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From the North Shore News:

Park Royal considering apartments
Redevelopment plans could add multi-family towers to south mall

By James Weldon, North Shore News
March 11, 2011

The owners of Park Royal are weighing a major redevelopment of the mall's south side that could include new apartment blocks.

An executive at the West Vancouver shopping centre confirmed Monday that his company has hired an architectural firm to draw up plans that envision the return of movie theatres to the site, the expansion of retail space -- likely in a similar vein to the outdoor Village at Park Royal -- and the potential addition of multi-family dwellings.

"We've engaged Dialog (a design and engineering firm) to take a look at opportunities we may have to add some different elements here," said Park Royal vice-president Rick Amantea in an interview with the North Shore News. "We continue to tinker around with Park Royal to see if and how we can create more of a mixed-use environment."

Amantea said the residential component, if it went ahead, would be higher than three storeys, at least. Asked if it would be as high as 20 storeys -- as was suggested by one of the architects in a recent interview with other media -- Amantea did not rule out the possibility.

"There is certainly precedent all around us," he said. "The (complexes to the east) are 20 and 22 storeys high, I believe. Park Royal (Towers) to the west of us are probably 20 storeys high."

The mall will be approaching the Squamish Nation and District of West Vancouver in the near future with a preliminary plan, said Amantea. The majority of Park Royal's south mall lies on Squamish land, but a small sliver falls within the municipal boundary. "Depending on the reaction we get from both of those groups, we believe that some time in April we will be engaging the public in a full information kind of program. At that point in time, we'll share with them all of the plans we have currently on the table."

The news comes as the community grapples with other proposed apartment blocks in the Ambleside area, including plans for a tower on the Safeway site at Marine Drive and 17th Street and a tentative plan for a multi-family complex at Marine Drive and 13th Street.

While some of the proposed changes at Park Royal will likely involve tearing down and "regenerating" existing stores, the majority of the work will focus on "underperforming space" -- areas that aren't used for retail, such as parking lots, said Amantea.

Larco Investments, which owns Park Royal, has already done something similar at its Morgan Crossing site in south Surrey, he noted, where it put three storeys of residential space -- a total of more than 450 units -- on top of an outdoor shopping complex akin to the Village.

Creating a mixed-use complex at the site makes sense, said Amantea. There is adequate water, sewage and electrical infrastructure in the area to support it, and the ready proximity of transit and retail to the new residences would help reduce its impact on traffic over nearby Lions Gate Bridge.

Park Royal drew some criticism last year when it floated a proposal to remove a pedestrian overpass and a vehicle overpass that connect the two halves of the mall across Marine Drive and replace them with an at-grade intersection -- a change council eventually approved.

Amantea acknowledged that his company's support for that move was related to the larger plans under discussion here, and that it had made that fact clear to the district. "It was submitted to West Vancouver at the time when we talked about the intersection," he said. "We also referred in our traffic analysis to the accommodation of future residential (and commercial)."

Some of the new retail space will likely be taken up by large American chains that are looking to expand their presence in Canada, said Amantea. "Apple, Sephora, Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel, all of those people are looking at the Vancouver market right now," he said. "We have to see if there's a means and way to perhaps accommodate them."

The movie theatres are intended to meet a demand that has existed in the community since Park Royal Cinemas closed more than 10 years ago, he added.

Amantea emphasized, however, that all the plans are far from final. "Some of them are just really massing plans," he said. "Some of them will have other ideas incorporated into them; some of them may even have some elevations. . . . But nothing, certainly, is set in stone."

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