General Vancouver Updates - Page 124

giallo · #**2461** Posted **Feb 23, 2011, 1:17 AM**

I quite like the Ho lab.
The medical district definitely has some of Vancouver's most daring architecture.

Architype · #**2462** Posted **Feb 23, 2011, 4:58 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by giallo

I quite like the Ho lab.
The medical district definitely has some of Vancouver's most daring architecture.

Guess it's fair to wait until it is complete, but I don't like the overall look they are going for. However, I do like most of the other new buildings that have gone in that area recently.

VancouverPM · #**2463** Posted **Feb 24, 2011, 9:05 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by hollywoodnorth

I thought V6A turned out great ... and The Mark I have similar hopes for.

V6A turned out great? ICK - I live in the building, sold my unit and am moving very shortly. This building is POORLY constructed, ONNI needs to give their head a shake in respect to the quality control, level of finishes, and general security of buildings they choose to build in this region. The promises of 24 hour security were abandoned quite quickly, and as a result there have been numerous break-ins and expensive costs to the Strata to update security features in the building that SHOULD have been taken care of during the Construction process. With a VP of Onni living in the building, you would think this building was a little more, up to par. And frankly, the exterior is just another fat looking building, they could have done so much more on the exterior, tried to have some form of quality on the inside.

What can I say, I am not a fan of the V6A, having lived there since occupancy, and already sold my unit and moving on.

djh · #**2464** Posted **Feb 24, 2011, 10:48 PM**

^That's the risk one pays with buying pre-sale. You hope to save money at one end, but quite often there are unexpected changes and costs. If you're willing to take the risk and have done due dilligence, fair enough. But there are very few developers that I would trust my money with based on them saying "this one will be good"

SFUVancouver · #**2465** Posted **Feb 24, 2011, 11:06 PM**

^ Out of curiosity, from which ones would you be comfortable buying a pre-sale?

mr.sandbag · #**2466** Posted **Feb 24, 2011, 11:32 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by VancouverPM

V6A turned out great? ICK - I live in the building, sold my unit and am moving very shortly. This building is POORLY constructed, ONNI needs to give their head a shake in respect to the quality control, level of finishes, and general security of buildings they choose to build in this region. The promises of 24 hour security were abandoned quite quickly, and as a result there have been numerous break-ins and expensive costs to the Strata to update security features in the building that SHOULD have been taken care of during the Construction process. With a VP of Onni living in the building, you would think this building was a little more, up to par. And frankly, the exterior is just another fat looking building, they could have done so much more on the exterior, tried to have some form of quality on the inside.

What can I say, I am not a fan of the V6A, having lived there since occupancy, and already sold my unit and moving on.

I can agree with you on finishings, its easy for developers to cut corners as completion nears, I don't thinks it just Onni who does this. Its up to buyer to go in an hold them to fixing problems right away. as for break-ins, this more of a new building problem. They are easy targets for thieves since most stratas are not organized in the beginings,. When I moved into the Sohia, both the finishings and break-ins we a real problem. Once strata was organized the break-ins stopped. Yes it did cost us since the initial budget wasn't suffucient to account for the damage done etc.

Im moving into the Social in couples months and have been tracking its progress and I'd have to say im happy with the work done so far by Onni.

My opinion...

djh · #**2467** Posted **Feb 24, 2011, 11:34 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

^ Out of curiosity, from which ones would you be comfortable buying a pre-sale?

It's not just about the reputation of the developer. It's also about those unknown or unpredictable things.

Last month I was looking at buying an investment property. I saw what on paper was an amazing condo right next to the Lawn Tennis Club in South Van - fabulous location, great neighbourhood, solid concrete building, quiet street, spacious layout. When I got there it was a coldish day. The building's HVAC was on. Guess what, the HVAC unit's flue was about 20 feet from the suite's window, and it literally sounded like a continuous gigantic vacuum cleaner, loud enough to be heard over a TV and over conversaiton. It was unbearably loud. Even with all of the double-glazed windows closed. I walked away going "Now *that's* why this suite is 10% below market value...". On a warmer day when the HVAC is off, some poor sucker will walk into the suite, love it, and think he's just landed the deal of the century...

