Office space
VANCOUVER’S COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MARKET TILTS EAST High tech and medical sectors shift direction of office space development in the city BY FRANK O’BRIEN
T
he redevelopment of the former Canada Post site on Georgia Street signals an eastward migration of Vancouver’s commercial real estate. The Post by QuadReal Property Group, scheduled to complete in 2022, incorporates the old post office into a mammoth mix of retail, residential and office towers. Amazon has taken all 1.07 million square feet of office space in the development. This is more pre-leasing than in the 15 other downtown office towers underway combined. East of downtown, the first of nearly a dozen proposed office projects is complete in Railtown. Across the viaduct into East Vancouver, Strathcona is seeing a development boom, Mount Pleasant is welcoming an explosion of new construction near the new SkyTrain Broadway extension and, in the 450-acre False Creek Flats, developers are staking office sites as the largest medical project in Canada begins construction. “Vancouver-Broadway is the busiest market in Metro Vancouver in terms of the number of projects underway and/or proposed with nine developments scheduled to complete by 2022,” Avison Young confirmed in its mid-2021 Metro Vancouver Office Market Report. Office construction is located in four nodes: Mount Pleasant, the emerging City Hall District, Railtown and the False Creek Flats. New office development in these former industrial areas includes light industrial/ creative space. A number of new office projects were announced in the first half
Rachel Lei, managing director and CEO of Keltic Canada Developments, flanked by Avison Young agents Jake Luft (left) and Mitchell Knoepfel at the Nexus strata office tower site in False Creek Flats | CHUNG CHOW
of 2021, including Kaslo at Renfrew District on East Broadway and the 10-storey, 190,000-square-foot T3 Mount Pleasant, the tallest mass timber office building in Western Canada. Biotech firm AbCellera Biologics Inc. is building its “global headquarters” on 4th Avenue, with a 380,000-square-foot tech campus in partnership with the Dayhu Group and Beedie. The facilities are expected to be completed in 2023 and 2024. Blocks away, games company Relic has completed a new 43,000-square-foot office building and tech giant Hootsuite is finishing a 60,000-square-foot complex. In Railtown, a city zoning change in 2017 has led to a rush of building proposals. It is estimated that up to 11 projects could proceed with offices and light industrial within a tight four-block area. East Vancouver’s total office inventory currently pales beside downtown’s, but its future is looking brighter and bigger every day. É Originally published in Business in Vancouver. PROPERTY MANAGERS’ SOURCE BOOK 2022 | 39
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