Downtown Vancouver Updates

[Vin]

Renovate Sinclair Centre all they want but just leave all the heritage portions alone: meaning no tall tower. The complex should be considered a heritage site as a whole, not just pieces of wall.

[madog222]

Should I ask Kennth for a job?

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sinclair...PAqWYNoN_zQV9HoWUkgQqttbPGsPNMA2dQlOf2eE

[officedweller]

Terrace House

In the Matter of a Plan of Compromise and Arrangement of Port Capital Development (EV) Inc. and Evergreen House Development Limited Partnership
...
[39] At the June 8, 2021 hearing, the Monitor provided its Confidential Seventh Report. The Monitor indicated that, on June 4, 2021, it received two additional cash offers:

a) Landa submitted a third revised offer ($22 million) (“Landa Offer #3”); and

b) Solterra submitted a second “backup” revised offer on a “without prejudice” basis (the “Solterra Backup Offer”). This rider was in relation to Solterra’s argument that the Court should have approved Solterra Offer #1 on May 25, 2021. The Solterra Backup Offer was sealed and not publicly made available, save to CMLS and Aviva. However, the Monitor advised all stakeholders that the Solterra Backup Offer was superior in value to Landa Offer #3.

[40] In addition, on June 4, 2021, the Monitor received a revised offer from 129 (the “129 Revised Offer”). In support, Mr. Reyes provided his Affidavits #3 and #4 sworn June 4 and 7, 2021, essentially referring to revisions to the 129 Offer and the removal of further conditions, as I will describe in greater detail below. In the Seventh Report, the Monitor reported that the 129 Revised Offer would result in a “materially better” outcome for the stakeholders than both Solterra Offers and Landa Offer #3.

[41] At the hearing, Landa conceded that Landa Offer #3 should not be approved in the face of the 129 Revised Offer. Landa proposed that Landa Offer #3 should stand as a backup offer in the event that the 129 Revised Offer was court approved, but failed to close for any reason.

...

[93] Without the 129 Revised Offer, the remaining issue is what other offers should be considered by the Court and, if appropriate, approved.

[94] Solterra takes the position that the Court should disregard the offers received after May 25, 2021 and that the Court should approve Solterra Offer #1 ($21 million). Solterra argues that it adhered to the sales process implemented by the Monitor and that it would be unfair if the Court approved any other offer. Solterra particularly objects to Landa Offer #2, arguing that Landa Offer #1 essentially stood as a stalking horse bid. Solterra refers to Landa Offer #2 as only slightly “beating” Solterra Offer #1 (about 4%), having had the benefit of disclosure of the price under Solterra Offer #1.

...

[106] Needless to say, the landscape changed quite significantly in the two-week period leading up June 4, 2021. Leaving aside the 129 Revised Offer with its ongoing improvements and removal of subjects, there was further jockeying between Landa and Solterra with their June 4, 2021 offers. In short, the submission of Landa Offer #3 and the Solterra Backup Offer to the Monitor are matters that, in my view, the Court should not ignore in terms of considering the various offers.

[107] I have concluded that, although there has been some unfairness in the sales process in relation to Solterra, it is not appropriate that I approve Solterra Offer #1 at this time. Faced with the substantial interest and increasingly higher bids from both Landa and Solterra leading to May 25, 2021, I may have been inclined to order one last round of sealed bids for Landa and Solterra. However, by and large, Landa and Solterra embarked themselves upon a further sealed bid process leading to the June 8, 2021 hearing.

[108] The Monitor emphasizes in its Confidential Seventh Report that the price under Solterra Backup Offer was increased by a significant sum, in the millions of dollars and well above that of Landa Offer #3. It will satisfy the priority debt - the professional charges and the Interim Lending Facility - and provide almost full payment to CMLS.
...

[112] Solterra Backup Offer is approved.

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/21/12/2021BCSC1272.htm

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by madog222

Should I ask Kennth for a job?

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sinclair...PAqWYNoN_zQV9HoWUkgQqttbPGsPNMA2dQlOf2eE

Lol

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

Renovate Sinclair Centre all they want but just leave all the heritage portions alone: meaning no tall tower. The complex should be considered a heritage site as a whole, not just pieces of wall.

