Ledingham McAllister apartments profess recovery sensibility
Michael Sasges
Sun
At the Memento new-home project in Burnaby, there is a ‘front yard’ (left) and a ‘back yard’ (right). The former is shared by the north-facing first-floor households and is ‘around the corner’ from the building entrance. Each patch of individual lawn has been fenced off. Developer Ward McAllister wanted an entry to the building that would differentiate Memento from earlier Ledingham McAllister residential buildings across the street. Stone piers, timberwork and a water feature will all tell Memento residents and visitors they’ve arrived. The knee-braces (below) broadcast the roof’s generous overhang; the railings, the outdoor extension of residency.
The Ledinghom Mcallister development company is selling the Memento homes from two show homes, one larger, one smaller. Sun photographer Stuart Davis shot the larger, a two-bed, two-bath 805 square foot apartment, with south facing covered patio.
MEMENTO
Project location: Brentwood, Burnaby
Project size: 87 residences, 4-storey building
Residence size: 1 bed + den (687 sq. ft. – 705 sq. ft.); 2 bed (797 sq. ft. – 807 sq. ft.); 2 bed + den (872 sq. ft. – 915 sq. ft.)
Prices: From $269,900
Sales centre: 2088 Beta St., at Lougheed
Hours: noon – 6 p.m., Sat – Thu
Telephone: 604-298-1283
Web: ledmac.com/memento
Developer: Ledingham McAllister
Architect: Rositch Hemphill and Associates
Interior designer: i3 design
Occupancy: Immediate
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By location, in time and place, the Memento new-home project is a public memento in the making of where real estate locally has been for the past year and where it is going — or not — in the next year.
Of course it’s unreasonable to nominate a (mostly) private achievement as a public memorial to an era or epoch, this one the retreat from, and then the recovery of, one of our town’s defining activities: the construction, sale and purchase of the attached home and the subsequent densification of neighbourhoods.
But I will not be able to pass the Burnaby intersection of Lougheed and Beta in the future without thinking of the Memento sales and marketing campaign.
It is an expression, from a veteran developer, that in September 2009 the local real estate business cycle, more likely than not, is in its recovery stage and it is a demonstration of the means of recovery, modest product from a developer possessing the wherewithal — capital and human — to prepare for recovery during retreat.
• The Memento homes are not homes first offered for sale last September; pulled from the market when they generated little interest, as an international financial crisis commanded the front page and the top of the news hours, and then re-offered as government monetary decisions mitigated the evaporation of credit around the world.
• They are not newly priced homes, meaning recently reduced in price. (They, of course, are newly priced, as in recently priced.)
• They are not “remainders,” inventory not sold during a sales and marketing campaign conducted before construction or inventory returned to the developer by purchasers during construction
• They are not more-of-the-same homes, a new phase in a new-home community, a completed clubhouse or completed grounds the only other news.
They were built for the buyer who restored liquidity to the local real estate market, new and resale: the first-time buyer.
And they were built by a seller who could start and complete a new-home project from its own financial resources or with bank financing extended without a pre-sale requirement. They are ready for occupancy.
Their modesty is only relative. In every home, granite tops the counters, stainless steel clads the kitchen appliances and the backsplashes are full-height, from counter to cabinetry. And, at fewer than 90 homes, they are a small undertaking for the Ledingham McAllister development company. Across the street, the company is finishing up the Brentwood Gate new-home community of eight buildings and about 800 homes.
For Ledingham McAllister, today’s Memento grand opening is the first in 15 months, reports Manuela Mirecki, the company vice-president charged with selling the homes.
In those months, Mirecki says, the first-time buyer has improved his or her product knowledge. And that’s why, for her, a completed building is an important part of the sales and marketing campaign.
“With the market cycle that we’re starting to come out of, with things slowed down, with a lot of developers finding themselves in tough straits and purchasers finding themselves in tough straits, buyers have become much more aware, much more savvy, much more educated about what they’re purchasing.
“There is very little if any finished product that’s brand-new and that’s available right now. Any opportunity a person can actually walk through, touch, feel, eliminates guesswork. What you see is what you get.”
The Memento building and grounds will be seen daily by thousands of passersby, either in private vehicles on the Lougheed Highway or on SkyTrain carriages above the regional roadway.
Any opportunity a person can actually walk through, touch, feel, eliminates guesswork. What you see is what you get.”
The Memento building and grounds will be seen daily by thousands of passersby, either in private vehicles on the Lougheed Highway or on SkyTrain carriages above the regional roadway.
This last quality is, perhaps, why public-memento status for this new-home project is more than mere fancy. The Ledingham McAllister development company hasn’t so much erected a building as it has sculpted a very public addition to the built environment in a very public location.
“Are they more ambitious than things we have done in the past? Probably not. Are they more ambitious for first-time, entry-level product? Probably,” Manuela Mirecki says of the Memento building and grounds.
“We see this as an entry-level product, first-time buyers, but I would say a more sophisticated first-time buyer. . . . The level of finishing . . . does not speak to a bare-bones, first-time buyer. The building, in the way it has been designed so the outlooks, for the most part, are to the quiet side, the landscaping. I don’t think it reads as a first-time-buyer opportunity but that’s who we are targeting.”
At least five different claddings cover the exteriors: two different-in-colour vinyl sidings; two different board-and-batten treatments, and wood shingles.
The trim and casings at windows and corners are robust. Muntins divide the windows into “lights.”
Black ironmongery defines decks and patios and yards.
More-difficult-to-execute hipped roofs top the building. “Knee-braces” proclaim the intersection of roof and exterior walls and accentuate generous overhangs.
Ward McAllister didn’t, of course, set out to erect a permanent pointer to business-cycle retreat and recovery. In specifying the Memento architectural elements that he specified, he was only doing what other builders of “spec” homes have always done: drape the product with a pride of ownership sensibility.
This work is especially pronounced at the building’s entrance, which few passing by on the Lougheed or in a SkyTrain carriage will see.
The ceiling of the exterior portion of the entrance is a true wood soffit, of dimension lumber and in the herringbone pattern. Timber and stonework guide resident and visitor to the lobby. Water features soothe their passage. These are “sense of entry” treatments and the company means them to reference the ski lodges of Whistler.
McAllister calls the building’s architectural style West Coast. A Ledingham McAllister partner can call it anything he wants: the first predecessor company started building in Vancouver in 1905. McAllister and partner Bruce Ledingham have built and sold thousands of homes in the last 25 years.
One additional reason for the presence of so much decorative detail is the presence of the Brentwood Gate community across the street, McAllister reports. He wanted to differentiate if not the buildings, then their entrances.
“Most of our projects have got a very strong sense of entry. In this project we just wanted to differentiate it from the entrances we have across the street.”
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