphor Lane, which I believe to still officially bear the name Sixth Street, has very long blocks. Urban planners like very short blocks, because they give you many ways and many reasons to explore a neighborhood, taking you in directions you might not have known you wanted to go.

Not so here. The Columbian property, with its bland parking lot and vacated streets, sent me far out of my way, into the bleak ruins of the old mill. This property is not at all welcoming, either, but worse yet it’s a huge obstacle in the way of Vancouver’s progress. It took me so far out of my way that I almost didn’t have time to find Kazoodles.

How sad that would have been. Because after you circle the sad remains of The Crossing and of The Columbian, Eighth Street has a new urban flair. It’s where I found Kazoodles. Unlike my trip thus far, the store was full of vibrant life. From the seemingly deserted streets, a constant stream of shoppers filled the store.

Bob was there and greeted me with a warmth that belied the five years since we had seen each other and the many more since we really knew each other well. Mary obviously didn’t remember me, yet welcomed me as though I was a fast friend.

Suddenly the bad memories of my last years at the paper were erased. I was transported back in time to the truly good old days of what was once a truly great newspaper.

I walked back out into the rain, past the beautiful park. There were signs even here of a darker past: police cars and an ambulance were dealing with a sick transient, but still things seemed happy.

Until I looked across the park to a faceless brown edifice. In the empty windows I could see the “Available” sins pleading for someone to bring the building to life. Scanning the building from this perspective I could see the dark signs proclaiming “The Columbian.”

There were no signs of life. From here I couldn’t even see those ghostly newspaper pages dancing in the wind.

All I could see was a tombstone for an old friend, once so full of life.