At least 35 towers with about 7,000 rental homes now proposed in the Broadway Plan area of Vancouver

As one of the last major but highly procrastinated moves by the previous makeup of Vancouver City Council, the Broadway Plan to densify the Central Broadway corridor with significant additional residential and employment uses was approved on June 22, 2022.

Just over two months later, on September 1, 2022, the new prescriptions and stipulations for land uses in the area came into effect.

The Broadway Plan’s area spans nearly 500 city blocks in a six square kilometre area framed by 1st Avenue to the north, Clark Drive to the east, 16th Avenue to the south, and Vine Street to the west — covering a large portion or most of the districts and neighbourhoods of Kitsilano, Fairview, and Mount Pleasant.

The “meat” of this growth outlined in the area plan uses SkyTrain’s future Millennium Line Broadway Extension between the existing VCC-Clark Station and Arbutus Street — six new subway stations — as its skeleton.

By March 2023, when a controversial “pace of change” policy was proposed by City staff, but later ultimately rejected by City Council, there were over 100 pre-application inquiries received by City staff since the start of September 2022 when the Broadway Plan was legalized. At the time, there were some suggestions that some developers who submitted these inquiries were merely holding their place in line.

The Broadway Plan’s first formal detailed rezoning applications for secured purpose-built rental housing projects in high-rise tower-based building forms were published by the municipal government beginning in Spring 2023, which is a step for every rezoning application that kicks off the City’s formal public consultation process for the respective proposal.

By Fall 2023, the pace of these published rezoning applications turned into a flood. New proposals were being revealed almost on a weekly basis, and this pace that first began late last year continued straight through this month. As of today, over two dozen rezoning applications have reached the public eye.

As of the time of writing, based on Daily Hive Urbanized’s comprehensive coverage of building development proposals within the Broadway Plan area, there are now at least 35 proposed towers containing secured purpose-built rental housing uses generating a combined total of nearly 7,000 rental homes. This includes 100% secured purpose-built housing buildings and mixed-use buildings, as well as proposals with multiple towers.

In terms of the mix of rents, these proposals contain roughly 5,700 market rental units and approximately 1,300 below-market rental units, according to Daily Hive Urbanized’s calculations.

In comparison, Squamish Nation’s nearby Senakw project on the 10.5-acre reserve at the south end of the Burrard Street Bridge will have 6,080 secured purpose-built rental homes, including 4,865 market rental units and 1,215 below-market rental units. Half of Senakw — the first two phases — are now well under construction and set to see staggered completions between 2025/2026 and 2028. The remaining two phases, representing the other half of the project, should be built by 2033. Senakw’s significant rental housing uses are contained within 11 towers reaching up to 59 storeys.

For further contrast, the 90-acre Jericho Lands project in Vancouver’s West Point Grey neighbourhood will see 13,000 homes for up to 24,000 people, and the newly revised proposal to redevelop Burnaby’s 35-acre Metropolis at Metrotown mall could generate up to 24 towers — many qualifying as the tallest in Metro Vancouver if they existed today — with 12,000 homes within the first phase of the project.

Nearly all of the publicly-known proposals in the Broadway Plan area to date are within very close walking distance to a future or existing SkyTrain station — most are only a few minutes walking distance away, while others are generally more than a 15-minute walk away. Some of these transit-oriented development proposals are even immediately adjacent to these transit hubs.

This includes four proposals closest to Arbutus Station, six proposals closest to South Granville Station, three proposals closest to Oak-VGH Station, eight proposals closest to Mount Pleasant Station, two proposals closest to Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, and one proposal closest to VCC-Clark Station.

It should also be acknowledged that the City has received a number of rezoning applications with significant office and/or industrial uses as prescribed in the Broadway Plan, but in far fewer quantities than rental housing proposals. This includes standalone office/industrial projects and mixed-use proposals integrated into the aforementioned major rental housing proposals. While the Broadway Plan provides a path forward for tower-based strata condominium proposals, few developers are pursuing such major uses at this time due to market conditions.

The aforementioned various numbers related to the rental housing proposals within the Broadway Plan are expected to change quickly after the publication of this article from the continued submission and publication of rezoning applications.

Ian Brackett, a senior broker for Goodman Commercial, told Daily Hive Urbanized that so far, the majority of the rezoning applications coming through the City’s formal review and public consultation process are from legacy owners with properties that were acquired well before the Broadway Plan came out. In some cases, he says, these proposals are on properties that have been held by the same family for decades.

“It is important to note that conditions have shifted quite substantially between when the Broadway Plan was first approved in June 2022 and today. Most of the proposals being made public now were submitted as pre-application inquiries in mid or late 2022 and are just trickling through to a formal rezoning application now,” said Brackett.

