2245 West Broadway has been sold. This is a 30-year old, 4-storey concrete office building on West Broadway between Vine and Yew. 50 ft of frontage. Fully leased, mainly to medical tenants.  The 11,600 SF building sold for $4,650,000 (after asking $4,950,000), representing $400/SF and a 3.8% cap rate.

City closes Onni deal with $1M land sale.

The long and, at times, rough public process for the Onni Safeway site development has come to a definitive end. The Onni towers got their fourth and final reading from council before just a handful of council watchers in the City of North Vancouver gallery Monday night, a stark contrast to the overflow crowds that came out to the two public hearings held in March and November last year.

Onni has been on track for approval since a second pubic hearing was held in March for the 344 units of housing in 24-storey and 18 storey towers, along with an eight-storey office tower and 40,000 square feet of commercial space. Council narrowly voted in favour of the development at the end of the hearing.

In keeping with the contentious public process that dogged the project, the final approval came with one last political provocation at the council table.

Upper floors of East Hastings site empty for decades.

An iconic set of adjoining buildings on the East Hastings strip most recently home to a pawn shop is expected to undergo a major renovation that will include adding 19 rental apartments and a retail business.

The addition of housing is significant since nobody has lived in the upper floors of the former B.C. Collateral and Loans buildings at 71-77 East Hastings St. for more than 40 years.

The pawn shop on the main floor has been closed for several years and the large neon “loans” sign once mounted on the west building’s façade is gone.

Located near Columbia Street, the C-listed heritage buildings are smack dab in the middle of a neighbourhood desperate for low-income housing and engaged in a mounting debate over gentrification.

But property owner Steven Lippman of No. 380 Cathedral Ventures Ltd., which owns the York Rooms and other single-room-occupancy hotels in the neighbourhood, said his project couldn’t be considered gentrification. “We rehabilitate, we re-energize, we reinvigorate, we re-use, we recycle,” Lippman told the Courier. “It’s an old junky building and we want to fix it up and put people who are low-income back in there. That’s what we do.”

The promised land.

Is the North Shore the next big real estate play?

That’s the question posed at the April 9 Vancouver Real Estate Forum, which, for the first time in its nearly two-decade history is eying up the North Shore as the next investment hot spot.

The forum is slated to include Park Royal Shopping Centre vice-president Rick Amantea, as well as Beau Jarvis, vice-president of development at Onni, which recently won approval for its 344-unit condo development on Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver.

The decision to focus on the North Shore was made by a committee of about 20 real estate executives who cited the overhaul of Park Royal, the Seaspan shipbuilding contract and the possible Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.

Those elements, combined with a scarcity of land south of the Burrard Inlet, have combined to make the North Shore a fertile ground for fresh foundations, according to Mark Stephenson, vice-president at Informa Canada, the company producing the forum.

Intergulf Development Group in conjuction with the owners of the Quality Inn at 1335 Howe Street are proposing a 39 storey, 180 unit residential tower in Downtown South.  The architect for the project is Ramsay Worden.

A preliminary open house for the project was held on April 3 at the Quality Inn. 

Cue outrage from purchasers of suites in Maddox and Salt.