Developer Ian Gillespie has reimagined Vancouver's skyline...

Globe and Mail At the corner of Cordova and Burrard, a one-line poem by British artist Liam Gillick wraps the facade of the new Fairmont Pacific Rim. The 60-centimetre-tall steel letters repeat for 17 storeys: "lying on top of a building the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street". Inside, a few weeks before tomorrow's opening, construction workers buzzed through the hotel lobby, working on final touches. A marble staircase, the stone quarried in Italy and cut in China, was sheathed in a protective yellow coating. Around the corner, a trolley carrying mirrors rolled through what will be a café/bakery/library/gift shop, the walls adorned with dark American walnut.