Aggressive urban planning around SkyTrain stations in Burnaby is turning the municipality into Metro Vancouver’s hotbed for condo development, according to an Urban Development Institute report.

Heavy pre-sales in projects such as Station Square at Metrotown and the redevelopment of Brentwood Town Centre added up to almost 30 per cent of all new-construction sales across Metro Vancouver, outpacing Vancouver’s downtown and west side neighbourhoods.

Throw in the city’s east side and Vancouver still sold more condominiums, but Burnaby’s high-density push is bringing development levels between the two cities closer together.

To the end of the third quarter, Burnaby saw 1,613 presales of condos under development compared with 1,394 for downtown and west-side Vancouver combined, UDI reported.

In total, developers have projects that add up to 14,548 units in the planning stage in Burnaby, within striking distance of the 14,766 in the City of Vancouver’s planning process.

An interesting development application was submitted this week for a property at the Southwest corner of Granville and 6th, owned and occupied by Zonda Nellis. The plan is relatively unique since the site is only 30′ x 120′ (3,600 SF). The site is zoned C-3A so the density max of 3.0 FSR is conditional. It is exceedingly rare to see a site of this scale seek a DP for a density as high as 3.0 FSR. Sometimes this type of plan makes sense on corner sites if assembly isn’t possible, or if as the case may be here, the property has been owned for a long time and the cost base of the land is quite low.

The plan calls for the existing single-storey retail building to be replaced with a 5-storey mixed-use development with retail at grade and four levels of residential above, with one level of underground parking below. Details include:

• 2,464 SF of retail space (3 CRUs)
• 8,336 SF of residential space
• A total density of 3.0 FSR (10,800 SF)
• A total of 4 parking stalls (one per residential floor)

An application has been submitted for a 7,686 SF site  on East Pender Street near Commercial Drive in East Vancouver. The plan calls for a 5-storey  mixed-use building with two levels of office space and three levels of residential space containing 15 residential units and 14 underground parking stalls. The site is zoned MC-1, which conditionally allows a mix of uses.

The site, currently improved with a single storey industrial building, was acquired earlier this year for $1,830,000 by Epix Developments.