DEVELOPMENT: Award-winning family firm takes on 2010 task

Ashley Ford
Province

Millennium Development Corp. hopes to begin construction of the 2010 Olympic Village in east False Creek before the end of this year.

Brothers Shahram and Peter Malek, who along with their father, Amir, run the family company, said in an interview with The Province on Friday “we put our very best foot forward for this project.

“We have been looking at this area for several years and are excited to get this opportunity,” they say.

They pledge to create a “legendary development that is inclusive and sustainable” and are anxious to get on with the job as it has to be completed by late 2009.

It will eventually contain 250 non-market-housing units and approximately 800-1,000 market-housing units.

The Maleks, who arrived here in 1981, are no stranger to Olympic-style developments, having built a 100,000-seat stadium, sports complex and village for the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran.

They joke that their first Vancouver project, the underground parkade at B.C. Place, wasn’t noticed by anyone.

The family has been in the development business for six decades and operates out of the heritage Province Building they restored at 198 West Hastings. Their father, a civil engineer, continues to play a major role in the company.

Peter is also a civil engineer and Shahram has an MBA.

They prefer to work quietly and have a solid reputation as developers who have a strong social conscience and even stronger sense of high standards and performance.

They have consistently produced excellent developments, rattling up an impressive honour roll of awards for their labours including winner of the GVRD’s Most Livable Region Award for City in the Park and most recently the Canadian Home Builders’ Association SAM award for the best multi-family housing project in Canada.

They’re paying $193 million, roughly $202 a buildable square foot, for the 2.6-hectare site, a new national land-price record.

Competitor Peter Wall, head of Wall Financial Corp., smilingly admits he underestimated the competition with his $150 million bid.

“I thought it was a bit steep but I also think it was a fair price and they will do very well. This is a great city and there is a shortage of downtown land.” And the canny Wall has acquired the whole of the 100 block on First Avenue looking over the village site for a major condo development.

Bob Rennie, of Rennie Marketing Systems, said he got the call to join the project “ten minutes after they got the approval.”

“This is an important project and you have to look at it as one that will be on Vancouver postcards for years. In other words, a legendary project for Vancouver.

“I have worked with the Maleks for over 13 years. They are extremely progressive and clearly understand working with and respecting the public good,” says Rennie.

A perfect example of their “social thinking” is L’Hermitage en Ville at Robson and Richards, he said. When a zoning/planning hurdle arose they rejigged their plans to create 47 social housing units in a project that will boast high-end condos, hotel and retail, he said.

Rennie, also involved in the Woodward’s redevelopment and the new Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel on the waterfront, does not think the land price is too high.

“Fortunately, or unfortunately, in life what is an aggressive move on Monday is the norm by Friday,” he said.

The Urban Futures Institute’s David Baxter says, “It’s going to be the newest, hippest area of the downtown. It is eventually going to be a signal development that will bring a whole new flavour to the city core.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

SHOULD BE RECORD SALE: Stunning views and, yes, sterling silver grout all included

Elaine O’Connor
Province

In Vancouver’s frothy, full-tilt real-estate market, residents are used to record-breaking price increases that force ordinary homebuyers to pay more for less.

But even high-end luxury condo buyers aren’t immune to the market’s effects: Behold, the advent of the $10 million, two-bedroom apartment.

The Presido penthouse at 2088 Barclay Street has hit the market at a scorching $9.8 million.

If offers for the two-floor, custom-designed suite come anywhere near the asking price, this hot property would smoke the city’s earlier condo records — the Two Harbour Green penthouse that sold in 2005 for $7.75 million, and the Shangri-La penthouse that went for $7.4 million the same year.

What do you get in a $10 million apartment? Well, at 4,046 square feet, the property is no Yaletown shoebox special. (Most highrise studio dwellers could live comfortably in the Presido’s closet. And the monthly maintenance fees of $1,557 are likely more than their mortgages.)

Elite buyers will be willing to pay for the privilege of living where sky, sea and Stanley Park meet, according to owner and developer Robert Quigg of The Quigg Group. That’s how he was hooked.

