Surrey Updates

[EhJay]

Skyline from New West

[CoryHolmes]

Any updates on the supposed redevelopment of Central City Mall? Last I heard was after the parkade was extended the parking lot was going to be redone, but nothing has happened in years.

[Equinox71]

Red crane (between Pura and Sequoia) just went up this weekend. Lots of change coming to this entire square block, let alone Sequoia to the South.

[GMasterAres]

Originally Posted by kja384

The "Health and Technology district" seems to be slowly coming to a halt. Floors 14 to 23 of City Centre 4 to be turned into hotel space rather than office. Could be worse, at least it's not student housing for a diploma mill like City Centre 5.

At the end of the day at least something is being constructed.

https://www.surrey.ca/sites/default/files/planning-reports/PLR_7924-0127-00.pdf

I'm a bit confused with your first statement. The planning report linked actually says pretty clearly (and intuitively makes sense) that the Hotel space is to specifically support the "Health and Technology" district use.

Very specifically the line:

The proposed hotel use is an employment generator and will support the vision of the Medical District in the City Centre by providing convenient hotel accommodations for workers, patrons, and visitors to the Medical District.

I mean it makes sense to me as you get more companies moving into those buildings that will have both customers and collaborators/researchers from out of town, that they have an area in the district to stay in rather than have to commute somewhere else in Surrey.

So that doesn't seem to back up the "coming to a halt" claim unless you're referencing something else...

And again it makes sense to me. We are majorly lacking hotel spaces in Surrey Central and quite honestly, anyone wanting to stay near Surrey Memorial is pretty much SOL for anything better than "hourly rate motel" and less than "ridiculous price." This is actually an issue in many cities near large medical facilities. Pick any hospital in Metro Vancouver even Children's Hospital. Even VGH, the biggest hospital and medical district in British Columbia has 1 major hotel within 20 blocks roughly and Children's Hospital 0. Be glad you're not a parent from anywhere outside Metro Vancouver with a sick child in Hospital trying to figure out where to stay that isn't a 30-minute commute. Like I said, it is an issue often not discussed or acknowledged with our medical support system and I actually applaud that they're considering it in that area.

[Greetingsfromcanada]

Comma by Rize is topped out

[Greetingsfromcanada]

Originally Posted by kja384

The "Health and Technology district" seems to be slowly coming to a halt. Floors 14 to 23 of City Centre 4 to be turned into hotel space rather than office. Could be worse, at least it's not student housing for a diploma mill like City Centre 5.

At the end of the day at least something is being constructed.

Work from home blew up the market. Adding hotel space is good. Also, the feds blew up the diploma mill market with no more automatic post graduate work permits. So whatever is built at city centre 5 won't be student housing

[kja384]

Originally Posted by Greetingsfromcanada

Work from home blew up the market. Adding hotel space is good. Also, the feds blew up the diploma mill market with no more automatic post graduate work permits. So whatever is built at city centre 5 won't be student housing

Not quite, all they did was make changes to the public-private partnership. If you go to a 100% private career college you can still qualify for a PGWP. They could easily phase out the diploma mill -> PR scam by refusing to issue study visas for private education and limiting the amount for public institutions but they would never do that.

The partnership with Western Community College was announced after the changes, it won't really effect their business that much unless we get to the point where it will be too difficult to transition a study visa to PR via CRS points.

The office space market is not looking good, it is nice that the hotel will be on the upper floors though.

I took a look at the brochure and it looks like they hadn't even offered anything over the 17th floor, and the offices for floors 14 and below are 80%+ sold, so maybe they were always planning on keeping this conversion as an option.

I also believe the upper floors were originally lab space, maybe the smaller CC6 will be entirely lab space.

[Greetingsfromcanada]

On another note, I've counted and at least +5000 units will be reaching completion by summer/fall of 2025. That's got to be 7500-10,000 more people

[BaddieB]

Surrey was at 7500 starts in 2023 so that lines up.

[kja384]

Originally Posted by Greetingsfromcanada

On another note, I've counted and at least +5000 units will be reaching completion by summer/fall of 2025. That's got to be 7500-10,000 more people

From some notes, the projects that will begin construction or launch sales from now to then: Janda Tower, Skyliving, Piano, District Northwest, The Manhatten, Juno, Parksville 96, Georgetown 3, Parkway 2, Innovation PH1, Bridgecity, Tangerine tower, and sales for Civic District PH1 are set to begin in 2025. Around 8000 units in total, not counting low rises.

