GWL lands tenant
GWL Realty Advisors Inc. was mum last week regarding reports it had landed an initial tenant for Vancouver Centre 2, launched earlier this year to much fanfare.
GWL has reportedly signed a deal with a U.S. technology firm for approximately 105,000 square feet of the 33-storey triple-A office tower being built at 753 Seymour Street. The deal represents nearly 30% of the 371,000-square-foot tower.
Approached for more details, Tom Sullivan, senior vice-president, asset management, Western Canada, for Toronto-based GWL, referred queries to its public relations consultant.
“GWLRA does not have any announcements to make regarding Vancouver Centre 2 tenants at this time,” replied Simone Abt, managing partner of Elettra Communications in Vancouver.
Vancouver Centre 2 is owned by Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, Great-West Life Real Estate Fund and London Life Real Estate Fund. Built on a speculative basis, it will be one of the first of the next wave of towers to be completed when it opens in 2021.
That next wave is massive, Avison Young reports, delivering 4.3 million square feet by the end of 2022. This represents a 19% increase to the existing downtown inventory.
Yet the space is coming with little room to spare. Towers announced to date have slowly but surely leased up, and strata space remains a fraction of the market.
“Tenants seeking large blocks of space will likely have few options,” Avison Young opines in its mid-year review of the Metro Vancouver office market.
Strata prices rising
September may be in sight, but when commercial real estate association NAIOP held its final breakfast of the spring in June, moderator Mark Hannah, managing partner of Nicola Crosby Real Estate in Vancouver, singled out strata office space as a niche where Vancouver is “absolutely leading-edge.”
“Despite the early successes of the Bosa Waterfront Centre and Burrard Place,” to crib from Avison Young’s latest report on the Metro Vancouver office market, its influence has largely outweighed its scale.
Hannah said that influence is mighty, however, and is playing out in areas like Mount Pleasant.
“I remember when Reliance [Properties Ltd.] was selling at $1,100 a [square] foot on Burrard, [thinking] ‘That’s an interesting number,’” Hannah said. “Now there’s a number of projects going on in Mount Pleasant, we’re involved in a few, and they’re selling for over $1,000 a [square] foot.”
One such project is the redevelopment of the 3 Vets site in the 2200 block of Yukon Street, where Chard Development Ltd. plans to construct a four-storey building totalling 54,492 square feet. The first level will be light industrial and the top three floors office space, according to a development application filed in June. Should the space fetch more than the $1,000 a square foot Hannah is seeing at his projects, it would push the per-floor price to more than $13.6 million – well above the $10 million per floor 34 West 7th Avenue, another Chard project, commanded.
The project has yet to receive a development permit, however. Development application information for the project no longer appeared to be posted on the city’s website last week.
Chard CFO Byron Chard did not respond to a request for comment regarding the project’s status.
Details released
The value of Vancouver’s largest industrial land deal in a decade is now public.
Hungerford Properties paid $90.4 million to acquire 12.5 acres on Southeast Marine Drive formerly home to an auto dealership and once slated for a Walmart encompassing 130,000 square feet with a multitude of environment-friendly design features. However, the city nixed the plans in 2005, and the property has sat idle ever since.
Colliers International reports that Hungerford plans to transform the site into a large, mixed-use commercial development within the existing I-2 light industrial zoning.
“[It] marks the beginning of the transformation of this traditionally industrial area,” Colliers stated. “The industrial development of this area will dovetail with the recent development activity of mixed-use multi-family projects in the area, such as PCI Developments’ Marine Gateway project.” •
