Eastside Arts Society wins big with new city grant, while another grant sits dormant in the city’s budget

Earlier this week, the city made a big investment in a prominent local arts organization, approving a $2.65 million grant to the Eastside Arts Society (EAS) for the group to purchase its own building.

“This is truly epic,” Esther Rausenberg giddily told Vancity Lookout. “It's just been a bit of a whirlwind.” Rausenberg is the longtime artistic and executive director of EAS, the non-profit society that organizes the popular Eastside Culture Crawl each year.

“I've been in the arts community for 40 years, and I've anticipated things and then they've never come to fruition. I've advocated for all kinds of artist spaces over many, many decades, and nothing has come out of that that's been as wonderful as this particular situation,” Rausenberg said. 

The multi-million dollar investment from the city allows EAS to purchase the small building at 716 East Hastings Street where the society has had its offices since 2015. Alongside the society’s offices, the building will serve as below-market artist studios for at least ten artists, as well as a gallery space. 

“This one-time investment would secure affordable artist studio and programming space as a public benefit, while using a community-owned approach, without creating long-term financial obligations related to facility maintenance and renewal for the City,” staff wrote in the grant recommendation.

The building purchase also provides the organization with certainty of tenure. “We don't have to be constantly moving from one place to another, trying to find something that we can work with,” Rausenberg said.

The building’s existing zoning allows for “hard to house” artistic production practices, such as sculpting or woodworking, which are loud, dirty, or dusty. “It's difficult for those artists to get space because it's not allowable in a number of areas within the city, for obvious reasons,” she explained. 

“I have always believed that in order for the arts to continue to survive, we have to own our own buildings,” Rausenberg said, noting that as a non-profit owner EAS won’t have to pay property tax on the building and will be able to pass those savings along to tenants. “That's a huge win right there,” she said. 

The purchase will also allow EAS to expand its programming and visibility too, Rausenberg said, describing how they run a workshop program for elementary schools in and around Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside, which until now have been hidden from public view. 

“We'll have this exhibit space … and we can show the public the art that these kids have made, because now we have a space that we can do that,” Rausenberg said.

An unpredictable funding model

The grant was approved and announced as part of the city’s first arts and culture grants of the year, but the money for the society’s building purchase didn’t come out of the same budget that supported the projects and operating costs of the other 164 organizations which received city funding. 

Rather, the society’s new home was funded through development contributions collected by the city since 2017 as part of the rezoning and approval process for new buildings in the False Creek Flats. 

EAS now joins a select number of arts non-profits that have received major investments from developer contributions collected by the city. Those include organizations like Western Front in Mount Pleasant and the Dance Foundation on behalf of the Dance Centre downtown. 

“These funds were positioned years ago through [the city’s] cultural services [department] for the Eastside Arts District, but we weren't sure how and when it could be used,” Rausenberg explained, underscoring how the selection of an organization for this sort of major funding, and the timing of when it comes through isn’t always straightforward. 

“The amount of money that [the city] had, the cost of this building, it just all seemed to come together and worked out,” after EAS found out the building was up for sale last March, Rausenberg explained. 

Nancy Lee told Vancity Lookout they are happy for Rausenberg and EAS to have gotten the building grant. Lee is an interdisciplinary artist, artistic director and chief curator of Chapel Sound Art Foundation, worked on the city’s Culture|Shift plan, and is a former board member at VIVO Media Arts Centre.

But based on their experience at VIVO, Lee sees “a lot of room for improvement” in the city’s framework for distributing developer contributions to arts organizations.  

In 2012, the city rezoned a half-block at Broadway and Kingsway for The Independent, a major 21-storey mixed-use development by Rize Alliance properties. The rezoning came with a negotiated $4.5 million contribution from the developer to support arts and culture in Mount Pleasant. 

After an open call for submissions to access the money, the city chose four neighbourhood organizations to support with funding for arts production spaces. That’s how Western Front got $1.5 million to buy its current building on 8th Avenue, according to CBC. 

VIVO, partnering with the Vancouver Creative Space Society (C-Space), were chosen to receive $2.3 million in funding to purchase a new shared building in the area. But “due to complications around partnership development, organization capacities and lack of affordable suitable space,” the money was never given out, according to a 2023 report from C-Space. 

Lee wasn’t on the VIVO board at the time, joining the organization after its 2014 move out of Mount Pleasant, but described the lack of access to the grant as a “constant issue” that came up during their time on the board. More than a decade later, that $2.3 million still appears as a line item in the city’s 2025 budget, earmarked in name for VIVO and C-Space, but neither organization seems able to access it.

To Lee, who is no longer on VIVO’s board, it’s an example of how the city’s framework for dispensing these amenity contributions has failed to support some of the organizations the funds were intended to benefit.

As we reported last fall, VIVO is in serious financial distress, cancelling its 2026 programming and temporarily laying off staff due to significant rent increases in the city-owned building it's occupied since moving out of Mount Pleasant. 

The jubilation for Rausenberg and Eastside Arts Society and the promise of an expanded home base is a tangible example of the positive impact these major civic grants can have. However, amidst that celebration, it’s worth remembering the situation where the same model has fallen short. 

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