Could there be an expansion of Vancouver Convention Centre?

Could there be another expansion of the Vancouver Convention Centre, creating a third wing building just to the east of Canada Place?

It will not happen anytime soon, but it is within the realm of possibility, based on the outlined framework for establishing a master plan for redeveloping downtown Vancouver’s Waterfront Station precinct, including the Central Waterfront railyard immediately north of the public transit hub and Gastown.

In a November 2024 internal memo, Paul Mochrie, the city manager of Vancouver, shared that the municipal government reached a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in May 2024 with various other landowners and stakeholders in the area to conduct a planning process for the area’s future redevelopment.

This planning partnership entails the Government of British Columbia, City of Vancouver, Transport Canada, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, GHD Equity Holdings, and Cadillac Fairview. Although they are not a part of the MOU, TransLink, Canadian National, and local First Nations are also involved in the work.

A shared, preliminary Transportation and Development Vision for the Central Waterfront by the group, led by the municipal government, is expected to reach completion soon — by early 2025.

They have agreed on the following vision for the area: “Identify and advance local, regional, provincial and national goals related to economic growth, business, commerce, trade and supply chains, transportation (including people and goods movement), tourism (including convention centre and hotel capacity), housing, including opportunities for densification, First Nations history, culture and reconciliation, public amenities, the public realm, and climate change.”

Furthermore, “The signatories to this MOU have a strong interest in working together to develop a vision for the future of the Central Waterfront that is worthy of its potential as the last significant undeveloped piece of urban waterfront in the heart of downtown Vancouver, a principal focal point of the regional transportation network and a vital part of the Port of Vancouver and British Columbia and Canada’s trade and supply chains.”

This would be a significant mixed-use redevelopment over the long term that somehow achieves a balance of the range of interests and concerns of the various landowners and stakeholders.

For the port authority and the railway companies, for instance, maintaining goods movement would be critical for any redevelopment of the railyard and port-owned waterfront areas, including Waterfront Road.

Cadillac Fairview owns not only the historic Canadian Pacific building that serves as Waterfront Station but also the adjacent Granville Square and PricewaterhouseCoopers office towers. Over a decade ago, Cadillac Fairview first proposed building an office tower on the east side of Waterfront Station, but this plan fell apart due to the pandemic, mixed reviews over the building’s modern origami-like design, and the emerging consensus to conduct an area planning process before enabling any development.

The municipal government may be particularly interested in the possibility of adding housing, public space, and hotel opportunities to the area.

The municipal and provincial governments and TransLink would also have a joint interest in the potential of expanding and growing Waterfront Station into a public transit hub with additional space for passenger amenities and future additional services and modes of transportation, such as additional SkyTrain lines and new commuter/regional rail, high-speed rail, and interregional passenger ferries.

“There are so many stakeholders here. It’s really hard to coordinate all the different groups. But what I can tell you is the City of Vancouver is 100% behind a new vision for that area,” said Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim in a previous interview with Daily Hive Urbanized in November 2024.

However, the Mayor added that because of the wide range of different priorities among the landowners and stakeholders, “not a single group will get 100% of what they want.”

For the provincial government, the area on the east side of Canada Place above the railyard likely represents the last opportunity for a seamless major expansion of the Vancouver Convention Centre, which is owned and operated by provincial Crown corporation Pavco. There are some obvious significant site constraints for any further expansion of the convention centre’s facilities on the west side of Canada Place.

But extensive infrastructure and utilities would need to be built to support any development, including an extension of the Canada Place Way viaduct and the construction of new viaducts over the site to create development parcels or even a large airspace deck over the railyard, similar to the Hudson Yards project in New York City.

Steve Wynn’s casino-resort proposal for the Central Waterfront

Although the 2009-built West Building of the convention centre is typically associated with its original use for the International Broadcast Centre of the 2010 Winter Olympics, planning for this new facility began in the late 1990s, when it was increasingly apparent that the existing convention centre facilities were too small. This expansion of the convention centre included the Canada Place Way viaduct extension between Burrard and Thurlow streets.