The Sinclair Centre is 80m x 80m, so 6,400 sq. metres of land. The Post is 80m x 150m, so 12,000 sq. metres. They're building just under 130,000 square metres in total on the Post, (11 FSR) including the heritage podium, and the Sinclair Centre is aiming at 80,000 to 100,000, so the proposal is going to have to be something like the two Post towers back-to-back, and slightly taller. Those are around 85m high and the Sinclair Centre proposal is for 17 to 20 FSR, and it can go to 106m (around 29 storeys) before hitting a viewcone.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

The Sinclair Centre is 80m x 80m, so 6,400 sq. metres of land. The Post is 80m x 150m, so 12,000 sq. metres. They're building just under 130,000 square metres in total on the Post, (11 FSR) including the heritage podium, and the Sinclair Centre is aiming at 80,000 to 100,000, so the proposal is going to have to be something like the two Post towers back-to-back, and slightly taller. Those are around 85m high and the Sinclair Centre proposal is for 17 to 20 FSR, and it can go to 106m (around 29 storeys) before hitting a viewcone.

Look at the four heritage building footprints and the aerial view of the complex: there is no room for a tower unless some or all of the buildings are partially demolished. This should not be allowed in a city with so little heritage structures left. Just leave them alone and do some light renovations. The Feds are in no business to make money in this city. They also have a lot to learn from Europe or even Montreal.

[madog222]

Originally Posted by Vin

Look at the four heritage building footprints and the aerial view of the complex: there is no room for a tower unless some or all of the buildings are partially demolished. This should not be allowed in a city with so little heritage structures left. Just leave them alone and do some light renovations. The Feds are in no business to make money in this city. They also have a lot to learn from Europe or even Montreal.

The buildings need significant seismic upgrades regardless.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

Look at the four heritage building footprints and the aerial view of the complex: there is no room for a tower unless some or all of the buildings are partially demolished. This should not be allowed in a city with so little heritage structures left. Just leave them alone and do some light renovations. The Feds are in no business to make money in this city. They also have a lot to learn from Europe or even Montreal.

What money are they going to be making? If they build the new Sinclair Centre additional office space, then it's still going to be a Federal building. They're trying to save money (that they currently pay in rent in all the buildings they don't own that they currently occupy). The interior space in the atrium is already totally changed from when they were four separate buildings.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

What money are they going to be making? If they build the new Sinclair Centre additional office space, then it's still going to be a Federal building. They're trying to save money (that they currently pay in rent in all the buildings they don't own that they currently occupy). The interior space in the atrium is already totally changed from when they were four separate buildings.

All the more they should not make it worse. The atrium looks alright because some of the old facade walls facing the old lane are still there. The "mall" is basically a glass canopy covering the old alley, although one must admit quite a bit of old structures had already been torn down.

Can you imagine an office tower looming from the middle of these beautiful heritage buildings? Knowing what types of new structures get built here, I would think the result will be a disaster.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

All the more they should not make it worse. The atrium looks alright because some of the old facade walls facing the old lane are still there. The "mall" is basically a glass canopy covering the old alley, although one must admit quite a bit of old structures had already been torn down.

Can you imagine an office tower looming from the middle of these beautiful heritage buildings? Knowing what types of new structures get built here, I would think the result will be a disaster.

Yes, I can imagine a significant office tower set back from the facades of the heritage buildings. I think it could work out fine, especially as the office buildings in the past decade haven't been 'a disaster' as far as I'm concerned - in fact some have been very successful. The MNP Tower, The Exchange and The Post add significant new office space above heritage buildings, and MNP is also immediately behind the best heritage building in the city, without being 'a disaster'.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Keep the north building (the only one that looks decent on all four sides) and gut the others. Let's get a proper office tower out of this.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by madog222

Should I ask Kennth for a job?

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sinclair...PAqWYNoN_zQV9HoWUkgQqttbPGsPNMA2dQlOf2eE

Gawd, what a load of hooey:

..“Density [on the site] has never increased since a hundred years ago and the conservative sturdy stone buildings interact less and less with the urban fabric of a young, dynamic metropolis and important gateway to Asia. Sitting near the edge of the Pacific, globalization has largely passed the Sinclair Centre by,” states the federal government’s rationale for the project...

Please Mr. Trudeau, explain how a highrise dropped in the middle of that is going to "interact with the urban fabric of a young, dynamic metropolis and important gateway to Asia" any better than what is there (unless they tear down the heritage facade). It wasn't that long ago the Feds announced they'd be selling off office buildings.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Keep the north building (the only one that looks decent on all four sides) and gut the others. Let's get a proper office tower out of this.

