Here is a brief overview of rezoning applications going to City of Vancouver Council next week seeking approval to move forward to the final public hearing stage. While these proposals have been posted on this site before, their potential advancement to public hearing signals an intent by each proponent to move forward with their respective projects.

101 East 2nd Avenue

This application is for the new MEC location at 2nd and Quebec. MEC will be relocating from their existing West Broadway location when their lease expires.

The plan is for a 3-storey building totaling 45,262 SF of retail space and 16,350 SF of office and fitness space. The total density is 2.04 FSR. A CAC of $11.50 per SF is being charged.

288-388 West King Edward Ave

This proposal, by Mosaic Homes, is for a 4-storey, 56-unit condo building at the Southeast corner King Edward and Yukon. The site is a 5-lot assembly being rezoned under the Cambie Corridor Plan.

The proposed density is 1.76 FSR, and the CAC is based on the fixed rate of $55 per SF of net increased density.

4085 Ash & 619-633 West King Edward

Also in the same area as the project above, Aragon is planning a development on a 3-lot assembly at the Northwest corner of King Edward and Ash Street.

The plan for the 19,150 SF site is a 4-storey condo building with a total of 31 units. The total proposed density is 1.93 FSR and the CAC is $55 per SF.

Cressey‘s plan for a rental apartment building on a site at Commercial Drive and East 18th Ave includes relocation and restoration of a heritage house. The new 6-storey building on the site will have 101 much needed rental apartments. The total density for the project is 2.70 FSR. 37% of the units will be family-oriented. There is no CAC.

420 Hawks Avenue

Atira Women’s Resource Society originally made this proposal back in November 2014 and it has been the subject of some media attention recently amid some objection by the Strathcona Residents’ Association.

The plan has been revised since the original proposal, with 21 social housing units being proposed in a 7-storey building. A unique aspect of the building is that it will be constructed out of shipping containers. There is no CAC for this project.

753 Seymour Street

GWL’s plan to redevelop the parkade it owns next to 650 West Georgia (Vancouver Centre) became public with an application back in the summer of 2013.

The plan is for a 33-storey office tower, totaling 398,942 SF of new office space above the existing 6-storey parkade structure. The parkade could also be converted into an additional 65,000 SF of office space in the future. The total density of the project is 22.96 FSR. A CAC equivalent to $5 per SF is being paid as a contribution towards childcare facilities downtown.

Here’s a quick look at the recent uptick in resales values and activity for Downtown Vancouver condos, which have reported to have taken quite an upturn over the last few months after having been relatively flat over the past few years.

Here is data derived from all Downtown Vancouver condo resales from 2011 to April 2016. A couple of observations:

• the average price YTD 2016 is $908 per SF (up from $761 for the same period 2015)
• Average sold price/list price ratio 2016 YTD is 1.03

The above data contains all downtown Vancouver condo resales. For simplicity, all luxury  condo sales above $2,000 per SF were removed (approx. 40 sales).

Data source: MLS/REBGV data

Here is an interesting map from 1956 from the City of Vancouver Archives showing land value assessments by $/SF from 1954 assessments in Downtown Vancouver.

Granville Street was the prime area back then at over $24.00 per SF of land! Conversely, Coal Harbour and Yaletown were steals at less than $1.50 per SF. Of course, these areas were still primarily industrial areas and condos were simply an idea that wouldn’t take hold for another decade. Fast forward sixty years and land values in those ‘hoods have increased approximately 2000%.

(click on the map for a zoomed in view)

“Scope and content Item is a map showing land values in dollars per square foot for the downtown area bounded by Burrard Street, Robson Street, and Nicola Street in the west and Main Street in the east.”

While the City of Vancouver grapples with worsening housing affordability conditions, increasingly contentious area plans, and an excruciatingly slow planning process for even modest density increases, Burnaby is quietly going through what is likely one of the most dramatic suburban transformations in the history Metro Vancouver, if not Canada.

