Keltic Development has acquired the 4.3 acre Revs Bowling & Entertainment site at 5502 Lougheed Highway in the Brentwood Area of Burnaby for $94,000,000.

The site is improved with a bowling alley but has long been targeted for redevelopment given it’s designation as High Density Residential within the City of Burnaby’s Brentwood Community Plan.

Macdonald Commercial’s marketing brochure from 2021 indicates that the maximum potential density for the site is 8.30 FAR, which could yield over 1.5 Million SF of residential density.

2022 was an active year for land sales activity in Metro Vancouver; largely a carryover from a return to acquisitions in 2021 after a two-year period of general stagnation in the market.

Continuing a trend since 2019, the bulk of land sales activity is happening in suburban markets, and now predominantly for commercial and industrial properties. The Downtown luxury tower sites that dominated the market between 2015-2018 remain largely absent.

Here’s a look at each of the 10 largest land deals of 2022:

1. The Grove Brentwood, Burnaby

• Price:                  $215 Million
• Site Area:            8.3 acres
• Vendor:               Aoyuan Canada
• Purchaser:          Anthem & Kingsett

The goods:        For the second year in a row, the largest land deal of the year took place in the Brentwood Town Centre area of Burnaby, one of the fastest growing, densest municipal centres in all of Metro Vancouver.

“The Grove” project, originally designed and rezoned by Aoyuan, is an 8-acre multi-tower, 2,400 unit high density residential project. Aoyuan was forced to sell in 2021 amid financial pressures.

Anthem Properties, with partner Kingsett Capital, will now move the project forward, with rezoning for individual parcels to occur in the near term.

2. Coronation Park, Port Moody

• Price:                  $158 Million
• Site Area:           15 Acres
• Vendor:              Land assembly
• Purchaser:          Wesgroup

The goods:          This sale represents the completion of an epic land assembly by Wesgroup; worthy of its own write up. The assembly involved 54 single family lots located in the Coronation Park area at the Eastern edge of Port Moody. The lots had been marketed in multiple assemblies and secured by Wesgroup over three years. The deal faced several twists and turns amid market uncertainty and evolving guidance and support from the City of Port Moody as to the OCP designation for the overall master plan for the site. Wesgroup submitted their formal rezoning application in July 2022.

The sale of the majority of the lots complete in September 2022 and now Wesgroup can turn their attention to execution of the high density master plan project, expected to include over 2,600 units built in several phases.

The land assembly was completed by Grant Gardner & Thomas Trowbridge of London Pacific.

3. 86-168 S.E. Marine Drive, Vancouver

• Price:                   $150 Million
• Site Area:            12.5 acres
• Vendor:               Hungerford Properties
• Purchaser:           Amazon Canada

The goods:        This site was previously owned by Walmart Canada until Hungerford acquired the property in 2018 for $90 Million. Hungerford undertook preliminary design and planning for the development of a mixed commercial/industrial project until an off-market deal came along from Amazon. Preliminary plans call for a new Amazon fulfillment centre on the strategically located South Vancouver site.

4. Coquitlam College Site, Coquitlam

• Price:                   $148 Million
• Site Area:            7.5 acres
• Vendor:               Coquitlam College
• Purchaser:           Onni

The goods:        The Coquitlam College site and 11 adjacent single-family parcels were acquired by Onni in a deal negotiated in 2021. The assembled site presents an opportunity for future rezoning for high density residential under the Burquitlam Lougheed Plan. Preliminary rezoning plans have yet to be filed with the City of Coquitlam.

The sale was facilitated by Alon Shapiro of CBRE.

5. Kingsway & Willingdon, Burnaby

• Price:                   $145 Million
• Site Area:            1.8 acres
• Vendor:               Bosa Properties
• Purchaser:           Keltic Development

The goods:        For the second year in a row, Keltic Development has made a splash with one of the largest land transactions in Metro Vancouver. An off-market sale of the Esso Gas Station site at 4444-4488 Kingsway was negotiated in July 2022 and completed November 30, 2022. Bosa’s preliminary plans included two towers, up to 70-storeys in height with potentially condos, rental, retail and hotel.

The sale was negotiated by Goran Bucan of Sutton Group West Coast Realty.

6. Tricity Central, Coquitlam

• Price:                  $130 Million
• Site Area:           5 acres
• Vendor:              Private Investor
• Purchaser:          Marcon & Quadreal

The goods:          In the works for well over two years, this deal closed representing one of the largest master plan communities in Coquitlam. Marcon and Quadreal have passed through the initial rezoning phase for the site at the southeastern corner of Lougheed and Barnet highways for “TriCity Central”.  The multi-tower development will see approximately 2,000 residential units in addition to office, hotel and retail space.

7. 7590-7688 80^th Street, Delta

• Price:                  $117 Million
• Site Area:           23 acres
• Vendor:              Private Investor
• Purchaser:          Beedie

The goods:         Beedie outbid 13 other buyers for this site, the largest industrial land deal of the year. The former Delco Container site is vacant pending redevelopment plans by Beedie.

This sale was brokered by Steve Brooke and Joel Barnett of CBRE.

8. 19469-19511 92^nd Avenue, Surrey

• Price:                 $111 Million
• Site Area:          14 acres
• Vendor:             Private Investor
• Purchaser:         Conwest

The goods:         Conwest closed on this 14 acre industrial sale in October 2022. The total sale price represents $7.8 Million per acre.

9. 900-990 West 12^th Avenue, Vancouver

• Price:                  $100 Million
• Site Area:           1.5 acres
• Vendor:              Private Investor
• Purchaser:          VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation

The goods:        The VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation closed on this full city block property across from Vancouver General in March 2022 with a long term vision for potential redevelopment. For now, the existing Windermere Lodge long term care facility and adjacent apartment building will be retained pending future redevelopment of the sites.