SFUVancouver · #**2468** Posted **Mar 1, 2011, 1:19 AM**

The English Bay restaurant is starting to look like slightly more than a hole in the ground.

Taken by SFUVancouver, February 25th, 2011.

sacrifice333 · #**2469** Posted **Mar 1, 2011, 2:12 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by VancouverPM

V6A turned out great? ICK - I live in the building, sold my unit and am moving very shortly. This building is POORLY constructed, ONNI needs to give their head a shake in respect to the quality control, level of finishes, and general security of buildings they choose to build in this region. The promises of 24 hour security were abandoned quite quickly, and as a result there have been numerous break-ins and expensive costs to the Strata to update security features in the building that SHOULD have been taken care of during the Construction process. With a VP of Onni living in the building, you would think this building was a little more, up to par. And frankly, the exterior is just another fat looking building, they could have done so much more on the exterior, tried to have some form of quality on the inside.

What can I say, I am not a fan of the V6A, having lived there since occupancy, and already sold my unit and moving on.

I don't know that you'll ever find a building that has adequate security on day 1. I'd even venture to guess that The Kingswood put in some security updates once the developer completed.

I previously owned a condo in Camera, a reasonably high-end boutique building in South Granville built by Intracorp. The security on day 1 looked okay, but we quickly found out it too was lacking. The strata did a thorough secuity audit and ventured to spend up to $30K in upgrades. Impressively, Intracorp stepped up and contributed $10K toward that and fortunately I think it also came in under budget. But no building will have adequate security on day one. Period.

hollywoodnorth · #**2470** Posted **Mar 1, 2011, 11:21 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by VancouverPM

V6A turned out great? ICK - I live in the building, sold my unit and am moving very shortly. This building is POORLY constructed, ONNI needs to give their head a shake in respect to the quality control, level of finishes, and general security of buildings they choose to build in this region. The promises of 24 hour security were abandoned quite quickly, and as a result there have been numerous break-ins and expensive costs to the Strata to update security features in the building that SHOULD have been taken care of during the Construction process. With a VP of Onni living in the building, you would think this building was a little more, up to par. And frankly, the exterior is just another fat looking building, they could have done so much more on the exterior, tried to have some form of quality on the inside.

What can I say, I am not a fan of the V6A, having lived there since occupancy, and already sold my unit and moving on.

you obviously have very little real world experience....as you see in the other posts this is COMMON STUFF.......I can think of a couple new buildings I moved into that have security issues as well.

"The promises of 24 hour security were abandoned quite quickly" ummmm ONNI does not run your building ... YOU and your fellow Strata members do ....so why not assign the blame correctly?

so what your saying if you would gladly have paid 10% more on your unit for better security from day #1? maybe you should have thought about that or brought it to the builders attention. I'm sure everyone else in the building would gladly have coughed up more $$ for that eh?

probably not .... you get what you pay for. look at the OV .... see the 24/7 security? see how units the same size as yours cost 2x as much there that at V6A ...... ??? again ... YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR .... especially right off the bat.

so I think the OV would be a better place for you and your $$

officedweller · #**2471** Posted **Mar 1, 2011, 11:50 PM**

Of interest:

I guess the 22 storey towers reference must be at Park Royal, since that would be too tall for YVR-restricted Richmond.
WRT the Surrey reference - my guess is that would be to densifying Guildford?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...ep-for-the-canadian-mall/article1924123/

Quote:

The next step for the Canadian mall?

FRANCES BULA
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Feb. 28, 2011 5:02PM EST
Last updated Monday, Feb. 28, 2011 7:03PM EST

Doreen Braverman likes her local shopping mall. From her leafy street on the west side of Vancouver, she can easily walk to the Safeway or the liquor store at the small, neighbourhood-size Arbutus Centre. If she wants to bring home a heavy load, she can park her car at ground level, near one of the doors.

