The controversy over whether the City of Vancouver should approve a $450 million mega-casino in northeast False Creek is overshadowing other major development plans for the area.
Potential development includes:
- two Concord Pacific towers on the west side of the Cambie Bridge (5b West: see map, page 4) with a total of 543 units;
- two Concord Pacific towers on the east side of the Cambie Bridge (5b East) with a total of 420 units;
- three Aquilini Group towers with a total of 463 residential units and 187,500 square feet of new office space (7a);
- a fourth Aquilini Group tower that would be a rental building and is currently not supported by city staff (also on 7a); and
- two Paragon Gaming Corp. hotel towers adjoining the casino with a total of 647 suites (10).
Aquilini Group principal Francesco Aquilini told Business in Vancouver February 14 that he wants to build his proposed towers regardless of whether Paragon Gaming’s casino gets civic approval.
In exchange for his towers’ approval, Aquilini is proposing to partner with Canadian Metropolitan Properties (CMP) to build a $50 million practice facility for the Vancouver Canucks on land that is currently the Plaza of Nations (6b) and owned by CMP.
That complex would be available for community use most of the time and would include an arena the same size as the one at Aquilini’s nearby Rogers Arena. It would also include a sports science centre, large gymnasium and private rooms where Canucks players could take pre-game naps.
“We’re saying we’d like to build a practice facility because it will help the team,” Aquilini told BIV in January. “The city seems to be supportive of that. It’ll be a fantastic facility. Most National Hockey League teams have it.
He added that he’s working through the process to secure approvals for the project.
False Creek Residents Association (FCRA) spokesman Sean Bickerton supports Aquilini’s proposal.
“The difference in approach between Aquilini-CMP and the one that Concord employs is an object lesson in how developers could work collaboratively with the community and how they can end up in an outright war with the local community,” Bickerton said.
The FCRA has an appeal with the Property Assessment Appeal Board of British Columbia because its members believe BC Assessment’s $400,000 assessed value for the Concord Pacific property (Lot 9) is far too low (see “Angry residents appeal Concord Pacific land assessment” – issue 1110; February 1-7).
City council has not yet approved Concord’s four proposed towers on land city planners call 5b West and 5b East. If council approves the towers it would agree to an arrangement between Concord and provincial Crown corporation PavCo that gives PavCo more commercial space (for the casino complex) and Concord more residential density than those land owners’ sites would normally have afforded. PavCo’s relationship with Paragon goes back to 2009 when it selected the Las Vegas-based private company as the preferred bidder to develop property west of BC Place.
Approving Concord’s proposed towers would also pave the way for a swap whereby the towers would have no social housing, but Concord would give the city two pieces of property on Hastings Street that the city could then use for social housing.
“There’s no application for [6c North and 6c South], but there’s still clarity,” city planning director Brent Toderian told BIV.
He expects Concord to propose to build residential towers and some commercial space totalling about one million square feet on that land.
“These various [northeast False Creek] proposals come together to represent a unique form of development along our waterfront,” Toderian said.
“Other parts of our waterfront have been characterized as live, work, play. We’ve characterized this more as play, work, live.”