Developer Ian Gillespie: “This is going to sound arrogant but no one else is willing to do what I’m doing”

By Frances Bula

Developer Ian Gillespie is much in the news these days, as he launched his Gesamtkunstwerk exhibit a week ago as part of the build-up to Vancouver House, the Bjarke Ingels-designed tower that with be blooming flower-like (thin stalk, showy bee-attracting thing on top) next to the Granville Bridge.

Here’s a recent feature I did on him in Vancouver magazine. In advance of your column, I notice Gillespie seems to draw a lot more negative comments than any other developer I write about. I’ve done profiles of Peter Wall and the Malek brothers at Millennium, mentioned people like Terry Hui at Concord and Andrew Grant at PCI and Michael Audain at Polygon in stories any number of times, and never seen as much vitriol directed at them as at Gillespie. (Interestingly, others in the development community seem to be at least as annoyed by him as many resident groups.)

I’m guessing it’s because he tends to wade in to contentious parts of town, attracting more attention. (Some development companies I report on simply never ask for rezonings — they just don’t want to deal with the hassle. They stick strictly to land that’s already zoned for what they want to …read more

Source: Frances Bula

By ChangingCity

Here’s another of the projects that are being developed to help solve the very limited housing opportunities for the homeless and hard to house in Vancouver. We haven’t featured the building before on the blog, in part because the render that was available showed a rather unexciting project (and a dematerializing vehicle).

Fortunately the reality is far more attractive. Designed by DYS Architecture, it’s a 16-storey 141 unit building that will be run by The Kettle Friendship Society in conjunction with Family Services of Greater Vancouver. The main floor will house the Directions Youth Services Centre that was on the City-owned site before the redevelopment. BC Housing provided the majority of construction funds, but the project was also financially supported by Streetohome Foundation with contributions from both CIBC and Canadian Western Bank.

Directions provides health, mental health and addiction services, counseling, employment and training opportunities, peer support services, access to community and business partnerships and practicum programs, literacy and life skills training, and recreational, interactive, and artistic (music and art) programs. It will also include a Vancouver School Board Learning Centre. 30 of the units will be committed to youth under the age of 25.

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Source: Changing City

By ChangingCity

The development permit for the Rize Alliance development site at Broadway and Kingsway was submitted back in July last year, and now has a June Development permit Board date. Rize Alliance, the developers, must be confident of approval as they’re already building a sales centre on the site. Here are two updated images on the city website for Acton Ostry’s retail and residential project, where a (now) 21-storey tower is located on the northern end of the block on Kingsway, and the Broadway facade is a mid-rise block which sort of references the Lee Building (across and down the street) in scale and colour. The project has quite a bit of colour in various elements, and an internal courtyard. There have been quite a few minor changes from the 2013 version, and the project is now much closer to the approved rezoning, with a significant commercial component – around 75,000 sq ft – and 258 residential units.

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Source: Changing City

Colliers International recently facilitated the off-market sale of the 1400 Block of Alberni for $83,500,000. The two parcels on the block are improved with a highrise apartment and an office building and have a combined site area of 43,282 SF.

This attractive development opportunity encompasses an entire downtown city block, a rare occurrence in today’s market. Simon Lim represented the Vendor in the transaction.

Read more at Colliers Canada

The part of Downtown South between Burrard and Granville was recently lagging behind the area to the east along Seymour and Richards, where condo projects were developed steadily. Now it’s catching up fast – here’s the first of a couple of projects in the area.

Cressey started marketing Maddox, their IBI/HB designed 34 storey tower under 3 years ago. Now it’s pretty much finished, with a pattern of three colours of terra-cotta panels.

It replaced a ‘meanwhile’ park that was built to ‘provide a community green space’ that coincidentally also avoided a lot of taxes, while the housing market recovered from the 2008 downturn. Before that there was a Travelodge on Howe Street, demolished some years earlier.

The street address is a new one, created to recognise that the Granville loops at this end of the Granville Bridge will one day be removed.

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Source: Changing City