“It’s an important centre for us,” says Ms. Braverman. “It’s important we don’t lose it.”

Malls are increasingly reviled by urban designers. A mid- to late-20th-century creation of clustered shops, the mall is defined by its melding of the automobile with indoor retail, with large swaths of off-street parking. Though designing anything around the car is out of fashion these days, it turns out the mall – the flat, boxy buildings surrounded by a sea of asphalt so beloved in the car-happy 1970s – still has loyalists.

Ms. Braverman, who worries about planned changes to her local mall, is one of them. The property’s owner, Larco Investments Ltd., is proposing the seven-acre site be reconfigured into four city blocks with two new streets running through it. The plan envisions a slightly larger shopping centre and four new residential towers, and most parking underground.

Canadian mall owners are exploring the idea of transforming their properties into more urban spaces The occasional mall has been redeveloped into a more pedestrian oriented design, sometimes with residential components. But pressure from various directions is making mall owners seriously consider adding towers or townhouses to their sites.

Land values are rising outside downtown cores. Some malls have been challenged by newer, larger malls, or have been done in by their own poor design. Recently, city planners, weaned on the benefits of mixed-used cities from urban theorist Jane Jacobs, have been energetically pushing developers to re-imagine properties in radically different ways.

“My premise is that shopping malls are a waste of land – boxes in fields,” says Terry Crowe, the manager of policy planning for Richmond, a suburb just south of Vancouver and a city that is famous for having a centre that is largely composed of malls.

Experiments in mall redevelopment in the United States are pushing the boundaries.

Eight out of 13 regional malls in Denver are planning to retrofit. The giant Belmar mall, in Lakewood, Colo., was demolished in 2001 and transformed into 22 new blocks of mixed stores, offices and homes. A dead mall in St. Louis was rehabbed into art space.

These examples were the bulletins from Ellen Dunham-Jones, the Atlanta-based author of Retrofitting Suburbia, when she visited Vancouver and Richmond last fall to talk to planners eager to hear the word.

Malls take up valuable urban space, and the people who live around them are changing, she said. “There will be a huge demand for more urban lifestyles in suburbia. And suburbia is full of these underperforming spaces, with underused parking lots,” said Ms. Dunham-Jones

Her presentation included malls that take up too much space for what they provide to their neighbourhoods, or that create dead zones in communities, or are actually failing economically.

At Arbutus Centre, where Ms. Braverman shops, owner Larco Investments, is working its way through a rezoning that would see the mall slowly rebuilt over 10 years into a site split into four new blocks, with four towers with 540 apartments and townhouses, along with slightly more commercial space than the 110,000 square feet it has now. Two new streets would run through what is now the parking lot.

“It’s a failing mall,” said Norm Hotson, an architect from Dialog, the firm that has been overseeing the design. It’s caught between being a neighbourhood shopping centre and a regional mall, but it doesn’t have enough critical mass to be the latter, he says.

He is also working on preliminary designs for redevelopment that include a residential component at Lansdowne Mall in Richmond, an inviting sea of frequently empty grey next to the new Canada Line rapid transit line, and at Park Royal in West Vancouver.

“It’s economical for them. If they can take that parking lot and turn it into two 22-storey towers, why not?”

In Toronto, the city planning manager for the north area of Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, says interest is high throughout the city in redeveloping malls with residential components. One proposal at Bridlewood Mall is in the works, with a rezoning completed that allows 975 residential units for owners Malibu Investments Inc. There are likely to be more.

In Vancouver, the large and high-end Oakridge mall is getting set to go through a rezoning that would create 1.2 million square feet of residential space, as well as 350,000 square feet of retail and 250,000 of office space.

But experts warn that turning a mall into an urban village, complete with residential, is not right for every place or mall.

