It was a dark and stormy morning when a handful of journalists and the head of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada boarded a Helijet flight in November 2006 for the launch of Bayview, a 20-acre master-planned development in the Songhees district on Victoria’s Inner Harbour. A venture of Calgary developer Ken Mariash, the gala launch for the project attracted the likes of former premiers Brian Tobin of Newfoundland, Mike Harris of Ontario and John Buchanan of Nova Scotia.
Today, on the other side of the 2008 financial crisis and with the participation of developers such as Bosa Properties Inc., Mariash’s Focus Equities Inc. is forging ahead with the company’s massive makeover of the former industrial site. Project value is pegged at $1 billion, with 10 to 12 buildings on completion.
Mariash himself has seen two towers of 10 and 26 storeys through to completion, while Focus partnered with Bosa on an additional two towers set to be completed next year. The four buildings have a total of 450 residential units.
Recently, Element Lifestyle Retirement Inc. bought two acres from Focus where it will build a five-storey building with 155 units including 50 condos, 70 rental suites and 35 licensed care units. Element targets completion for 2020. The project is the company’s third, after similar developments in Vancouver and Langley.
“Tenacity” is the word Mariash uses to describe his pluck in seeing through the project, which he began investigating in the mid-1990s. Civic opposition to the form of development created hurdles, and the financial crisis added to delays and holding costs. While it hasn’t been easy, Mariash isn’t one to back down.
“The project’s going very well,” he said last week. “It’s high quality; we haven’t given in on anything in particular.”
While the tag line on the lavish marketing materials produced in 2006 proclaimed “true luxury need not boast,” Mariash said residents in the project include millennials just starting their careers as well as seniors who have downsized from detached homes. The mix of units makes the project work.
“They love it,” he said.
Still significant
An exchange with Vancouver staff last week elicited the fascinating nugget that detached houses represent more than 40% of new development (by square footage) in Vancouver.
While this surely includes renovations that aren’t part of the official housing starts Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) reports, a glance at CMHC’s numbers provides some context for the city’s data point.
According to CMHC, 9,320 multi-family, row, semi-
detached and detached housing starts occurred in Vancouver in 2016. Of these, 1,280 were detached units – 13.7% of the total.
While the size of apartment units shrinks in the name of affordability, it’s clear that owners of detached dwellings can afford a share of floor space out of proportion to their share of starts.
Data gaps
Key tools analysts, journalists and others use to gauge the real estate activity in the province continue to languish in the wake of this year’s provincial election.
The blackout on disseminating information during the election campaign for fear the data could have political ramifications means that the latest issue of the province’s major projects inventory provides information on projects only through 2016’s last quarter. The inventory is prepared by the B.C. Ministry of Jobs, Trade and Technology.
Similarly, the B.C. Ministry of Finance’s much publicized effort to track data on real estate transactions in the province effectively ended March 23, 2017, the last time new information was published (a modification to the data file was made June 28, according to tags attached to the data).
While delays are attendant on any transition, government owes taxpayers timely information in keeping with its commitments and the work that staff must surely have been doing even if they couldn’t speak about it.