It should also be noted that there was a years-long moratorium on many types of rezoning applications within the Broadway Plan area. The moratorium was put in place during the entire planning and consultation process for creating the Broadway Plan between 2018 and 2022.

Brackett says the number of rezoning applications far outpaces the number of sale transactions in the Broadway Plan area to date.

Since early 2023, based on his company’s tracking of data, there have been only five sales involving properties that are bona-fide development sites. This figure excludes properties bought for investment and longer-term holding. With that said, Brackett expects more deals to close over the coming months and notes that where there was a transaction, such deals were done up to 24 months ago and are not necessarily indicative of today’s market.

When asked whether the Broadway Plan’s stipulations that limit the number of towers on each city block are a factor for the recent flood of tower-based rezoning applications, Brackett emphatically said, “Absolutely.”

Under the Broadway Plan’s stipulations, many city blocks can only see one or two high-rise towers — and this accounts for any existing towers built prior to the area plan’s creation. Moreover, the Broadway Plan defines a city block as being framed “street-to-street,” including the laneway that cuts through the block.

Brackett says the policy limiting the number of towers per block has “created winners and losers. This is a more restrictive definition than in other community plans and forces neighbours to compete against each other because once the maximum has been met the rest of the block is out of luck.”

“In the single-family and duplex neighbourhoods, not only do the properties not assembled and sold to a developer miss out on any potential lift in value, but they also have to live through years of construction and a 20-storey tower popping up beside their family home.”

The owners of the other properties on each block that are not eligible for towers can strive for a medium-density redevelopment option. However, Brackett says the permitted lower density is not enough to make these viable as development sites in many instances.

He adds that these policies in the Broadway Plan have created “an all-or-nothing scenario,” and “a site that cannot achieve a tower form is largely frozen in its current state.”

When asked how likely these rental housing proposals in the Broadway Plan area are to actually be realized, Brackett said many proposals will move forward, as they are being pitched as serious applications by experienced developers to address a pressing need for rental housing and job space.

However, he warns that a larger number of these proposals, possibly even the majority, will likely not move forward over the short- or medium-term for a range of reasons. He adds that the projects that do not move forward within the foreseeable future will be mainly because the financial margins are so thin. As well, he says, the “conditions have to be just right to attract financing and investors to get these projects off the ground.”

Moreover, compared to the municipal jurisdictions of Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Surrey, the tower height and density allowances for Vancouver’s Broadway Plan area — including sites immediately adjacent to SkyTrain stations — are generally on the lower side.

The majority of the Broadway Plan’s rental housing tower proposals to date are generally about 20 storeys tall, featuring a floor area ratio density of a floor area that is 6.5 times larger than the size of the lot — all in accordance with the area plan’s prescriptions for their sites. There are also other restrictions to floor plate and street frontage size. Slight height and density increases will only be considered if such projects incorporate retail/restaurant uses or a childcare facility.

“In Vancouver especially, it takes a very experienced and patient developer with deep pockets to pull off a large-scale purpose-built rental development,” said Brackett. Such developers are more likely able to successfully wade through the muddy waters of inflating construction costs and high borrowing costs for construction financing, and they are also more likely to be on the receiving end of lenders, who are now more selective of which developers they will lend to. All the while, municipal development fees, property taxes, and other City-mandated costs continue to rise.

“Some of the proposals likely have been submitted defensively to avoid losing out on any future development potential, while others have every intention of moving forward, but will struggle to do so in the current environment,” continued Brackett.

“It is great to see proposals starting to move forward, but we need to see actual starts and completions before there is any dent at all in the housing crisis.”

One longtime developer responsible for some of Metro Vancouver’s most successful high-density, mixed-use transit-oriented developments is PCI Developments, and they have a handful of proposals within the Broadway Plan area that fall under the area plan’s prescriptions and stipulations.

Within the Broadway Plan area, PCI has four mixed-use residential proposals entailing eight high-rise towers with a combined total of about 1,500 rental homes. This does not include their major rezoning application for 5 West 4th Avenue, where they are proposing to build a 100% job space project reaching up to 11 storeys with 480,000 sq ft of creative industrial, office, retail, restaurant, and childcare facility uses.

One of PCI’s most high-profile proposals is a 25-storey mixed-use tower with 260 rental homes at 2096 West Broadway, which is located at the southeast corner of the prominent intersection of Arbutus Street and West Broadway — immediately south of SkyTrain’s future Arbutus Station and 99 B-Line bus exchange. This is a sizeable project, but it particularly shines for being TransLink’s very first project under the public transit authority’s new for-profit real estate development division.