The original convention centre, now known as the convention centre’s East Building, is contained within the 1986-built Canada Place pier, which was originally built as the Canada Pavilion for the Expo ’86 World’s Fair. It shares a building with the other major uses of the port authority’s cruise ship terminal, the Pan Pacific Hotel, and the World Trade Centre Vancouver offices.

By the early 2000s, the convention centre was essentially at capacity — increasingly turning away meeting, convention, exhibition, and other event opportunities due to a lack of available dates or because its facilities were too small for larger bookings. In 2003 alone, the convention centre forfeited a number of events that would have generated a total of $100 million ($157 million in 2024 dollars) for the local economy.

Prior to the provincial government’s 2002 decision to grow the convention centre’s capacity by building the West Building on Burrard Landing at the foot of Burrard Street, at least four sites and plans by different proponents were contemplated.

In 1995, late architect Bing Thom floated an idea to the provincial government of an off-site convention centre expansion at BC Place Stadium. The stadium floor would have been raised to create underground exhibition halls with 30-ft-high ceilings, reducing the stadium’s seating capacity by about 10,000 seats. The then-undeveloped sites around BC Place Stadium would have been used to integrate the existing venue and new meeting and exhibition spaces with Rogers Arena and Queen Elizabeth Theatre, including a hotel with 1,250 guest rooms, public spaces, shops, and restaurants.

However, the most ambitious vision was a 100% privately funded project by Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino tycoon known for the Wynn Resorts chain. In the early 1990s, when Wynn proposed a massive casino-resort redevelopment for Vancouver, he was the CEO of Mirage Resorts.

Attracted by Vancouver’s post-Expo afterglow, Wynn partnered with local developer VLC Properties (now known as Concert Properties) to pitch a proposal to build Seaport Centre immediately east of Canada Place, over the railyard north of Waterfront Station — within the same area that is now going through an area planning process led by the City of Vancouver.

According to reports at the time by the Vancouver Sun and Washington Post, Wynn’s 1994 Vegas-style proposal — known as Seaport Centre — would have built a complex with a hotel tower with 1,000 guest rooms, extensive retail and restaurants, a major convention centre, an additional cruise ship berth complementing the existing Canada Place berths, a permanent show theatre venue for Cirque du Soleil, and a 125,0000 sq ft casino, which would have been the fifth largest casino in Canada and United States at the time.

Seaport Centre would have carried a construction cost of $1 billion ($1.9 billion in 2024 dollars), and it would have been a massive tourism magnet and economic generator for downtown Vancouver. It would have created 15,000 permanent jobs upon opening and increase the combined tax revenues of the municipal, provincial, and federal governments by at least $185 million per year ($347 million per year in 2024 dollars).

However, the proposal for Seaport Centre was short-lived largely due to the opposition to the major casino component of the mixed-use complex.

In 1996, after the cancellation of Wynn’s private sector-funded convention centre proposal within Seaport Centre, the tourism industry began working on another potential plan to expand Vancouver’s convention centre capacity.

An alternative proposal was then announced in 1997 by Greystone Properties, which created a revision of Wynn’s proposal, with the key difference being the removal of the casino, according to a City staff report at the time.

Located to the east of Canada Place, on the same footprint over the railyard, the Portside project would have entailed a hotel tower with 1,000 guest rooms across 800,000 sq ft of hotel space, an additional berth for cruise ships, a 490,000 sq ft convention centre, 264,000 sq ft of retail, restaurants, entertainment, cabarets, and other commercial space, a three-acre public plaza, and a relocation of the SeaBus terminal with a new walkway link to the rest of Waterfront Station. A future second phase of Seaport Centre would have added 400,000 sq ft of hotel, office, retail, and restaurant uses.

The Portside proposal submitted to the provincial government was completely within federally-owned property. To consider the proposal, a MOU was reached between Greystone, the provincial government, the municipal government, and the port authority.

$688 million in annual economic benefits from the existing convention centre

And now, things have come full circle with the creation of a new MOU with a broader group of the area’s landowners and stakeholders. The current planning process was triggered by Vancouver City Council’s 2022 direction to City staff to restart the planning process for the Waterfront Station precinct, with about $2.6 million in municipal funding subsequently set aside to support this work.

