Quote:
Originally Posted by djh
I was talking to one of my retailer friends in the mall the other day. They said that people in the mall are really fed. The project is apparently on the 3rd set of developers (the previous 2 being fired), as the work is years behind schedule. They have changed plans and inconvenienced retailers by moving them around, which affected their retail business.
I didn't want to ask them too many more questions about this but does anybody have insight as to what's going on with changing the developmen teams and why?
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Wait,......
So Westbank are no longer the developers of this project?
Unless you mean they are among the third set of developers (and design proposal) - which also wouldn't make sense, since they were also involved in the first two design proposals (but back then in partnership with the previous Mall owners Ivanhoe Cambridge who have since sold up their stake in the mall).
The current project proposal is being submitted by Quadreal who are the de facto owners and management team, but Westbank are still attached as the Developers as far as I can recall (unless that's recently changed).
Previous design proposals were back in 2007 and 2014 by the aforementioned Ivanhoe Cambridge and Westbank. Both those proposals had been approved by the council, but after being forced to downsize their design proposal due to geotechnical issues (an aquifer* discovered later on at the site; forced a cut-down by 25% of the original proposal), IC clocked out and sold their stake to Quadreal (who are also behind the Post project in the heart of Downtown.)
That's the short history of the project's timeline.
No firings as far as can tell.
Just different re-assessments by billionaire owners who couldn't make the numbers work, and then sold to a different set of billionaires.
*The aforementioned aquifer would have affected the plans to dig deeper in the site to provide the required parking, and because digging and building onto an aquifer (which is basically a water pooling element that lets water into your structure in much the same way a high water table does in places like Richmond or New West) is super-expensive, they faced the choice of skyrocketing construction costs, or cutting down the overall construction to eliminate the need for more parking (and this digging deeper into the site) just to avoid the parking. I'm not really sure why they wouldn't have just simply put some of that parking above ground like they do in Richmond. They don't have to deal with building height restrictions there like Richmond Developers are forced to. I suppose it would eat up into the mall retail space and that's where Ivanhoe Cambridge couldn't make the numbers work.
On the flip side they DO have above ground parking in their other mall at Metropolis in Metrotown, but I guess in that situation the mall was built around that parkade structure which was necessary anyway for the office towers.
Anyway, I've rambled on long enough, but it makes for interesting reading what they've all gone through to get to this point and I would now be concerned that Quadreal are also going to run into some of those same cost over-run issues that forced IC to sell up with the hit that retail marketing is going to take thanks to the pandemic lockdown's effect and also making those same numbers work with conditions that haven't really changed.
But Quadreal are a Pension Fund management outfit which means they have deep pockets. So cost might not be as big an issue for them.
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