PCI and TransLink have a 50-50 partnership for the Arbutus Station rental housing tower, with the developer taking the leading role in fulfilling the project. Both the developer and the public transit authority have combined the properties they independently acquired to create the project’s development site.

In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized, PCI president Tim Grant says the Arbutus Station tower project could enter a public hearing with City Council soon, potentially before the end of this summer. After the rezoning application is approved, they fully intend to quickly proceed into the next application and permitting steps, with construction possibly beginning before the Millennium Line extension opens.

This tower sets aside some space on the Arbutus Street frontage for a potential future secondary entrance into the subway station.

Their rezoning application for the Arbutus Station tower project was amongst the first rezoning applications within the Broadway Plan area to enter the City’s formal review and public consultation process.

Some of PCI’s largest long-term properties are located along Great Northern Way in the False Creek Flats, where the developer has built tech-oriented office buildings and acquired existing office buildings — all branded as part of their “South Flatz” portfolio.

PCI expanded its partnership with Low Tide Properties for its latest proposal to develop 485 Great Northern Way — a project that wraps around and integrates itself with the subway entrance building for the future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. There would be three towers up to 35 storeys, including two rental housing towers containing about 530 units — a mix of 424 market rental units and 106 below-market units — and an office tower with about 315,000 sq ft of office space. Significant retail/restaurant uses spanning 93,000 sq ft are also included. Grant says the rezoning application has been submitted, and its publication by the City to kick off the formal public consultation process is imminent.

At the eastern end of the Great Northern Way corridor, PCI is planning a similar major mixed-use redevelopment for the Rogers/Shaw warehouse and vehicle compound, which occupies an entire 2.1-acre city block at 1155 East 6th Avenue — the northeast corner of the intersection of Great Northern Way and Glen Drive, immediately west of SkyTrain’s existing VCC-Clark Station.

For this Rogers/Shaw site, says Grant, his company has plans to build three towers up to 35 storeys — two rental housing towers and one office tower. There would be 550 rental homes — a mix of 440 market rental units and 110 below-market rental units — as well as major components of creative industrial space, office space, and retail/restaurant uses, including a grocery store.

Grant notes that the rezoning application for the VCC-Clark project will be submitted soon. He adds that PCI is working closely with Vancouver Community College to integrate the public realm of its development with the institution’s main campus just to the south. Catalyzed by the Broadway Plan, the institution has long-term plans to redevelop its eight-acre campus into new and expanded academic and community uses, along with significant residential uses of over 3,000 homes, with a large proportion being secured purpose-built rental homes.

“I think that the really big key to the long-term office demand in all these areas, but particularly on Great Northern Way, is the need to have the housing and the shops and services. That’s why we’re really encouraged by our Great Northern Way-Emily Carr proposal because there is some office included, but the housing component is really important to be able to kind of create the activity that we need to generate some more office demand,” Grant told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“I think we’re optimistic that over the long-term, particularly in close proximity of the SkyTrain stations, that there will be good office demand and especially from the creative type industries that the City has aspired to with the Broadway Plan. But it’s really important that housing, particularly good rental housing, is there in advance because it’s a real limit without it.”

PCI is perhaps an outlier amongst the many proponents within the Broadway Plan area, as all of their development sites carry existing under-utilized minor commercial/industrial uses or are vacant — there is no displacement of existing rental housing tenants, as there are no existing residential uses on any of these sites. This includes PCI’s rezoning application to redevelop 1434-1456 West 8th Avenue — immediately northeast of the future South Granville Station — into a 25-storey tower with 162 rental homes and some retail/restaurant uses.

“We’re not really impacted by the number of towers per block policy on any site, so I can’t really comment about that. I will say that I think the City, for the larger sites that we’ve been involved in, was good about considering that ahead of time. From our experience, there hasn’t been a lot of uncertainty on the blocks we’ve been involved in about where those towers would be,” said Grant.

“But I think what we’re seeing right now in terms of the influx of applications coming in is it too long [of a] time for the City through the pre-application inquiry process to get guidance on these Broadway Plan sites. I think into last fall, the City had come back with their guidance to a number of developers, so maybe that’s why we’re seeing the applications come in now. It’s one thing to get applications in, but we need to get the housing built and get it built relatively quickly. It’s tough to make these projects work, so hopefully everyone in the City keeps the priority of trying to get these proposals through the review process in an expedient fashion so that housing is built as quickly as possible.”

In all likelihood, if approved and the projects do not face financial hurdles, these proposals falling under the Broadway Plan’s prescriptions and stipulations are still years away from being realized to create a real material impact on housing and sustained economic activity.

But there are already tower-based rental housing projects under construction that pre-date the creation of the Broadway Plan.