“I walked in and I saw the view and I thought I had to have it,” he says, standing in his glassed-in library overlooking half the city.

After Quigg bought the property two and a half years ago, he and his design team gutted it to the tune of $5-million and refitted it with decadent materials and exclusive features — there’s nary a scrap of drywall or paint in the house.

The furniture, Quigg notes, is included. And, he adds, there’s no GST. A deal, really, considering buyers of top-end condos typically pay tax on presale showhomes then drop a few million on custom-fitting.

Besides, in Vancouver’s frenzied market, this property’s far from the priciest. The home at 130 Oxley Street South in West Vancouver was assessed in 2006 at $19,118,000.

While first-time homebuyers may despair at each quarter’s stratospheric price gains, and the latest TD Bank market study reports Vancouver and Victoria are showing “signs of a bubble,” Quigg says the luxury-living market is booming with wealthy residents and jet-setters who see the city as a bargain.

“We’re the most livable city in the world, but we’re not the most expensive city,” he says. “I think there’s a real demand for quality and trophy properties.”

Amenities Galore

What’s in an apartment worth $10 million?

– 360-degree views

– 11-feet ceilings

– 2 storeys

– 10-seat hot tub with waterfall

– 5 balconies

– 2 bedrooms

– 2.5 bathrooms

– gourmet kitchen

– 900-bottle wine cabinets

– private elevator foyer

– floor-to-ceiling windows

– sunken bar

– 2 fireplaces

– media room

– lounge

– library

– private study

– 2 walk-in closets

– hidden laundry room

– outdoor kitchen

– fully wired home with monitors controlling hidden lights, speakers, security and temperature

– top finishes: heated limestone floors, limed oak paneling, stainless steel staircase, leather ceilings, bluestone patios

– custom furnishings: 2 Sub-Zero fridges, Viking outdoor range king-plus bed, plasma TV, $360,000 A/V system, goat-skin tables, sterling silver grout.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

The Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association

Sun

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PETE McMARTIN
Sun

As of Friday afternoon, they had 5,526 prospects: people so interested in buying a piece of the Woodward’s development they had registered their names, addresses and phone numbers in advance. Calls came from New York, Los Angeles, Seattle. Calls came from realtors acting on behalf of offshore buyers. Calls came from thousands of locals who — unthinkable a decade ago — now were intrigued by the idea of owning a piece of the Downtown Eastside. For sale: A total of 536 suites. Price: Anywhere from $200,000 to $600,000. Move-in date: Some time in 2009, or 16 years after Woodward’s closed its doors and the tortuous story of its redesign began. And today — Saturday, at noon — members of the public will get their first chance to preview what is being offered for sale.
   A 639-square-foot one-bedroom demonstration suite has been constructed on the 17th floor of the Shaw Tower, at 1077 West Cordova.
   It’s a sleek little thing with patterned oak floors, polished stone kitchen countertops, high-end stainless steel appliances, a tastefully appointed bathroom — the typical chi-chi finish you find in a Yaletown condo.
   The thing differentiating a Woodward’s condo from a Yaletown condo, though?
   It’s more than the address, or the local wildlife.
   It’s the high-minded idea, or the pretension, take your pick, that buying into the Woodward’s project is to take part in a social experiment. It’s an experiment that ostensibly encourages egalitarianism, of having the well-off and the not-so-well-off living together.
   At the same time, it’s a sly form of reverse marketing, of using the grittiness of the Downtown Eastside as a selling point.
   Or to put it another way, living on the edge of the Downtown Eastside is cutting edge. You’re not just buying a condo; you’re buying texture, an arty urban toughness, a commitment. As its ad campaign states:
   “This is an authentic area, not a sanitized environment. Neighbourhoods like this are rare and offer a creative mix of cutting-edge culture, heritage and character. That’s why the intelligent buyer will get in early. This is the future. This is your neighbourhood. Be bold or move to suburbia.”
   “That’s why I like to call it an intellectual property,” said Bob Rennie, the condo king marketing the Woodward’s project.
   “You have to think about what you want in living here and about being down here. It’s not like buying a condo in Yaletown, because the social housing is in place here and it’s not going anywhere. The buyers coming in
know this.”
   Unlike much of Yaletown, the Woodward’s development has a high portion of social housing units set aside — 200 apartments situated on the development’s bottom 12 floors, to be managed by the Portland Hotel Society.
   In addition to that, 100 of the 536 market units are also being offered to residents of the Downtown Eastside on a priority basis.
   You might ask who in the Downtown Eastside could afford to buy a $300,000 or $400,000 condo, but the qualifying residence area covers two postal codes — all of V6A and half of V6B. Rennie believes there are more than enough single-family residences and home owners in the area to generate sales.
   If the number of registered prospects is any indication, he could be right. Saturday’s preview, which as I wrote earlier, opens at noon today and is expected to attract about 1,500 viewers. Viewing will run until April 20.
   What follows next has the air of a radio-show call-in contest.
   On April 13, Rennie’s phone lines will open at exactly 9 a.m. and a bank of operators will take calls from interested buyers. It’s first-come first-served, and depending on the time they call in, buyers will be assigned a colour-coded wristband designating when they can come in and make an offer.
   Those residents within the Downtown Eastside postal code areas will be given priority, and then, on April 22, buyers from outside the area will be able to come in and make offers.
   “And they are eligible to buy only one unit,” Rennie said.
   “My bet is that 90 per cent of the building will be sold on the 22nd,” he said.
   A couple of years back, he said, he was not as sure.
   “Two and a half years ago, [city planner] Larry Beasley and I both spoke at the Urban Development Institute, and we both said, ‘The city’s moving east,’ as if we were soothsayers. We said there was nowhere else to go, and at that time, it was considered pioneering.
   “But that pioneering that existed 2 1 /2 years ago is not the same pioneering we are talking about now.”
   The pioneering we’re talking about now, Rennie said, is the undiscovered territory into which the Woodward’s development is about to take the Downtown Eastside. The appetite for change down there is tempered by the fear of change, which he said he understands and with which he sympathizes. He hopes the Woodward’s development will be the critical mass needed to start urban renewal but not one that completely changes the neighbourhood’s character.
   “The drug dealers? If they disappear, I could give a s—. They should have no place down there. But there should be room for a real mix of incomes and types of people.”
   That’s the question of Woodward’s. How will the well-off and the not-so-well-off get along?
   Will Woodward’s change the Downtown Eastside or not?
   In perfect illustration of that, Rennie told a story.
   “I got a call from a guy who was from L.A. and who had expressed interest in buying a unit, and he was in town walking around the [Woodward’s] building. While he was there, a woman on the sidewalk dropped her drawers in front of him. So he took a photo of her on his cellphone, sent it to me and asked:
   “ ‘Should I be worried?’ ”
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   604-605-2905
   This story can be heard online
   after 10:30 a.m. today at
   www.vancouversun.com/readaloud. THE DAILY SPECIAL LOOKS AT: A North Vancouver soccer team taking everyone by Storm

Bruce Constantineau
Sun

Toronto-based TransGlobe Property Management Services has purchased an eight-storey downtown Vancouver office building at 570 Dunsmuir Street for about $15 million — the company’s third major Lower Mainland real estate acquisition in the past nine months.

“We are actively looking to grow our B.C. presence,” TransGlobe president Daniel Drimmer said in an interview. “I really like the West Coast because it has all the right fundamentals we’re looking for now. A strong condo market puts pressure on the affordable housing market, and it’s the same thing in the office market — not too much office space available.”

The Dunsmuir property — known as the Churchill Building — was acquired from Vancouver-based Churchill II Real Estate LP, a subsidiary of Churchill International Property Corp., which bought the building for $11.19 million in December 2004. It had previously been owned by now-defunct Vancouver investment company Eron Mortgage Corp.

