Pacific Metropolis

Maybe Next Millennium

It looks as though sales of the new Millennium Water development in South East False Creek are going to start a little later than planned.

According to the following ad, the showroom opens on October 13th, rather than September 29th as originally scheduled.

Future residents probably won't be put off by the two week delay though, since only the very patient will be buying - occupancy of the units isn't possible until after the Olympics are over in 2010.

As an interesting marketing angle, if you buy a suite, Bob Rennie will tell you which Olympic athlete temporarily resided in your apartment. Even though the odds are that it'll have been some dull Norwegian curler, what the hell.

SEFC Development Update

Finishing off this week's update of major public works projects, the following pictures look at progress on the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood development (aka the Vancouver Olympic Village).

The new intertidal inlet and shoreline are starting to take shape, as is the general form of the neighbourhood.

Advertising is already up for the future Millenium Water development, although revitalisation work hasn't yet begun on the Salt Building.

However, construction of the Community Centre is already well underway (with Concord Pacific's Cooper's Quay development in the background).

SEFC Community Bunker Unveiled

When we initially heard that Arthur Erickson would be helping out with the design of the SEFC community centre, we thought to ourselves, 'it's good that we have a West Coast architect handling the design.'

But then, a smarter inner voice said to us, 'oh crap - let's hope that he doesn't go overboard with the concrete and harsh angles like he usually does, and gives us another cold fortress like they've got up at SFU.'

(click photo for a larger version)

Unfortunately, it appears as though the second voice was the more prescient one, as the SEFC community centre certainly looks a lot more like a bunker than a warm, inviting place where local residents might gather. (Unless bombs are raining down on their heads).

In addition to the ground-floor restaurant and boating facilities, the 3-storey building will also be home to a 69-space daycare centre.

In this happy place, the children will be toilet trained at gunpoint, while there will be a military-style obstacle course set up on the second floor. The little tykes will get to take daily target practice in the third-floor shooting range.

And if one of them starts crying over spilled milk, then it's 25 push-ups and a week of peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

For more information, including additional design plans and elevations, click here.

Millenium Water

The latest renderings and design plans for the post-Olympics SEFC neighbourhood are now available online.

Check out the Millenium Water website - as the project is being called - for more information.

Among the details - 620 condos will be built for this part of the SEFC neighbourhood alone, with prices ranging from $450,000 to $6 million per unit (link here to pdf).

The Vancouver Sun provides some additional background on how the vision for the site and other elements of its design came together here (link to pdf).

Some Final Notes on SEFC

In taking our final look at the SEFC and Vancouver Olympic Village developments for the next little while, we've come across a few more interesting details about the project. (Click map for a larger version).

First, the Globe and Mail recently reported (subscription required) that the New York-based architect who had been hired to design portions of the Olympic Village has been dumped. It turns out, he wanted to make the SEFC site look like a 'French classical fishing village'.

Next, it's worth noting that many of the rezoning approvals for the SEFC site require developers to allocate 25% of new residential units for families.

Developers must also build to LEED Silver standard, although the Millenium Group has committed to achieving Gold standard on the Olympic Village site.

And lastly, there's some interesting information in each of the rezoning applications regarding Olympics-related security.

Should buildings on parcels 2, 3, 4 and 7 be completed prior to 2010, residents may occupy those units, although VANOC security may erect barriers, etc. to safeguard the Olympic Village.

For those properties that look directly onto the Olympic Village site - namely parcels 5 and 6, and a portion of parcel 4 - occupancy of these buildings will not be permitted until March 12th, 2010, about two weeks after the Olympic Games are finished.

Furthermore, should the building sites still be under construction during the Olympics, all buildings will have to be locked down by January 12th 2010, and construction activity will have to cease until March 12th, 2010.

For a closer look at one of the Olympic Security clauses, link to the zoning application for parcel 5 here (lind to pdf, see pages 27-29).

Postscript: Pricetags has the full Globe and Mail story here.

SEFC Outside of the Olympic Village

According to zoning applications for SEFC properties located outside of the Vancouver Olympic Village, there are 14 proposed buildings so far, which will add at least 939 residential units (condos, live/work units and townhouses) to the neighbourhood.

Exact unit totals have not yet been provided for parcels 5 and 7 though, which means that there will probably be an additional 200 to 300 units on these properties, pushing the proposed total over 1,300 residential units.

The breakdown of each parcel is below. Please note that the links opens to pdf files.

• Parcel 2: 1 building, 13 storeys, 105 units
• Parcel 3: 1 building, 10 storeys, 90 units
• Parcel 4: 1 building, 16 storeys, 190 units
• Parcel 5: 4 buildings, 11-15 storeys
• Parcel 6: 6 buildings, 4-15 storeys, 404 units
• Parcel 7: 3 buildings, 6-13 storeys, 150+ units

Parcel 5 is being developed by Wall Financial Corp., and as part of their rezoning application, a new 250-seat studio theatre and production complex will be built for the Playhouse Theatre Company. The City would like the new Playhouse Centre to form the 'cultural anchor' of the SEFC community.

