[hollywoodnorth]

Business in Vancouver December 11-17, 2007; issue 946

Real estate roundup: Peter Mitham

Construction starts on project to create region’s “greenest” commercial building

$60 million Discovery Green aiming for LEED gold, but could hit platinum certification

Pouring green

What’s being touted as the greenest commercial building to become available in the Lower Mainland came a bit closer to reality last week.

With dignitaries from the province and the developer, Discovery Parks Trust, looking on, the foundation for Discovery Green poured into place.

The $60 million project is rising on the last available site in Discovery Place, Discovery Parks’ original Burnaby research park. An 80-acre parcel set aside by the province in 1979 for technology-oriented office space, Discovery Place is now home to 15 buildings occupied by companies ranging from Electronic Arts to Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The latest building aims to achieve LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) Gold certification on completion in 2009, but Tom Douglas, Discovery Parks’ director of leasing, notes that the initial results from energy modelling suggest that the building could meet the requirements for LEED platinum.

Total energy consumption could be cut by 79% compared with a conventional building, while a 45% reduction in water consumption is planned through rainwater harvesting. An ambitious target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions is also envisioned.

Douglas notes that several of the features being incorporated in the building’s mechanical and electrical systems are new to North America, but he sees no reason why they can’t work here. Better still, Douglas expects that tenants will enjoy overall savings from the building, citing a U.S. study that suggests one company in a similar eco-friendly building managed to pay its rent through lower employee turnover and productivity gains.

Morguard Investments Ltd. is handling leasing for the building, which will join its stable of properties on completion. The 147,162-square-foot building is estimated to be in excess of $60 million.

Green light

Shato Holding Ltd.’s bid to exclude approximately 28.5 acres from the province’s agricultural land reserve to accommodate redevelopment of the Tsawwassen Golf and Country Club recently won approval from the Agricultural Land Commission.

“The commission believes the exclusion will have no greater impact on the agricultural suitability of the land beyond that which currently exists,” the commissioners say in their decision.

Adjacent to the existing club property, the land will allow the club to be reconfigured as a residential community with upwards of 450 units of housing. The proposal drew strong objections from conservationists, some of whom mounted a boycott of Shato’s White Spot restaurants.

Parking tax shifted

Despite concerns in some quarters that the new South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority that forms on January 1, 2008, diminishes citizen representation in the taxation process, business groups are applauding the approval of a bill that will see the former TransLink parking tax laid on the backs of businesses and residential taxpayers alike.

Passed in Victoria on November 29, Bill 43 restructures TransLink such that the board of elected municipal representatives that formerly governed it will be replaced with a nine-member board of appointed professionals. The interests of municipalities will be represented by a commission of mayors.

But the bill also provides for a system of variable tax rates that lays the burden of taxes to support regional transit service on all regional property owners, not just commercial property owners as the old TransLink parking area tax did. In addition, revenue garnered through the property tax is capped at $18 million a year.

The allocation of the tax burden is up to the appointed board, to be named in early 2008.

The Vancouver Fair Tax Coalition, an alliance of seven business groups, expects the allocation to be fair given the degree of opposition to the TransLink levy and feedback on drafts of Bill 43. One such draft could have hit Vancouver business property owners with a whopping 34% of the burden, according to Bob Laurie, the tax coalition’s co-chairman.

“The province is going to be watching them like a hawk,” he said of the new board.

And what of the democratic process?

Laurie thinks it will be an improvement on what existed before, as the legislation is specific in the parameters it sets for the board’s taxation powers, the province will be overseeing its activities, and the new board promises to eliminate much of the regional squabbling that hobbled the current governance structure that Laurie considers hardly democratic.

“You don’t have the governance model that promotes regional co-operation,” he said. “That’s not democracy. Democracy is the alignment of appropriate decision-making with the will of the people.