Richmond Updates

[vanman]

The Paramount from earlier today.

[officedweller]

Nice ones, thanks!
That's quite the angle on those columns.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Richmond is more of an underground lake... or even more just land floating on top of a lake.

The fact that so much gets built over there highlights the failure and backwardness of its northern municipality.

Just look at the Dutch city of Amsterdam and how it can reinvent itself through the centuries to become what it is today, without being swallowed by the tides.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by naota2018

Do anyone know what happened to atmosphere? It is far slower than other development. Looks like the project has been frozen for a while after the digging!
thanks

Covid related funding issue. One of the lender groups prioritized there risks.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by naota2018

i have heard about the funding story when they were selling. South street was selling with huge discount and seem very rush to receive deposit. I remember that any realtor sold 15+ unit will receive a 100k Mercedes. Also, when Paramount was selling for above 1000/sqft, Atmosphere was selling for 850-950 price range(after discount, especially the 2nd promotion). After i heard most of the residential unit sold, they released retail stores which was not their original plan. The reason was that the founder forced them to sell as much as they can to secure more found coming when completion.
And everyone should remember that just after they start digging, the whole site paused for a long time, then someone from the inside told the industry that why they paused because there was an underground stream which they have never surveyed before. Who knows. Then they dug and left the site like this.

No streams or lake in Atmosphere site. It is the most successful underground excavation in Richmond. During high water storm season the dewatering was running part time.

[naota2018]

Originally Posted by whatnext

I'd be surprised if there was an underground stream anywhere in Richmond, with their types of soil. At best, there might have been a slough but that would have been regularized into a ditch long ago when Lulu Island was divided up into farms and then put into a culvert as it was suburbanized.

So I think they just found an excuse to make the outside world think that their slow progress is not due to financial problems

[naota2018]

Originally Posted by cairnstone

Covid related funding issue. One of the lender groups prioritized there risks.

covid is not a problem to real estate market, but it helped. Look at last years' market, it was so good, and also because of the pandemic, we now have the historical low interest rate which has boosted the recovery of real estate market from sinking since 2017

[officedweller]

From Glotman Simpson twitter Jan 19th:


Paramount


https://twitter.com/GlotmanSimpson

[officedweller]

The first tower (office) looks topped out.
I wonder if the shorter office building (marked Chunghwa's head office) has been built?

Snip from Zepfancouver (Richmond International Tarde Centre thread):

Originally Posted by officedweller

Bridgeport Business Centre
Bridgeport & Hwy 99

https://bridgeportcentre.com/location/


https://brandcast-cdn.global.ssl.fastly....ss-Centre_BROCHURE_PO12195_FINAL_WEB.pdf


https://youtu.be/TCeOeSkY3zE

[vanman]

Was wondering what was going up there. It's quite visible from the Oak Street Bridge.

[vanman]

Not sure if this has been posted yet. Looks to be somewhere near the Olympic Oval.

N2W by Westgem.

A multi-phased master planned community with 1,200,000 SF of market residential, 500,000 SF of market rental, 200,000 SF of non-market residential, 200,000 SF of retail spaces, a 200,000 SF hotel, 200,000 SF of office spaces, as well as a 300,000 SF private school with student housing, day care and community amenities

http://www.gblarchitects.com/projects/n2w/

Video Link

[officedweller]

Cool, thanks!
Looks like a massive site. I wonder where it is?

Different (old) rendering from developer's website if anyone can place it.


https://www.westgem.ca/about-us

I think it's on the "World of Kidtropolis" site.
You can see the park beyond 2 Rd Bridge in the rendering.
And they've sent a new road through WorkSafeBC at the bottom left of the rendering.


https://www.google.com/maps/place/Richmo...0a5ec108!8m2!3d49.1747141!4d-123.1516981

[vanman]

^Actually that would make sense because you can see the part of the oval for a split second in the video.

[officedweller]

Yeah, down a new road where the 's' of Kidtropolis is on that aerial shot.

[Tysonbrown]

Terrifying.

[jollyburger]

Chinese backed company. Seems like they were still hiring some people last year so maybe it's not totally dead. It's wierd they have this on their projects page:

We understand that the current Vancouver School Board capital plan proposes to build a new elementary school with a capacity of 500 students to be located at Hinge Park at the North end of Columbia Street.

https://www.westgem.ca/projects

[officedweller]

I didn't understand that either.

[jollyburger]

Boston Pizza at Ackroyd and No. 3 is closing because their lease is up and the land might get developed.

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/richmond-boston-pizza-location-says-final-goodbye-3465345

And a Richmond NIMBY thinks a fence to protect the bog from trespassers reminds him of concentration camps:

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/feds-construct-fence-around-dnd-lands-in-richmond-3464076

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

Boston Pizza at Ackroyd and No. 3 is closing because their lease is up and the land might get developed.

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/richmond-boston-pizza-location-says-final-goodbye-3465345

And a Richmond NIMBY thinks a fence to protect the bog from trespassers reminds him of concentration camps:

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/feds-construct-fence-around-dnd-lands-in-richmond-3464076

"reminds him"??!?!?

How much does anyone want to bet that this person wasn't ever at an actual concentration camp (and possibly even much less alive at the time) to know what it was actually like, that it would "remind him" of that.

I'm pretty sure he'd much prefer the weeks and weeks of smoke inhalation and poor air quality from the resultant bog fires that the fences are supposed to prevent and protect against instead,.... like the 2018 one - because THAT certainly wouldn't remind him of anything at a(n actual) concentration camp or anything like that.
(assuming he was there, of course).

No Sireee!

Says the fence doesn't show respect for people in the local community (unlike,.... say,......crassly using a historical atrocity to make an argument against a fence being put up in your neighbourhood).


I see no flaw in the Feds' argument and reasoning for putting up the fence in protecting both the environment and the people in the area.
Too bad they couldn't pretty it up to put him at ease and not give him "bad memories".


"NIMBY" is just about right.

Classless NIMBY, perhaps a bit more accurate.

[zahav]

The insane thing is this block barely faces any residential really. It faces a park on two sides, the backside of residentail cross 6 lanes of traffic and no houses on the street itself, and then rural lots to the south. Almost no one is affected by it.

God I wish NIMBYs were blocked from this kind of public interaction. That's why I love when it is someone like the DND or First Nations that don't have to listen to the NINBYs and can do what they like. If only cities were the same