It's also interesting to note that the future 2nd Avenue/Cambie station for the Canada Line will be built just to the west of parcels 2 and 3.

Additionally, plans for the proposed streetcar call for a stop on 1st Avenue, across from the Salt Building.

Olympic Village Construction

To get a sense of how things are coming along at the Olympic Village construction site, have a look at the following pictures, which were taken during the past few weeks.

The Salt Building

View of BC Place, from the Olympic Village site

The new seawall, along the Southeast False Creek waterfront

All photos are courtesy of John Allison. He has more than 70 additional pictures of the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood available on Flickr, here.

Also worth checking out are a few videos from GVTV.ca. On the GVTV homepage, click 'Video Archives' on the left side of the page, and then scroll down to 'Southeast False Creek Update'.

This latter video (which originally aired in 2004) has several shots of the area around the Salt Building, and provides an explanation of how building heights will be staggered, going back from the water. It also describes plans for the neighbourhood's commercial centre.

There's another video entitled 'Olympic Village Construction Update' that was shot in September 2006. Our previous coverage of that one can be found here.

The Olympic Village Neighbourhood

Preliminary design plans have finally been released for the Vancouver Olympic Village, with the first four properties going before the Urban Design Panel last night. (Click picture for a larger version).

According to the City's overview of the site, the Olympic Village neighbourhood will eventually form the commercial heart of the wider SEFC community.

To achieve this plan, a central plaza will be built in front of the historic Salt Building, around which several small shops and cafes will be built at street level. The commercial centre will be anchored by a liquor store, drug store and supermarket, which will be located at parcels 6, 10 and 9, respectively.

There will also be a community centre built at parcel 11, and an elementary school built at parcel 1.

Preliminary development applications have been filed for residential and commercial construction on parcels 2, 3, 6 and 10. We've summarized the proposals below, along with links to further information, including design plans.

• Parcel 2: 2 buildings, 13 and 5 storeys; 220 units total
• Parcel 3: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 169 units total
• Parcel 6: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 99 units total
• Parcel 10: 3 buildings, 11, 5 and 4-storeys; 179 units total

It's interesting to note that building heights are staggered as they step back from the water, as required by the initial SEFC community plan. Buildings on the north side of 1st Avenue will rise to a maximum of 13 storeys, while across the street (and outside of the Olympic Village), developers have proposed buildings that rise as high as 15 and 16 storeys.

So far, minutes from the January 9th Urban Design Panel meeting have not yet been released. We'll be sure to add links to this post, once they become available.

SEFC and the Olympic Village

During the past few months, several rezoning and development permit applications for the Southeast False Creek and Vancouver Olympic Village neighbourhoods have been filed. Over the next four or five posts, we're going to take a look at what's been going on up until now.

The following map (click for a larger image) shows the entire SEFC development site, with the Olympic Village marked as parcel number 1.

The other properties on this map, numbered 2 to 7, are privately-owned parcels of land, for which developers have already submitted re-zoning applications, although in most cases, they have not yet filed development permits.

Based on our review of re-zoning and development permit applications for the entire SEFC site, including the Olympic Village, we've counted 28 proposed buildings so far, which include a total of 1646 condo units.

However, we estimate that there are actually more than 2000 condos among these proposed buildings, as the rezoning applications for SEFC parcels 5 and 7 do not provide complete unit totals.

As might be expected, the City has given priority to the Olympic Village parcels, which have begun to move through the development approval process - special meetings with the Urban Design Panel are scheduled for tomorrow, January 9th.

We'll have more details on the Olympic Village development in our next post, with additional coverage of the other SEFC properties to follow next week.

Olympic Village Update

For a look at the latest developments at the Olympic Village site, head on over to GVTV.ca to view a four-minute video update that aired on October 18th.

At present, soil remediation and the construction of roads and public parks and walkways is underway, along with the installation of underground utilities.

The video also includes some early pictures of the future inlet that will provide moorage for kayakers, as well as the separate island and intertidal inlet that will sit at the mouth of the Village's wetlands and rainwater drainage system.

So far, there hasn't been any pre-construction work done on the actual building sites, although it's scheduled to begin in January 2007, once the roads are completed.

No word yet on the final design plans either, which were due to be presented in 'early fall 2006'.

On September 20th, the Vancouver Sun reported that the developer and the City were still arguing over the design. It would seem that in an effort to emphasize the project's environmental sustainability, city planners are pushing for some rather obvious architectural statements, while the developer would prefer to take a more subtle approach. (On this issue, we're siding with the developer - let's not hit people over the head with our environmental evangelism).

There's also some concern over whether the New York-based architect chosen for the project's most prominent waterfront building will be able to meet the City's other main requirment, which is for the Olympic Village to showcase West Coast Design. On the other hand, local talent is still being used - Arthur Erickson has been tapped to design the community centre.