10. 5910-5998 Cambie Street, Vancouver

• Price:                 $76 Million
• Site Area:           0.74 acres
• Vendor:              Wall Financial
• Purchaser:         Coromandel Properties & Peterson Group

The goods:       This full city block at Cambie & 43^rd was sold by myself, Simon Lim, James Lang and Jessica Hathaway in an off market transaction negotiated in late 2021 and closed in February 2022. The site has rezoning approval for a two-tower development including condo and hotel.

Some notes from the above list:

• 3 of the 10 largest land deals in Metro Vancouver took place in the City of Vancouver (down from 5 of 10 last year, and 9 out of 10 at the “peak” of the market in 2017)
• 6 of 10 are residential land deals, down from 8 of 10 in 2021
• 3 of 10 were sold by open market bid process (the other 7 were ‘off-market’ or not openly offered)
• All 10 were bought by well-established ‘local’ development groups, a shift from 2016-2018 when many “new” buyers were making a splash

Please contact me for further information on any of the above transactions, or if any questions, comments, or corrections to the article.

Happy Holidays!

McCarthy Properties have submitted a Master Plan Concept to the City of Burnaby for the redevelopment of McCarthy Plaza, a full city block property on Kingsway in the Metrotown area.

The 3.83 acre site is comprised of four parcels, occupied with a number of older lowrise retail and medical/office buildings, collectively known as the Plaza 5000 complex.

The McCarthy Plaza site is located within the Metro Downtown Neighbourhood of the Metrotown Downtown Plan area which designates site for high-density mixed-use residential development under the RM5s Multiple Family, RM5r Multiple Family Residential District, and C3 General Commercial Districts.

The preliminary concept includes three mixed use towers above podiums to be built in four phases, as well as a new North-South public street “McCarthy Way”. The overall project will include approx. 1.8 Million SF.

Phase 1 includes a 70-storey signature landmark tower that includes:

• 820,000 SF;
• 425,000 SF of residential including 160,000 SF of rental in the lowrise.
• 500 total residential units;
• retail and office space;
• substantial amenity space including daycare space, meeting spaces; gardens, bowling alley, fitness centre, basketball court and first nations art gallery.

The second and third phase anticipate a 54-storey mixed-use tower, and a 45-51 storey tower respectively. Phase 3 includes options for residential or commercial uses. Phase 4 includes a smaller lowrise commercial building.

The formal rezoning application for the project is expected in early 2023 and will include concurrent applications for the overall master plan and Phase 1 of the project.

The architect for the project is Dialog.

Concord Pacific has submitted their formal rezoning application to the City of Burnaby for Phase 2 of their Concord Metrotown project, on the Western portion of the overall site.

The overall master plan for the Concord Metrotown project originally proposed four phases of development. Concord has now proposed to coalesce the last three phases into one rezoning as a larger second phase. The total site area of Phase 2 is 5.30 acres and will likely be built out over a period of several years.

The proposal includes:

• a 40-storey condo & non-market rental building;
• a 49-storey condo & non-market rental building;
• a 58-storey condo & non-market rental building;
• a 47-storey, 375,000 SF office tower at 614 ft. height;
• a 60-storey market rental building;
• a gross floor area of 2.3 Million SF;
• a total density of 9.99 FAR;
• 1,145 condo units;
• 188 non-market rental units;
• 791 market rental units;
• 616,000 SF of commercial space;
• 3,054 parking stalls.

Pinnacle International is seeking City of Burnaby Council approval to allow a density transfer to facilitate the development of both their Austin-Gatineau Place property, and a nearby site also owned by Pinnacle, called Carrigan Court.

The Gatineau proposal was first unveiled in 2019, and generated some attention by proposing three towers totaling 1.9 Million SF, the tallest of which envisioned at 82-storeys, likely a new tallest for Metro Vancouver. The new proposal would now see four towers for the site with the tallest at 80-storeys.

The 6.2 acre Austin-Gatineau site is located in the Lougheed Town Centre Plan area. It was acquired by Pinnacle from Shape Properties in 2018.

Following the initial proposal, a number of issues were identified relating to both the ability to accommodate the site’s allocated density and density associated with the Rental Use Zoning policy which came into place in 2020. It was determined that the site could not accommodate the non-market rental density. Also, the British Columbia Transportation and Finance Authority (BCTFA) would not permit any encumbrances over adjacent Provincial-owned land, which had a significant impact on the siting of one of the Austin-Gatineau Site’s towers identified in the Master Plan.

In 2021, the City of Burnaby a Density Transfer Policy allowing density transfers to accommodate non-market rental housing on concurrent rezonings for nearby sites.

As Pinnacle is the owner of a nearby 3.40 acre property at 3846 Carrigan Court, an existing 141-unit rental apartment property that they are now proposing to transfer the inclusionary rental from the Austin-Gatineau site to a redeveloped Carrigan Court.

The revised proposals for both sites are as follows:

Austin-Gatineau Site

• Four condo towers of 80, 76, 73 & 50-storeys in height, each atop commercial podiums;
• Three phases;
• 2,474 condo units;
• a total floor area of of 2.3 Million SF;
• a total density of 11.82 FAR.

Carrigan Court

• Three residential towers of 33-storeys, 25-storeys & 23-storeys;
• Two phases;
• 900 total residential units;
• 546 rental units including:
  • 141 replacement rental units;
  • 405 inclusionary units transferred from the Austin-Gatineau site;
• a total floor area of 734,810 SF;
• a total density of 4.95 FAR.

The architect for the project is JYOM Architects.