The red brick one?
It's interesting that the ones with the ornate facades facing Hastings St. might have pretty plain north sides facing the alley,
while the red brick one seems to be consistent on all 4 sides.
The L-shaped one can definitely be hollowed out.

With the height limits, it may be hard to design a "hovering" building that keeps any of the existing buildings intact,
but conceivably, they could have 4 big stilts/shear walls (3 of them in the former alleys) with a massive transfer slab above.
Think former Citicorp Tower NYC with a bigger floorplate.



https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sinclair...PAqWYNoN_zQV9HoWUkgQqttbPGsPNMA2dQlOf2eE


https://www.amny.com/news/former-citicorp-center-38-new-yorks-youngest-landmark/

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Gawd, what a load of hooey

It wasn't that long ago the Feds announced they'd be selling off office buildings.

That was 2004 - there are people posting here who weren't born when the Feds considered selling their office buildings. If they were to try that today, all the proceeds would be claimed by First Nations, and it would cost them even more to create office space for Federal employees. That's why they haven't sold Downtown real estate, and why they're revisiting adding space at the Sinclair Centre.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by officedweller

The red brick one?
It's interesting that the ones with the ornate facades facing Hastings St. might have pretty plain north sides facing the alley,
while the red brick one seems to be consistent on all 4 sides.
The L-shaped one can definitely be hollowed out.

The MNP/Exchange towers were mostly built to the side of the existing heritage buildings so it would be fun to see how they would build a tower in the direct center of the site without the large parking garage doors access they had at The Post.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by officedweller

The red brick one?
It's interesting that the ones with the ornate facades facing Hastings St. might have pretty plain north sides facing the alley,
while the red brick one seems to be consistent on all 4 sides.
The L-shaped one can definitely be hollowed out.

With the height limits, it may be hard to design a "hovering" building that keeps any of the existing buildings intact,
but conceivably, they could have 4 big stilts/shear walls (3 of them in the former alleys) with a massive transfer slab above.
Think former Citicorp Tower NYC with a bigger floorplate.

That's the one. The Chateauesque fronts on Hastings are worth keeping, but the buildings themselves, not so much.

Worth noting that a contractor screwup when building Citigroup almost levelled half of Midtown. At any rate, the Sinclair design team would have to get creative with the floor plan to put the columns in, and at that point it's just as easy to rework the whole interior and build the tower conventionally.

[dleung]

This is the only form of redevelopment I would accept - keep all the heritage buildings except the PoMo-renovated portions of the L building, offset the core to maintain the atrium space and have the tower float high enough above the buildings to allow light to come into the central space from the south via spider glass walls coming up to the tower soffit.



Queen Richmond Centre in Toronto for example:

[Metro-One]

Like your idea, but isn’t your tower already too high for the view cones?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

The MNP/Exchange towers were mostly built to the side of the existing heritage buildings so it would be fun to see how they would build a tower in the direct center of the site without the large parking garage doors access they had at The Post.

I think the Exchange tower structure goes right through the old Stock Exchange building. That was why it made a better hotel than office space - a lot of extra columns, as well as the original ones. MNP was just a facade retention, with some of the side wall.

The Winch Building (the Hastings building to the west, beyond the old Post Office), is 1909 and had an interesting structure that isn't what you'd build today. It's 1909, and a hybrid of steel and reinforced concrete, but without much in the way of cross bracing (although the Henriquez makeover will have partly improved that, but not to current standards).

Here's a VPL image

[trofirhen]

Excuse me, I just tuned in to this thread after a hard day on the borderlands of life.
I cannot believe that the feds want to take the Sinclair Centre and suspend a building over it, ruining the exterior aesthetic and cutting daylight from the courtyard.
It is documented that Vancouver has one of the lowest office space markets available anywhere in North America, so, unless they're too desperate for cash to do so
why not find a choice downtown lot - and there surely must be a couple somewhere- and build that never-built I.M. Pei design *1, lease part of for federal offices, and the rest at market?
That way, you get: a Sinclair Sentre unmutilated, unmolested. ... a fabulous design aching to be made manifest; ... and a building able to charge top rates to to its design prestige.
This Sinclair Centre is pathetic. Surely they could come up with a more elegnt solution than this !!
*1 The building never built at Pacific Centre where TD now stands