New Westminster News Leader – Breathing life into New Westminster’s main streets.

Lots of places to eat and drink, few storefronts that aren’t retail oriented, and at least some representation of chain outlets are all signs of successful main streets, according to a university term paper written by a New Westminster councillor.

Along with sitting on council, Jonathan Coté is also an urban studies student at Simon Fraser University, and has written the paper “Reviving New Westminster’s Main Streets,” which looks at what makes a main street work and what New West’s streets need in order to improve.

“New Westminster has a tremendous advantage in that we have traditional main streets already in existence. For most municipalities in the Lower Mainland these don’t exist except in Vancouver. We have the bones in place. The challenge is how do we bring these to life and make sure these are neighbourhoods our residents want to shop in.”

Coté found the highest vacancy rates were on Twelfth Street (11.6 per cent) and East Columbia in Sapperton (11.4), while Columbia in the Downtown area was just 6.4 per cent and Sixth Street was 8.7. The latter two compared favourably to a pair of Vancouver’s most dynamic retail streets, Robson (6.9) and Denman (5.4).

Read more: http://www.newwestnewsleader.com/news/186342442.html

Devonshire Properties‘ plan for Beach Towers (1600 Beach Avenue and1651 Harwood Street) goes to council next week. The plan is to rezone from RM-5A to CD-1 to add 133 units on the existing four tower property with new infill development to be added as follows:

• on the Beach Avenue site, 118 new market rental units located within a four-storey building fronting Beach Avenue and a nine-storey building at Harwood and Cardero streets, a one-storey amenity building at Beach and Cardero streets, and enclosure of the bases of the existing towers, thereby increasing the allowable floor area by 89,095 sq. ft.; and
• on the Harwood Street site, 15 new market rental units located within two- and three-storey buildings, thereby increasing the allowable floor area by 10,906 sq. ft.

New building from courtyard

From the City’s rezoning report: “This application helps achieve City housing policies, specifically through the creation of a total of 133 units of new secured market rental housing. Staff have assessed the application and support the uses and form of development….Staff recommend that the application be referred to a Public Hearing, with the recommendation of the General Manager of Planning and Development Services to approve it, subject to the Public Hearing.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

Pension funds north of the border have poured about $9 billion into U.S. commercial real estate in the past three years, after largely steering clear of owning hotels, office buildings and apartments in the U.S. before then.

While there are only a handful of big funds that are active abroad, they are having a disproportionate impact on the U.S. market by funding ambitious plans that domestic investors have been afraid to touch.

Canadians funds see value in the U.S. as they expand beyond their own overheated property market. And, since the Canadian market wasn’t hit as badly as the U.S. during the financial downturn, these pension funds are less gun shy about putting money to work in riskier projects.

Ivanhoe Cambridge, the real-estate investor for Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, in May said it was investing $300 million to build a 45-story office tower in the West Loop of downtown Chicago. When completed, the 900,000-square-foot project will be the largest-size new property development in five years in that city at a time when no other major office projects are underway.

“The majority of institutional investors would say the U.S. is No. 1 on their list today,” says William Tresham, president of global investments for Ivanhoe Cambridge. “….Canadian assets are around an all-time high.”

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323706704578229770064523416.html