Forward-looking
There’s a story behind every sale, and in the case of 501 Dunsmuir Street – which Reliance Properties Ltd. recently purchased – the best part of the tale may be yet to come.
The two-storey property, home to eateries and private learning centres at Dunsmuir and Richards streets, underwhelms in many regards: kitty-corner to Holy Rosary Cathedral and opposite the old Dunsmuir Hotel (more recently a former Salvation Army residence, student hostel, and shelter), it’s dwarfed by its neighbours.
Reliance Properties president Jon Stovell thinks it’s a giant opportunity.
“It’s a very well located downtown property – good transit connections, good area of the city,” Stovell said. “We, of course, will be looking to do a significant development there sometime in the future.”
Two factors are setting the pace for Reliance’s plans.
On the one hand, the city is shifting east – something Bob Rennie proclaimed to the Urban Development Institute a dozen years ago and that is even more true today as plans to remove the viaducts take shape.
“We see all the shift eastward with the removal of the viaducts, the development of the Larwill Park site and all that kind of stuff – it’s just a good part of the downtown,” Stovell said.
On another hand, the city’s desire to add housing prompts Stovell to wonder if, or when, council will once more allow residential development in the downtown core.
Council imposed a moratorium on the conversion of downtown commercial sites to residential in May 2004 – neatly timed with Rennie’s proclamation that the city had nowhere to develop but east – and subsequently tweaked the exclusion zone for downtown residential development.
Now, with office development booming enough for Mayor Gregor Robertson to crow last August that the city had seen 3.6 million square feet of office construction since 2009 and could boast “a record-breaking 4.5 million square feet of new office space under development” (even if some of those projects were mere applications), Stovell wonders if council may once again welcome residential development on select downtown sites.
A residential development is part of the Telus Garden development, and Stovell expects a relaxation for the Canada Post site in the 300-block of West Georgia.
“The city seems to be at least considering situations where, if the commercial density that goes with the site is achieved, … residential density over and above that can be considered,” he said. •
