Quote:
Originally Posted by scryer
Well there's a reason why tech giants tenants (like Google out in the Bay area as opposed to San Francisco, etc) are generally located outside of downtown CBDs; one of the reasons is that those CBDs weren't able to offer them large floorplate office spaces due to them building out. Much like the COV will never be able to offer them as well. The negotiating point with the COV IS to offer more sq. ft in height.
When speaking on quantity of towers, you can host more businesses within a taller tower. This reduces tower sprawl in the region, reduces the carbon-footprint of these businesses, and reduces the geography needed to host these businesses. For the record: I'm not against tower sprawl but a lot of these city policies have certainly encouraged it in the rest of region - perhaps needlessly. IMO tower sprawl encouraged by backwards city policies is a symptom of the COV's inefficient use of its land.
The biggest problem for me for the Flats (Fraser River flats, right?) is accessibility. In order to attract the best talent to your workplace, you need to have your business' location accessible. You can interview highly qualified individuals all day and night but if they had to take an uber to get to your workplace then they can't be relied upon to be on time. Or, on the flipside, the potential qualified employee doesn't even apply because they know that they won't be able to make it. Part of the draw to downtown Vancouver and to Broadway is that both areas are BC's top employment centres and they are extremely accessible to everyone in the Metro region. Therefore you would only be able to attract specific office tenants to the Flats, and that would rule out any larger tenants that value transit accessibility in the region.
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I wanted to jump in again. Outside of the CoV there's the rest of the region, which in the past was primarily bedroom suburbs to CoV and downtown Vancouver. Since then there's been a pivot to the region turning into a variation of garden cities.
From Wiki:
The garden city movement is a method of urban planning in which self-contained communities are surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture.
Now obviously we don't have greenbelts surrounding each city in the region (the original idea is from the UK over 100 years ago... ) but a lot of the same ideas are being used - try to have a lot of the needs of people contained within each city instead of them having to leave and travel downtown every morning and back home every night. You can see this with the cities all having their own downtowns and retail centers. This will inevitably lead to what some could consider tower sprawl.
Now those ideas inevitably lead to downtown Van and it's CBD not being as important as it used to be. I know some people don't like to hear it, but the CoV is not Rome. The region is becoming more dispersed and that's ok.
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