Oxford Properties Group today announced that it will proceed with a 35-storey, 270,000- square-foot office tower at 1021 West Hastings Street.
“Our building has been designed by Kohn Pederson Fox; they’re an absolutely world-class architectural firm and Vancouver has such a great urban landscape, we just think this is a great opportunity for us to participate and contribute to that with a building,” said David Routledge, vice-president, Real Estate Management – West, for Oxford.
“So we’re very, very excited to be going ahead.”
Routledge said shovels are expected to be in the ground within months.
“We have our development permit in place, which is really the key next step for us to advance our plans and get shovels in the ground and we anticipate that happening in Q3 of this year and finishing our building in 2014 in the summer,” he said.
According to the company, the new building, at the site of the University and Quadra clubs, will retain the “historic club façade” but gain a modern new entrance and landscaped public space to “build a bridge between the new and the old.”
Routledge said the next big step for the company is to take the building to market to pre-lease it, building on “a really good response” thus far to pre-leasing efforts.
“We’ll have a very thoughtful, deliberate push forward [to pre-lease] over the balance of this year and, as is customary with these projects, it takes a period of time to get them leased and we’ll be pushing forward over the next three years until we’re done.”
Jenny Wagler
Twitter: JennyWagler_BIV