“I think it’s like it’s a blank canvas that could be absolutely spectacular,” Sim told Daily Hive Urbanized in November 2024.

“Opportunities like this do not exist in very many parts of the planet. And so, we’re blessed with one. Let’s not squander it.”

The new planning work is expected to build on the previous preliminary planning work conducted in the late 2000s, triggered by the Vancouver Whitecaps’ unsuccessful proposal to build a 15,000-seat outdoor soccer-specific stadium — expandable to 30,000 seats — on an elevated deck over the railyard. Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot owns the air space over the railyard for its development potential.

One of the key challenges of the stadium concept was the site challenges both spatially and the safety concerns for such a facility over a railyard that also contains hazardous goods. With Kerfoot and his partners announcing their intention to sell the Whitecaps this month, the revival of such a proposal is now even more unlikely.

Following the previous failed proposals for the site, planning for the long-term redevelopment of the railyard has come full circle, including the possibility of a major convention centre expansion integrated into a wide range of mixed uses for this specific location.

In recent years, three prominent international architectural firms — Perkins&Will, Farrells, and Civitas Studio — have each separately created unsolicited visions for the area to inspire planning discussions and spark public dialogue about the site’s future potential.

The convention centre is one of the largest drivers of tourism in BC and a major economic engine for downtown Vancouver, with visitors contributing to the city centre’s economy through spending on retail, dining, hotels, entertainment, and services.

According to Pavco’s latest annual report, for the 2023/2024 fiscal year, events held at the Vancouver Convention Centre attracted 484,000 delegate days from visitors outside Metro Vancouver and 371,000 delegate days from visitors outside BC. These convention centre delegates generated a total of $688 million in local economic spinoffs over the fiscal year, including $371 million from visitor spending outside Metro Vancouver and $317 million from visitor spending outside the province.

Over the coming years, the Vancouver Convention Centre will host some of its largest and most high-profile conferences and conventions.

In May 2025, the Vancouver Convention Centre will host the inaugural annual Web Summit tech conference in Vancouver, previously known as the Collision Conference, relocated from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which is Canada’s largest convention centre. As many as 40,000 attendees from around the world are expected for Web Summit 2025, with Destination Vancouver expecting over $93 million in economic benefits for the conference’s first year in the city.

Then, in July 2025, the convention centre and BC Place Stadium will jointly host the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 2025 International Convention. Over 50,000 delegates are expected from around the world for the first AA International Convention since before the pandemic, and it’ll also be Vancouver’s largest convention ever in terms of attendance.

Vancouver Convention Center is now facing growing competition from newer and larger facilities, including the 2023-built Summit building that substantially expanded the Seattle Convention Center and the 2024-built BMO Centre at Stampede Park in Calgary, which has now claimed the title of Western Canada’s largest convention centre from Vancouver.

However, tourism officials and industry stakeholders are also increasingly raising concerns over the ability to attract larger meetings, conferences, and conventions due to Metro Vancouver’s growing hotel room shortage.

Destination Vancouver estimates there is a need for 20,000 additional hotel rooms in Metro Vancouver over the coming decades, including 10,000 rooms within Vancouver. These figures were also made well before the provincial government’s new policies restricting short-term rentals like Airbnb. An acute hotel room shortage is anticipated to begin in 2026, worsening progressively each year unless significant additions to the hotel supply are made. Vancouver’s hotel rates are already among the highest in Canada due to demand outpacing supply, and rates are expected to rise further, potentially making the city less competitive in attracting events.

Currently, there are about 23,000 hotel rooms across Metro Vancouver, with about 13,000 of this supply located across the city of Vancouver (mostly located within the downtown Vancouver peninsula). In contrast, there are 26,000 hotel rooms within Montreal Island alone (including 16,000 in downtown Montreal) and over 44,000 hotel rooms in the Greater Toronto area (including about 17,000 in downtown Toronto).

However, since hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver’s hotel room capacity has actually decreased from the closure of older hotels for conversion or redevelopment into residential uses. Early on in the pandemic, all three levels of government acquired lower-end hotels to convert them into supportive housing.

The municipal government recently rolled out various policies intended to help catalyze more hotel developments, including near-future SkyTrain stations within the Broadway Plan area.

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