Burnaby highrise will be the region’s tallest vertical village
Randy Shore
The Vancouver Sun
The newly approved Concord Pacific Metrotown development will feature a 65-storey tower and test the vertical limits of the urban village concept.
The tallest of the three towers to be built on the old Sears site in Burnaby’s Metrotown will be the region’s highest, eclipsing Burnaby’s 64-storey Two Gilmore Place, which is just getting underway.
The lower levels of the development will turn the old-style enclosed mall inside out, with restaurants and shopping accessible from the street. Three towers with 1,309 residential units will sit atop a podium of commercial space.
“It’s as if you took the village space around Park Royal and added some towers, plus several levels of atrium-style space with lifestyle and health-related businesses,” said Pete Webb, senior vice-president of development.
“It will also add lot of dining opportunities, which is something that is missing from the area,” he said.
A suite of office spaces and boardrooms will be accessible to the residents of the towers to accommodate the growing number of people who work from home or have nomadic computer-based businesses, he said.
“This is a live, work, play environment,” he said. “There is a symbiotic relationship between the work environment and the living environment. People can go downstairs to meet clients and hold meetings in a more professional space.”
Concord also envisions a cluster of lifestyle and medical tenants to encourage healthy living and allow people to age in place.
“Shopping centres are reinventing themselves away from these controlled black box environments,” said Webb. “We are devolving the mall to reintroduce street grids, outdoor spaces are re-engaged and retail is facing out at grade.”
Burnaby’s Downtown Metrotown plan is a centrepiece of the city’s strategy to absorb about 125,000 more people by 2041.
The result will be Manhattan-style density with British Columbia style, active and open and the street level, with terraces of commercial development surrounding highrise living.
“Clearly, the old concept of towers, parks and retail — all in separate buildings — is no longer the correct way to look at it,” he said.
Metro Vancouver is ground zero in the trend toward “vertical villages.”
Billions of dollars are being invested in mixed-use developments on the sites of retail malls such as Lougheed Town Centre, Brentwood and Oakridge, among others.
The notion of a mall as a large enclosed box surrounded by parking lots is dead.
“We are going to lead the re-envisioning of the Kingsway strip where towers and commercial spaces will really activate the grade level,” said Webb.
Two Gilmore Place (214 metres) will likely be the region’s tallest building when it is completed in the spring of 2025, but its reign will be short.
Concord Metrotown will come in at a cool 219.5 metres when it is completed.
Vancouver’s Shangri-La (201 metres) is currently B.C.’s tallest building and it positively towers over Trump International Hotel and Tower (188 metres) and Solo District — Altus (188 metres) in Burnaby.
“Two Gilmore Place will be the tallest for a while until we take over and then someone else will build something bigger,” said Webb.
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