Megaproject may lead to tallest building outside Vancouver's core

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A proposed megaproject could become home to the tallest building outside Vancouver's downtown core. And that building would be among the widest - 250 feet at some points - seen anywhere in this city where the slim tower reigns.

Those two facts are raising concerns about the development project at the city's Canada Line station at Marine Drive in the sometimes forgotten south Vancouver neighbourhood of Marpole.

Until recently, the PCI Group's Marine Gateway project had been viewed by many as an exciting new entryway to the city. Supporters saw it as bringing a cluster of offices and condos to a Canada Line station and new shopping to an underserved neighbourhood of mainly single-family homes mixed with some social housing and private apartments.

But the project design that has evolved dramatically in the past year - a design that is going to get a preliminary review from the city's urban design panel Wednesday - has taken many aback.

Local resident Jo-Anne Pringle was startled to find out two weeks ago that the project - originally planned as two smaller residential towers in a retail-office complex - had turned into one extremely large tower and a much smaller office building in a project the size of the Woodward's complex in downtown Vancouver. The design, by noted Vancouver architect Peter Busby, is striking, with big, rectangular boxes piled on top of each other in steps for the main tower.

"The height and design of the building are being billed as 'bold,' but quite honestly, both are ridiculous," Ms. Pringle said. That kind of reaction is starting to ripple through the community, albeit slowly. Marpole, dominated by immigrant and modest-income households, hasn't traditionally been as militant or organized as other Vancouver neighbourhoods. But an anonymous flyer that's being distributed to local residents, along with gradual word-of-mouth, is having an impact.

That's not surprising, said the director of the Marpole Business Improvement Association, because the size of the main tower in the project is so big.

"It's huge. It will take a lot of getting used to standing next to a 40-storey building around here," said Claudia Laroye. Last year, her association's board supported an initial vote at council to allow a mixed-use project on a piece of the city's scarce industrial land, saying it would bring new development and it was environmentally smart to put offices and condos next to one of the city's new transit stations.

Even the city's planning director said the project is raising more challenging issues than the norm.

"How big is too big?" is the question Brent Toderian said he is planning to ask the design panel, as the city faces demand to add more density at all of its Canada Line stations, not just the one at Marine where PCI is building.

Mr. Toderian, like many planners in North America, wants to encourage what's called transit-oriented development. But he said he'll be looking for advice on what the limits are when it comes to putting density around transit stations that are also in low-density neighbourhoods.

PCI's CEO Andrew Grant, who started developing Marine Gateway more than two years ago, said he doesn't see his project as the kind that should necessarily be built everywhere.

"It's a unique site," Mr. Grant said. Some of the constraints of the site - a waste-transfer station on one side, the Canada Line on the other - forced the tower to be pushed higher.

But, he said, the project, which will include office space with very large floor plates, will give the city the chance to retain businesses that might have gone out to Burnaby, Surrey or Richmond. And it will add 5,000 people a day to the Canada Line ridership.

Those arguments aren't appeasing the critics, especially because they also feel like they were misled.

Notifications about the project only went to a relatively small two-block radius. And pictures of the project on boards at the site continued to feature the design with the two smaller towers until recently.

That wasn't cricket, Ms. Pringle said, who runs a bookkeeping business from the Marpole home where she's lived for five years.

"Given the enormity of the residential tower proposed, one would hope the city would recognize that a much larger notification area would be fair," she said. "If developed as proposed, this project would have an impact on more than just a two-block radius."

Special to The Globe and Mail