“It really depends on where the centre is,” says Gordon Wylie, director of development for Ivanhoe Cambridge, which owns 80 malls around the world, including 50 in Canada, worth $13 billion. He dismisses the possibility for a centre where Surrey planners have been pushing hard and unsuccessfully for something besides more retail. “The residential value doesn’t offset the cost of building underground parking.”

Another potential nightmare is the construction phase, since the existing centre needs to be kept alive while new parts are phased in. That can take up to 15 years.

And finally, there are the neighbours. At Bridlewood in Scarborough, it took three years of community consultation before the redevelopment was approved last August. The project got scaled down from the original plan for 1,375 units, after many residents expressed serious unhappiness about the traffic impact.

And in Vancouver, Ms. Braverman and her neighbours have been mounting determined opposition to the plans for the Arbutus Centre.

“Ninety-five per cent of our community want a better centre. But we don’t like their plans. We gave them a compromise plan with 250 units,” she said. And she continues to add names to her petition opposing it.

“I walk around here three times a day with my dog and get signatures.”

Special to The Globe and Mail

flight_from_kamakura · #**2472** Posted **Mar 2, 2011, 12:51 AM**

i like the bit there about the 'compromise' at 250 units. like, this is sitting off an arterial, and it's an indoor commercial center, and it's a privately-owned enterprise. it's not a traffic circle, it's not a modifying use in such a way that it will reduce neighborhood integrity, we won't have shading issues or built form grotesquely disproportionate to existing. were we to impute reasonable motives to her objections, the argument here would be against increased neighborhood traffic, anxiety at some potential increases in competition for on street parking, and the inevitable construction irritations. but knowing what we all know, we understand that beyond these, her real concern is that such a development would transform the neighborhood from its present form -- as car-centric sleepy preserve of these old-timers who bought back in the day and the relatively wealthy new arrivals -- to something more sustainable and neighborhood-like, with mixed incomes, a quality retail center, more people in the streets, and yes, the threat of later higher-density incursions into the preserve. it's almost abusive.

SpikePhanta · #**2473** Posted **Mar 2, 2011, 2:09 AM**

Developer should just threaten to shut it down if people object to the plan

/jokes

officedweller · #**2474** Posted **Mar 10, 2011, 9:43 PM**

Looks like the Rize Alliance project at 428 Terminal ("Containers") has been dumbed down.

Here's the render from the Staff Report on the rezoning:

http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20110315/documents/p1.pdf

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20110315/documents/p1.pdf

What's that in the foreground?
Hmm - it's a BRIDGE (and associated pedestrian ramp)

The Thornton Street Bridge - never even heard of it before
- looks like the City is planning on it's own "Coast Meridian Overpass" -
with the realization that the BNSF yard isn't going away

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

And here are the renders on the Containers leasing website:

http://www.containersonterminal.com/pages/photos

Alex Mackinnon · #**2475** Posted **Mar 10, 2011, 9:59 PM**

Did any of you guys notice the random suicide lane drawn on Terminal Ave. in the rendering? The cars are also on the left side of the road. Oops

officedweller · #**2476** Posted **Mar 10, 2011, 10:05 PM**

The other side of the median was probably turned into a bike lane.

The bridge would be just above the "y" in 'Copyright Image" in this Global Air Photo:

http://www.globalairphotos.com/large/BC/Vancouver/East/2010/0164/2

wrenegade · #**2477** Posted **Mar 10, 2011, 10:11 PM**

^That's unfortunate. I was quite looking forward to the containers building. However any is better than what is currently there and it makes more sense being office there than it does car dealerships.

SFUVancouver · #**2478** Posted **Mar 11, 2011, 12:29 AM**

The developer changed architectural teams. The upside is that the project is actually quite a bit larger. The eastern building had a floor added while the eastern building gained two additional floors.

SFUVancouver · #**2479** Posted **Mar 11, 2011, 12:51 AM**

Poor weather today for the photo tour.

Robert H.N. Ho lab at VGH

Taken by SFUVancouver, March 10th, 2011.

Spruce.