An interesting proposal has surfaced for a 33-foot lot on Commercial Drive at the corner of Napier Street. The site, which is improved with a 2-storey heritage commercial building built in 1908, is now being planned for heritage preservation with an infill apartment building at the rear lane.

Details of the proposal include:

• retaining the existing 2-storey Heritage B building (now occupied by Moja Coffee)
• a new 5-storey infill residential building with 8 rental apartment units at the rear of this site;
• a maximum height of 48.5 feet;
• a density of 2.70 FSR (10,108 SF);
• one-car share parking space having vehicular access from the lane;
• removal of one street tree on Napier Street.

Under the site’s existing C-2C1 zoning, the application is conditional and requires the approval of the planning department. For this project, relaxations would be required on building height and some setbacks. The application references incentives under the Rental 100 program.

View from Napier St – existing heritage building on the right

View from rear lane

The architect for the project is Cornerstone Architecture.

The property was listed for sale in 2013 and sold for $1,690,000, which equates to approx. $125 per buildable SF when the existing building is taken to account.

An application has been submitted to rezone an 11,500 SF mid-block site at 8815-8827 Selkirk Street. Th plan is to rezone from the current MC-1 industrial zoning to allow for a 6-storey mixed-use building. The proposal is being made under the Marpole Community Plan, and the project includes:

• 33 residential units;
• 24 one-bedrooms, 6 two-bedrooms and 3 three-bedrooms
• 2,408 SF of commercial space on the ground floor;
• a building height of 61 ft.;
• a total density of 2.96 FSR; and
• 36 vehicle parking spaces and 42 bicycle spaces.

The site is currently improved with two older lowrise office/industrial buildings. The area south of West 70th Avenue has potential for new residential buildings, but so far has been slower to develop than other more established residential areas of Marpole.

The architect for the project is Wilson Chang.

Here is a brief snapshot of the condo resales market since the start of 2016, shown as average price per SF broken down by sub-area/neighbourhood.

Source: MLS Data

The above chart reflects data on all MLS sales for condo units that were one year old or newer at the time of sale, and only includes neighbourhoods with sales in multiple buildings. Pricing is slightly distorted by product type; for example, all of the downtown condo product is concrete highrise which is more expensive, whereas all of Maple Ridge product is in lowrise or townhouse form that is much cheaper to build and sell. Nevertheless, some may find the average pricing stats interesting.

The market for pre-sales inventory is likely to track above the average resales in a given sub-market.

Here is a construction update on Serracan Properties‘ office building project at the southeast corner of Seymour St. and West Pender St. in Downtown Vancouver.

510 Seymour will be 82,000 square feet and 10-storeys tall. Upon completion, the majority of the building will be occupied by Adler University and shoes.com.

The building looks to be nearly topped out now.

Photo courtesy mcminsen http://po.st/7Ap7Hh via @imageshack

Photo courtesy mcminsen http://po.st/RtRmLm via @imageshack

Photo courtesy mcminsen http://po.st/WE7jqj via @imageshack

1290 Homer Street is a 14,800 SF heritage style office building located at the corner of Homer and Drake Streets in the Yaletown area of Downtown Vancouver. The building sits on a 50.5 x 120 ft site and is an excellent candidate for repositioning and/or redevelopment.

Please contact me at david.taylor@colliers.com for details.