There may be no more dismal a downtown site for eco-densification than this one. If being wedged in-between the grim concrete ramps of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts were not enough, this leftover hunk of land sits between two huge sports stadiums and a SkyTrain station, with a steep escarpment on one side, to boot. What can you do with a difficult island, adrift in a sea of brutes like these?
For its bravura architectural performance, for its tilt at the chimera of affordability, but most of all, for its artful demonstration of how marginal bits of our city can be improved by high density combos of residential with commercial, I am naming the sandwich of four condo towers with a Costco store collectively called "Spectrum" as my 'Dwelling of the Year' for 2007.
These challenges — met with fine architecture, innovative land development, and inspired engineering — are the very limits that give Concord Pacific's Spectrum its power and originality. This becomes apparent while walking through the near million square foot development with Peter Webb, the Concord Pacific executive who saw it from inception right through to occupation by new residents over the past few weeks.
"This is the largest concrete construction, the largest single housing development Vancouver has ever seen," he says matter-of-factly, as we walk behind the Beatty Street armoury onto the streets and parks set on a raised platform that continues the plate of downtown Vancouver. This place was once the dog end of EXPO 86, before it was sold first to Li Ka-shing, and now to Concord Pacific, led by chief executive Terry Hui.
This platform in the air is crucial to Spectrum's success. Up top, it provides a townhouse-ringed seamless extension of the streets of downtown itself, reminding me of reclaimed harbour lands in Hong Kong that instantly become an integral part of the city.
On December 11, the Vancouver Art Gallery announced they will build their new gallery right across Beatty Street, and what is likely to be a "starchitect"-designed extravaganza there may well match Spectrum's near $250-million cost.
What to put below Spectrum's city-extending plate was the real problem, as towering neighbours on its flanks and a resulting lack of light and air meant housing could not be put below the level of the viaduct roadways. For Concord Pacific, it meant two full city blocks, six storeys high, before getting to a level where housing was even an option.
The notion of a big box retail store going underneath the deck and residential zone came quickly to Mr. Webb and colleagues, but landing a deal took years of negotiation with potential retail partners and downtown planners. In the end it was Costco that took up the challenge, all the more impressive because the company had never previously done a downtown store, much less one with four enormous condo towers growing out of its roof.
Putting the four tall towers over the high-stacked shelves of this airy warehouse store, not to mention six site-wide trays of parking for shoppers and residents, took some slight-of-hand by Spectrum's structural engineers, Jones Kwong Kishi. In order to accommodate Costo's loading docks and the arrival and unloading of up to five tractor-trailers at once, one of the four residential towers has to be supported on expensive transfer beams, its entire weight shifted to open up a clear zone below for deliveries.
Just as difficult was Costco's insistence on SUV-friendly, extra-wide parking stalls for its customers, meaning the pattern of support columns for their garage did not match the column pattern and spacing of the narrower slots for Spectrum residents above. That resulted in yet more expensive transfer beams. All of this added up, according to Mr. Webb: "We had $20-million of sunk infrastructure costs before even starting to build the income-generating spaces of store and apartments."
