Vancouver's Insane Live Music Venue Laws

I'm writing an article right now on Vancouver's lack of live music venues, and have to say, this city is effed. It is literally legally impossible for someone to open a live music venue that is not either a restaurant or a sit-down theater. And the ones that do exist keep getting torn down to build condos. Where are their licenses going? No one knows.

It is virtually impossible to open a venue off of our Entertainment District, which is basically one street. If you want to open something off of Granville street, you need a Restaurant Class 2 license. In other words, if you want to play live music, you need to feed 100 people a night. You could get a cabaret license, but successfully winning one off of Granville is almost impossible. The application processes for a liquor license (and who would want to go to a gig that didn't serve booze) is arbitrary, expensive, complicated and approval is unlikely.

One of the reasons for this mess is that the three families that own the Entertainment district have very talented lobbyers, that for years have convinced city council that to open a venue anywhere else would mean lawsuits and complaints and a lessened ability to sell high priced condos.

Now, though, the city is introducing a pilot project to reshape their venue by laws. By early 2011, they're going to offer the province a proposal as to how they should change the by-laws, so as not to completely kill off live music in Vancouver. But it'll be slow going.