This includes Jameson Development Group’s 28-storey mixed-use tower redevelopment of the former Denny’s restaurant location at 1296 West Broadway (also known as 2538 Birch Street) — just two city blocks east of South Granville Station. This was a highly contested project, as it was the first of its kind contemplated before the Broadway Plan; City Council in January 2018 approved the developer’s initial rezoning application for a 17-storey tower with 153 rental homes, but this later became a larger 28-storey tower with 258 rental homes, which saw its revised rezoning application approved in June 2023. Construction did not begin until 2023, when the provincial government provided Jameson with a $164 million low-cost loan to cover the majority of construction financing, amidst the shock of high borrowing costs in the marketplace.

At the northeast corner of the intersection of Granville Street and West Broadway, addressed as 1477 West Broadway, PCI is in the process of building a 39-storey mixed-use tower that provides a fully integrated subway entrance for South Granville Station. PCI initially began construction in 2020 on a five-storey building with office and retail uses and the subway station entrance, based on a placeholder design previously approved through a development permit application due to the urgency to follow the Millennium Line extension’s construction timeline. In April 2022, just months before the Broadway Plan decision, City Council approved PCI’s rezoning application to build the 39-storey concept, with the already-built five-storey commercial structure forming the tower’s base podium.

The 39-storey South Granville Station tower will contain 223 rental homes, 100,000 sq ft of office space, a 22,000 sq ft Loblaws City Market grocery store, and over 7,000 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses. The subway station entrance will be located at the building’s prominent corner with the intersection.

Grant says South Granville Station tower reached the major construction milestone a few weeks ago of topping off. With a completed height of 410 ft, it is now the tallest building in the entire Broadway Plan area — exceeding the height of the Jim Pattison Pavilion of the Vancouver General Hospital — but falls short of being the tallest building in Vancouver outside of downtown, as it will be exceeded by the tallest towers at Senakw and Oakridge Park (Oakridge Centre mall). Jameson’s 283-foot-tall tower down the street will be the area plan’s third tallest building upon completion.

Grant notes that South Granville Station tower is now on target to reach completion by late Summer 2025, at which point the rental housing component will be ready for occupancy, followed by the grocery store and other commercial uses at later dates.

PCI’s South Granville Station tower could remain the tallest building in the Broadway Plan area for many years to come, as the area plan’s tallest permissible heights surround this particular transit hub, which is further aided by not being impacted by protected mountain View Cone 3.0 emanating from the top of Queen Elizabeth Park.

One of the largest tower-based rental housing proposals within the Broadway Plan is Onni Group’s revised proposal for their already-excavated 2.5-acre construction pit at 399 East 1st Avenue, which is immediately northwest of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station.

This reimagined mixed-use development concept will entail four towers up to 35 storeys, including 1,000 rental homes and live-work units, along with hotel, office, retail, and restaurant uses. Onni Group will submit a formal rezoning application sometime over the coming months.

Reliance Properties is also moving forward with the redevelopment of its longtime property of the former MEC store at 130 West Broadway, which is about a five-minute walk from Broadway-City Hall Station. A rezoning application submitted last year calls for two towers up to 30 storeys, containing 524 rental homes, 43,500 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses, including a grocery store, and a childcare facility.

The Broadway Plan area’s extent also spans Mount St. Joseph Hospital. Early this year, Quadreal Property Group submitted a rezoning application to develop a large surface parking lot at the hospital into two towers up to 32 storeys, containing 542 rental homes, 16,000 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses, and a childcare facility. The hospital parking lot site at 2950 Prince Edward Avenue is about a 10-minute walk from Mount Pleasant Station.

Closer to Mount Pleasant Station, about two city blocks to the west, Chard Development previously had a plan to build a 12-storey office building at 8 East Broadway, which saw its rezoning application approved in 2020. Last year, under the Broadway Plan’s prescriptions and stipulations, the developer submitted a new rezoning application that axed the office uses due to market conditions, and replaced it with a 14-storey design with 152 rental homes and retail/restaurant uses.

A rezoning application submission is forthcoming for 293 East 11th Avenue, which is located at the northwest corner of Kingsway and East 11th Avenue — just southwest of Kingsgate Mall and a five-minute walk from Mount Pleasant Station. The provincial government recently provided the Coast Foundation Society with grant funding to cover design and planning costs for building 370 homes on the small site. Under the Broadway Plan, a 25-storey store tower can be achieved at this location.

Reliance Properties has also indicated its interest in developing the surface parking lot at 1540 West 10th Avenue — near the southwest corner of the intersection of Granville Street and West 10th Avenue, about one block south of South Granville Station — into a 20-storey rental housing tower.

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