MICHAEL SASGES
Sun
For the Cressey development company and executive Hani Lammam (above), the Duke on Dunbar is a small departure, at 23 homes.
Developments from Cressey and overseen by Lammam this year and last include Park 360, 214 homes; Elan, 229; and Olive, 109. The eventual views of sea and mountain, recorded by a Cressey camera, include (top) north by northwest, north and north by northeast. IAN SMITH/VANCOUVER SUN
The Duke on Dunbar newhome project is a house-on-ahill proposition that has generated all the right-for-the-site responses from developer and architect.
Each home’s generous glazing will maximize the views. Each home’s balconies and terraces will minimize time spent inside.
Further, the building’s rooftop garden ought to facilitate some only-in-Duke moments for residents. How charming is it to tell dinner guests, these herbs . . . why I just picked them on the roof this afternoon!
According to city hall’s electronic map, the 64-metre mark passes through will sit. For me the ascent of that hill has
always started, and the descent has
always ended, at about 16th and Trutch the Duke property at 18th and Dunbar. That’s an absolute and, therefore, only half the site story.
I have lived all my life below the hill on which the Duke on Dunbar building
The 24-metre mark passes through that intersection.
Accordingly, the 18th and Dunbar and 16th and Trutch intersections are 40 metres below and above each other. They are also about 570 metres apart.
That relief, seen on the one-metre-contour version of VanMap, comes darn near to the dictionary definition of escarpment as ‘‘inland cliff.’’ As the Cressey executive responsible for the Duke project, Hani Lammam, says: ‘‘It’s very well located geographically, because it’s on top of a hill.”
If natural geography will favor Duke homeowners, human geography facilitated their opportunity to own there: The Duke is a multiresidential development in a famously, resolutely singlefamily-detached neighbourhood. Its Dunbar Street location is key. Dunbar Street, at city hall, is an ‘‘arterial.’’
As the Dunbar Community Vision, law of the land locally since city council approved it more than seven years ago, comments:
“In addition to apartments above stores in the shopping areas, new types of housing, such as rowhouses . . . and duplexes should provide other affordable housing choices for young families and people wanting a smaller home in Dunbar.
‘‘This new housing should be developed as small projects over time, and should fit in with the character of the adjacent single-family areas.
‘‘There should be further community involvement in the detailed planning for this new housing, which should include assessing the most suitable locations on the arterials (Dunbar Street, 16th, and/or 41st Avenues). Housing for seniors could be in a variety of forms, including low-rise apartments.”
Or, as Cressey’s Hani Lammam almost said, we’re here because city hall said we should be here.
“What we try to do is identify neighbourhoods that we want to work in,” he said in explaining how Cressey came to involve itself in what, for it, is a small development.
‘‘The neighbourhood, not a piece of land, draws us. So when we like a neighbourhood we go and start digging. This site was an assembly, two different vendors, one middle piece [on the block between 17th and 18th] that was on the market for a very long time and never sold. We liked the neighbourhood so much we acquired that middle piece and then . . . the corner.
‘‘It all stems from the city decision to have these urban centres and Dunbar was one of the first neighbourhood plans that was put together by the city.’’
(The city’s purchase of a lot less than a block north of Duke, a purchase some Dunbar residents fear will impose a drug-treatment centre on the neighbourhood, has been received at Cressey with neighbourly interest. Fundamentally we’re not opposed to it [the purchase],’’ Lammam comments. ‘‘Whatever it will be it will be a use that fulfils the needs of the city.” City hall has said no decision on the use of the property has been made.)
The apartments at Duke, Cressey (explicitly) and city hall (implicity) will appeal firstly to older residents of the neighbourhood who will turn their single-familydetached equity into maintenance-free, mortgage-free apartment residency.
The five townhouses will probably appeal to younger buyers who want to raise a family on Vancouver’s westside, but can’t afford a singlefamily-detached home there.
Any of the homes would appeal to buyers who are the parents of university-aged children and, further, who might eventually want to retire in the Dunbar neighbourhood. Do not doubt this possibility: Earlier this year I interviewed a Burnaby family who bought, not in Dunbar, but in False Creek South, in the hopes that their children might eventually live in False Creek while attending the University of B.C. or Vancouver Community College.
In Hani Lammam’s opinion, whoever will own at Duke will be looking for something unique in their next home. “It is the discerning buyer who wants a sense of exclusivity, who doesn’t want to be in a building where there are 30 other units exactly the same,’’ Lammam says of the expected buyer.
‘‘There are very few typical units in this project. Virtually every unit is unique; every one is special .’’
