In December, the Vancouver Art Gallery said it was not going ahead with a planned design for its new home, after construction costs soared by $200-million.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press

What a debacle, I muttered to myself. I was passing a large empty block in downtown Vancouver, looking at the signs on the fences: “The Future Home of the Vancouver Art Gallery at the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts.” Here, a self-congratulatory “ground-awakening” ceremony was held in 2023. But the ground remains asleep – just piles of dirt and gravel, hibernating indefinitely.

Over the years, The Globe has reported that the new gallery could open in 2019, 2021, 2023, 2027, 2028.

But the design for the new gallery – introduced by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in 2015 (yes, 10 years ago), who had been selected (over Canadian firms and others) – is now dead. It was finally pronounced as too expensive – which critics have been saying for years, as various iterations of gallery leaders clung to outdated budget estimates, sometimes preposterously. Expected costs ballooned to $600-million, VAG officials said last year. In December, they acknowledged that they were abandoning the design, and said they would look for a more economical........

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