Four towers up to 35 storeys with rental homes and a hotel eyed for pit next to SkyTrain’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station

Local developer Onni Group has ambitious revised plans for its big watery hole in the ground at the northwest corner of the intersection of Thornton Street and East 1st Avenue.

Site excavation at 2.5-acre vacant industrial lot of 399 East 1st Avenue first began over five years ago for Onni’s previous development concept of four mixed-use buildings, ranging between seven storeys and 15 storeys.

When Daily Hive Urbanized last wrote about this previous concept in 2016, it included 220 live-work homes, 199 hotel rooms, 80,000 sq ft office space, 45,000 sq ft of ground-level retail/restaurant uses, and an 86,000 sq ft underground warehouse on level P5 — below the underground parking. These buildings, designed by IBI Group (now known as Arcadis), would be oriented around a large public plaza.

The previous concept was created long before the provincial government officially confirmed its commitment to the project of building SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension.

Fast forward to 2024, the SkyTrain extension is not only confirmed, but overall construction work has now passed the halfway mark, with the extension reaching Arbutus scheduled to open in 2026.

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Site of 399 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, adjacent to SkyTrain’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. (Google Maps)

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Onni Group’s construction pit at 399 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Onni’s development site is located in the immediate area of the extension’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station — just northwest of the subway station’s entrance pavilion building. Over the past few years, this subway station construction site has doubled as the staging and launch area for the tunnel boring machines.

Onni is now on the verge of submitting a new rezoning application that retains the uses and spirit of its original development concept, but with significantly more density and the introduction of a major secured purpose-built rental housing market component as the project’s primary use.

Robert Vrooman, the vice president of development for Onni, told Daily Hive Urbanized today there will now be four mixed-use high-rise towers up to 35 storeys for a substantially larger project in terms of total building floor area.

“The proximity to the transit station was a big impetus for us for doing a rethink on this site and contemplating more. Additional residential density, specifically rental, is always in high demand and it seems like the right place to take advantage of that,” said Vrooman.

“With this station location confirmed, it made sense for us to take a pause [on any further excavation work] and do a rethink of the project.”

There is now also a much greater impetus for higher-density transit-oriented development and rental housing due to the provincial government’s various new policies and directions.

Furthermore, this site is within the special MCDD sub-area of the City’s Broadway Plan, which prescribes building heights of up to 35 storeys, especially for sites closest to Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, with institutional, office, industrial, cultural, residential, and retail/service uses.

Additional height and density would be considered if the projects contain institutional uses, employment spaces such as office or hotel uses, secured purpose-built rental housing or student housing, and local-serving retail and restaurant uses. Under the Broadway Plan, particularly near Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, these sites also have greater public space and public art requirements.

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Construction progress on SkyTrain’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, which doubles as the tunnel boring staging area, as of April 4, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The exact detailed design concept is still in the process of being refined for the rezoning application’s formal submission in late spring or early summer, which follows the developer’s pre-application letter of enquiry submission more than a year ago to the City of Vancouver. Onni is working with Boniface Oleksiuk Politano Architects on the reimagined concept.

Currently, there are plans for three rental housing towers and one live-work housing tower with a combined total of roughly 1,000 homes.

The lower levels of the northwest tower would also contain “The Emily Hotel” with several hundred hotel guest rooms, serving both tourists and business travellers.

An interconnected base podium for all four towers would contain about 80,000 sq ft of office space — purposefully designed for the long-term demand for unique and creative office space in the area, with the site’s adjacency to Emily Carr University of Art & Design and a growing cluster of tech- and creative-oriented office buildings along Great Northern Way.

Highly preliminary 2024 development design concept for 399 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver. (Daily Hive photo)

The vast rooftop of the base podium would serve as an amenity area for both residents and hotel guests.

Within the core of the complex at ground level would be a semi-covered atrium space over an amphitheatre-like, event-friendly plaza, with this public space and the street frontages further activated by about 35,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant uses around the perimeters. As well, a significant public art component is envisioned for this atrium area.

The design incorporates local First Nations considerations, including its place along the “cultural ribbon” along the False Creek Flats’ Great Northern Way corridor, particularly for the public art component. The corridor’s “cultural ribbon” is also an outlined prescription of the Broadway Plan.

There would be five underground parking levels, which is partly influenced by the deep excavation already performed to date for the previous development concept. But with excavation already largely complete, Vrooman says this project potentially provides Vancouver City Council with a quicker win for generating significant rental housing, without any rental housing displacement and other unintended impacts.

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Previous 2016 lower-density development concept for 399 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver. (IBI Group/Onni Group)

To the west of the site is a vacant lot currently used as an interim make-shift dog park, and to the east is PCI Developments and Low Tide Properties’ 485 Great Northern Way future project site, which is proposed to be developed into two 35-storey rental housing towers with a total of 500 homes and one 20-storey office tower with about 315,000 sq ft of office space.

The PCI/Low Tide project also includes 93,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant uses on the ground level, a large indoor “market” hall, a childcare facility for up to 93 kids, and 53,000 sq ft of open and plaza spaces, including an amphitheatre-like space fully integrated with an enhanced subway station entrance pavilion building.

In 2016, immediately south of their current pit, Onni completed the pair of five storey and seven storey buildings collectively known as Canvas, which contain 100% condominium uses with a combined total of 209 units.

And just to the north beyond Onni’s property line is one of the railyards that serve the False Creek Flats.

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Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of 485 Great Northern Way, Vancouver. (Perkins&Will/PCI Developments/Low Tide Properties)

Preliminary conceptual layout of 485 Great Northern Way, Vancouver, integrated with SkyTrain’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. (Perkins&Will/PCI Developments/Low Tide Properties)