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

The City of Vancouver is recommending changes to the I-1 Zoning as part of the City’s Metropolitan Core Jobs Plan. The changes are intended to enhance the use of sites within the I-1 zone in Mount Pleasant, which was generally limited to light industrial or mixed use at a density of 1.0 to 3.0 FSR. Included in the changes is more flexiblity for office use.

Summary of Proposed Changes:

• A variety of service uses have been proposed for increase in allowable density, while still remaining within the overall 3.0 FSR density limit.
• Several service uses that were previously not permitted are proposed to be allowed as conditional uses, like entertainment.
• A greater variety of office uses are proposed to be permitted. In the existing zoning, several categories of General Office use are not allowed. In the proposed zoning, all of the categories of General Office use will be allowed.
• This means a mixed use building could be comprised of 1.0 FSR of the identified light industrial/service space on the ground floor and 2.0 FSR of General Office space above.
• There will be an opportunity with a potential Parking Payment-in-lieu District in the area for the developer to partner with new developments in the same area in order to provide additional parking over and above specific site requirements. This will be important for smaller sites to get to 3.0 FAR.

With a couple of high-profile apartment buildings trading last year (notably, Lougheed Village and the strata-titled Pacific Point), here’s a look at Vancouver’s most valuable market-rental apartment properties in Metro Vancouver.

The top-10 list has been compiled based upon total assessed values, and excludes strata titled, co-op or non-freehold properties.

1. Langara Gardens, 501 West 57th Avenue ($164 Million) This 621-unit complex consists of four towers and multiple townhouse buildings and sits on a strategically located 21 acre site at Cambie and 57th. The property was developed in the 1960’s and expanded with a fourth tower in 1988. The property also includes some retail units on West 57th. Langara Gardens was sold by the well-known Wosk family in 2009 to Ben Yeung’s Petersen group for $157 Million, representing a 4.3% cap rate. This acquisition, a Vancouver record, is increasingly looking like a great move for Petersen, with significant redevelopment potential on this sizeable lot.

2. Metropolitan Towers, 930 Seymour ($111 Million) This 437-unit, 2-tower complex located at Seymour and Nelson in Downtown Vancouver was completed by Wall Financial in 2002. It includes a Nester’s grocery store on the ground floor. Since it’s completion over ten years ago, a number of projects have been completed in close proximity, including by Wall at Capitol Residences. Metropolitan Towers offers a relatively affordable alternative to rentals in many of the newer condo projects.

3. Beach Towers, 1600 Beach Avenue ($96 Million) Beach Towers is a 4-tower, 598 unit complex located front and centre on English Bay in the West End. Also sold by Colliers for the Wosk family in 2009 as part of their portfolio disposition. The towers were sold for $117 Million to a group led by Devonshire Properties. The price represented a 4.0% cap rate and $195,000 per unit. Devonshire is currently seeking to use some of the residual density on the site for more rental units.

4. Bayview, 1529 West Pender Street ($85 Million)      This 236-unit, 28-storey tower prominently featured at the intersection of West Pender and West Georgia in Coal Harbour was completed by bcIMC in 2002. After 10 years, the building remains one of the highest quality purpose-built rental buildings in Vancouver.

5. Lougheed Village, 9500 Erickson Drive ($78 Million)    Lougheed Village is a two-tower, multiple lowrise, 548-unit complex in the Lougheed area of Burnaby. The property sold to Mayfair Properties in April of last year for $90 Million, or $164,000 per unit. Built in 1973, the property currently produces $7,400,000 in gross income per year and sits on 7.5 acres of land.

5-10:
6. McKenzie House, 5775 Toronto Road, UBC ($70 Million)
7. Columbia Place, 1150 Jervis Street, West End ($66 Million)
8. Pacific Palisades, 788 Jervis Street, West End ($64 Million)
9. Carmana Plaza, 1128 Albernie Street, West End ($63 Million)
10. Ocean Towers, 1835 Morton Avenue, West End ($62 Million)

Honourable Mention: Here’s a few that were not included for various reasons:

• Park Royal Towers. This 505 unit complex is one of Vancouver’s larger apartment assets, valued at $147 Million, though it is on leased land with the Squamish First Nation.

• Pacific Point. This 227-unit strata titled complex sold in 2012 for $79 Million and has an assessment of over $70 Million

• Panorama Place, a 147-unit co-op is valued at over $72 Million.

Coming soon: a look at neighbourhoods with the most expensive apartments on a price per unit basis.

To start off the new year, we have compiled a summary of Metro Vancouver’s most valuable commercial real estate assets. The summary is based on a survey of the top 25 commercial properties ranked by asssessed value.

While assessed values can often vary significantly from market values (take Bentall 5 for example, which sold for $400M last year), the survey provides a glimpse into who controls the larger commercial assets in Metro Vancouver and yields some interesting observations:

• Metrotopolis at Metrotown is by far Vancouver’s most valuable commercial property. The nearly 1.8M sq ft shopping centre is assessed at $725M ($406 per sq ft). This value does not include the adjacent office towers, also owned by Caisse de depot, which is Quebec’s largest pension fund manager.

• The top 25 are almost all retail or office, or both. One apartment and hotel property each cracked the top 25.

• Pension funds control the vast majority of these larger core/trophy assets. (76% to be exact)

• A group of 6 pension fund managers (some in partnership) control well over 50% of the top 25.

• While the top 3 are super regional shopping centres, 15 of the top 25 are Downtown office towers.

Where does Vancouver rank next to other cities in terms of commercial property valuations? While Vancouver valuations are among North America’s highest on a price/sq ft and cap rate basis, due to scale we’re not quite in the same league as others for total values… For reference, Scotia Tower in Toronto sold in 2012 for $1.27 Billion. The Bow office tower in Calgary cost $1.4 Billion to construct. Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board acquired a 50% stake in a 2.5M sq ft. Manhattan office tower in 2012 for $576M.

CMHC has just released their 2012 rental market report for Vancouver. Some highlights:

• „The average vacancy rate rose to 1.8 per cent in October 2012 from 1.4
  per cent in October 2011.
• „„The average rent increase for two-bedroom  apartments between October 2011 and October 2012 was 2.3 per cent. The general rate of inflation for this period was 0.7 per cent.
• Areas close to Vancouver City, such as Richmond, North Vancouver, and West Vancouver, reported similar low vacancy of around 1%. In contrast, Coquitlam, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam, where home prices are relatively lower, recorded average vacancy rates of 3.2 per cent.
• A supply increase of 3,724 rental condominium apartment units helped to keep the rate of rent increase contained.
• The Vancouver rental market is forecast to remain stable next year with vacancy rates expected to remain below 2.0%.

CMHC 2012 Vacancy Rates

CMHC Average RentsSource: CMHC

Source: CMHC