Most people have only really begun to take notice more recently with higher and higher towers starting to pop up in Metrotown and now Brentwood. With a strong condo market fuelling demand for new towers near transit, most of Vancouver’s large developers have been active securing sites in Burnaby in the last several years. While the rezoning applications tend not to attract as much attention as those high profile projects in Downtown Vancouver, the magnitude of activity can’t be ignored, particularly when one ponders the scale of projects like Shape Properties’ recently approved Lougheed Town Centre.

How did Burnaby become a hotbed of highrise construction at a scale that dwarfs even the City of Vancouver? You have to go back a few years to understand how the plans were put in place.

The City of Burnaby put plans in place several years ago to concentrate growth in and near major rapid transit (Skytrain) nodes, particularly in four town centre areas they identified as follows:

• Metrotown
• Brentwood
• Lougheed
• Edmonds

Furtheremore, unlike homeowners in Vancouver that have been increasingly vocal against even midrise developments, towers in Burnaby have faced less public opposition during rezoning, in part due to the fact that many highrises are being being built in former industrial areas that are being lost to residential, or in areas that are primarily occupied by older rundown apartments where tenants have, seemingly, less influence with the City than single family homeowners.

So far, about 30 highrise towers have been built in these four town centre areas (including 2 office towers), primarily in Metrotown, where projects such as Sovereign by Bosa – a 45-storey hotel and condo tower, and Metroplace by Intracorp – a condo tower near the Metrotown Skytrain station, have each taken advantage of sizeable density increases per the Metrotown Town Centre plan. The sales velocity and pricing of each new development spurs even greater interest for new projects and generates more and more rezoning applications. Land speculation is now commonplace, particularly in more mature areas such as Metrotown.

The City of Burnaby’s willingness to allow fairly substantial density on previously underutilized parcels of land previously dedicated to commercial and industrial use has vaulted Burnaby far ahead of any area in Metro Vancouver in terms of highrise construction. Shape Properties’ two mall sites: Brentwood and Lougheed, are the largest and most well known, but others such as Onni’s Gilmore Station (rumored to include BC’s new tallest tower) and Concord’s Brentwood projects are massive themselves and in terms of height and scale, tower over Vancouver’s most ambitious plans such as the recently scaled back Oakridge.

A review of current and forthcoming developments in the City of Burnaby shows over 100 highrises in various stages of development (under application or construction), almost all of them intended for residential condos, with a handful of commercial office towers usually required on the larger scale developments to preserve job space. A few stats show the scale of this wave of development in Burnaby:

• 106 highrises under development (compared to 68 in the City of Van)
• 47 highrises of 40-storeys or more (compared 13 in the City of Van)
• Over 30,000 units under development (excluding lowrise and townhouse units)

Here is a breakdown of all of this activity, by each area of Burnaby:

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The above floor & unit counts are best estimates unless otherwise confirmed in City of Burnaby planning/rezoning application documents.

It is anticipated that there will be more rezoning applications forthcoming in the near future, particularly as the Town Centre Plans are further refined; however, it can be argued that the majority of the most central and logical development sites have now been secured by developers. With a very active presales market and continued upward trajectory of condo prices, it can be anticipated that land costs will continue to increase for these Burnaby tower sites in the future, with areas such as Port Moody and Coquitlam seeking to catch some of the spillover of this growth in conjunction with the 2017 completion of the Evergreen Line.

With the height and scale of these projects in Burnaby, it will be interesting to see what, if any response the City of Vancouver has while it struggles to create even modest height and density in increasingly expensive and largely unaffordable areas.

For the record, I am not espousing the virtues of density as the primary means of increasing affordability. In fact, if Burnaby is behind in an area, it is in the creation of new rental units for which there is currently no coherent or substantive policy. This, in part, has helped the viability of several projects since rental replacement is not a requirement like it is in other municipalities. The City of Vancouver has been more proactive in the provision of affordable housing which has hopefully had at least a moderate impact in terms of affordability.

The District of North Vancouver held a council workshop earlier this week during which an update was provided on development activity in the five town centre and village centre areas.

While rezoning applications do exist outside the town centre and village centre areas, the District of North Van has sought to concentrate development growth in these areas.

A summary of this update is provided below:

Lions Gate Village

Edgemont Village

Lynn Valley Town Centre

Lynn Creek (formerly Lower Lynn)

Maplewood