Drimmer said he likes the 70,000-square-foot building’s downtown site near the BCIT campus and the Granville SkyTrain station. Tenants include three educational institutions, and various retail and commercial operations.

Churchill International president Philip Langridge said his company bought the building as a long-term investment in 2004, but received an unsolicited bid from TransGlobe and negotiated an attractive selling price of about $15 million. He said Churchill bought the property under a foreclosure situation that was forced upon Eron Mortgage, which planned to renovate the building and sell it for a profit before the firm fell apart in 1997.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Bruce Constantineau
Sun

A surge in non-residential building intentions boosted the value of all building permits issued in B.C. in February by 11.2 per cent to more than $849 million, Statistics Canada reported Thursday. StatsCan said the value of non-residential permits rose by more than 20 per cent to $287 million while the value of residential permits increased by about seven per cent to $562 million.

Vancouver Regional Construction Association president Keith Sashaw said Greater Vancouver, in particular, has experienced strong growth in all aspects of non-residential construction — industrial, commercial and institutional.

“We’re seeing strength across the board, which reflects a robust economy,” he said in an interview. “Olympic projects are coming on board, there’s a big demand for industrial projects and institutions like universities and hospitals are also very busy now.”

Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association chief executive officer Peter Simpson said the slight increase in residential building permits reflects the industry’s forecast that 2006 housing starts will match or fall slightly below last year’s levels, as builders are working flat out and face trades shortages which can delay projects.

“We don’t expect huge increases this year because we’re already at full capacity,” he said. “But there won’t be dramatic drops either.”

Simpson said that despite rising housing prices, the demand for new Lower Mainland housing remains as strong as ever, noting that a standing-room-only crowd of more than 800 people attended the association’s annual first-time home buyers’ seminar in Surrey this week.

“Buyers know that prices may flatten out but they still want to get in because they feel that over time, they will do all right in this market,” he said.

Sashaw said construction is a cyclical industry so there’s bound to be a slowdown in the future.

“But I don’t see it coming for quite some time,” he said. “Look at the major projects coming down and capital spending plans and activities on architects’ boards. Everything points to a good long run and we expect 2006 and 2007 will show continuing strength.”

Sashaw recently returned from a four-day recruitment drive in Europe, where his association interviewed skilled tradespeople interested in working in the B.C. construction industry. He is going over the resumes of at least 70 workers, including bricklayers, roofers, electricians, mechanical workers and floor layers. “Believe me, there’s a lot of interest in Europe and around the world in what’s going on in B.C.,” he said.

Statistics Canada said the total value of building permits in February rose by 3.6 per cent to $5.2 billion. Non-residential permits increased by 14.4 per cent to $1.8 billion while the value of residential permits fell 1.5 per cent to $3.4 billion.

THE BIG BUILD-UP:

Sun

VANCOUVER – Vancouver city and the province are jointly spending $10 million for planning and initial construction of a new “cultural precinct” that will help highlight B.C.’s cultural institutions during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The precinct will include two areas in downtown Vancouver: a two-block area around the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and a city-owned block next door, and the Robson Square complex.

On Wednesday, the two governments chipped in $5 million each. The city will lead a planning exercise this year to look at what kinds of cultural facilities are needed. The last such inventory was done 15 years ago.

The city is undertaking a $35-million, three-year renovation of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre complex and is also considering relocating the Vancouver Art Gallery from its cramped quarters at Robson Square.

In its throne speech in February, the province also proposed a provincial Asia-Pacific Museum of Trade and Culture and a new National Gallery of Aboriginal Art, which could be built in the precinct, according to Sue Harvey, Vancouver’s managing director of cultural services.

The city-led review will be finished by the end of the year, she said. Some of the $10 million could be used for the Queen Elizabeth renovation project or for seeding construction of other cultural institutions.

In a news release, Premier Gordon Campbell linked the cultural precinct to the Olympics.

“Vancouver is home to Canada’s most vibrant artistic and cultural community — it helps define our community and it’s critical to our economy. It is Vancouver’s face to the world in 2010.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006