Although that would assume everything goes as planned for those developments which is not always the case. Parksville 96 launched at 1175 a square foot and has not been doing very well.

[Greetingsfromcanada]

Originally Posted by kja384

From some notes, the projects that will begin construction or launch sales from now to then: Janda Tower, Skyliving, Piano, District Northwest, The Manhatten, Juno, Parksville 96, Georgetown 3, Parkway 2, Innovation PH1, Bridgecity, Tangerine tower, and sales for Civic District PH1 are set to begin in 2025. Around 8000 units in total, not counting low rises.

Although that would assume everything goes as planned for those developments which is not always the case. Parksville 96 launched at 1175 a square foot and has not been doing very well.

Construction might just wait until 2025 for a lot of those. Rates are coming down . But lol. Newer high rise developers are really overestimating themselves and Surrey. If population growth stalls for a couple years the bottom will fall out on these units value overnight.

Well, whatever gets whalley to sustained development is good in the mean time

[Greetingsfromcanada]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

Surrey was at 7500 starts in 2023 so that lines up.

My mistake. I mean Whalley alone. A fortunate blend of delayed and quick builds is driving an insane completion spike in 2025

[Greetingsfromcanada]

So yeah, just going from H1 2024 vs H2 2024 - H2 2025.

Completed in H1 2024

Q5: 141
Century City Rental: 243 Units
Oak &Onyx: 173

Total 560 Units

Most of these in 2025, based on my eyeballing:


Belvedere: 271 Units
Comma: 392
Plaza 1&2: 886
Park George: 784
Century City: 409
The Holland 2: 308
Melrose: 223
Sunshine co-op: 69
Pura: 248
Parkway 1: 373
Ascent: 243
Radley: 193
Viktor: 254
The Grand: 415
Flamingo 1: 375
Quinn: 174

Total: 5617 Units


Streetview, this forum and some googling suggests what probably be the strongest completion surge in Whalley's history

[officedweller]

Kinda weird how Comma is right where you would have wanted an office tower.
(it does have the small office block retention on KGB though.)


https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/9686-137-street-surrey-city-centre-4-tower-hotel-lark-group

[SpongeG]

does anyone know what happened to the Red Brick project? located at 137A Street and 106A Avenue. It's been stalled for quite a few months now. It was started and is just sitting there now doing nothing.

[giallo]

Aerials from yesterday.


























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[giallo]

Here's a companion video to the pictures I took the other day.

• Video Link

[osirisboy]

Those are great! Thank you

[BaddieB]

They have a long way to go before that area becomes remotely pleasant. Surrey is Vancouver overflow parking, and I feel like with all the upzoning in Vancouver, developers are going to shift focus to building along Broadway, Cambie, and Renfrew/Rupert than in Surrey.

[mcj]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

They have a long way to go before that area becomes remotely pleasant. Surrey is Vancouver overflow parking, and I feel like with all the upzoning in Vancouver, developers are going to shift focus to building along Broadway, Cambie, and Renfrew/Rupert than in Surrey.

Metro Vancouver's population projections agree with this sentiment. From the thread discussing that:

Originally Posted by Changing City

It seemed appropriate to bump this thread, rather than start a new one. Metro Vancouver have released their projections through to 2050. There are three scenarios, low, medium and high growth (with medium being the current best guess).

Unlike the last projection (from 2021), in the new one Surrey still won't have overtaken Vancouver's expected 2050 population. (Both would have just under a million residents).

The previous projection saw Metro Vancouver at 3.8m people in 2050, now there could be 4.2m. (The low growth scenario still anticipates 3.98m).

Rounding to the nearest 1,000, the greatest growth in the scenario is obviously Surrey, adding 362,000 to 2050, but the City of Vancouver adds 293,000. Burnaby is expected to add 126,000, Township of Langley 99,000, Coquitlam 94,000 and Richmond 90,000. The entire north shore adds 82,000.

Still expecting to see substantial growth in Surrey, although not as much as some would have forecast relative to Vancouver. But that's nothing new, having grown up in Surrey I can remember that the overtaking of Vancouver was always something that was 5 - 10 years away (but has never materialized), and anecdotally, of those I grew up with that are still in the Lower Mainland, the largest contingent live in the CoV.