This new-home project was designed with a specific type of future resident in mind

Province

THE FACTS

WHAT: Cascade, 2 buildings, 9 and 10 storeys, 153 residences WHERE: Coquitlam

DEVELOPER: Liberty Homes

SIZE: 2 bed, 1,041 sq. ft. -1,468 sq. ft.; 2 bed + den, 1,187 -1,912 sq. ft. PRICES: 2-bed from $380,000; 2-bed + den from $389,000

OPEN: Sales centre at 2950 Panorama Drive; hours noon -5 p.m., daily

When Liberty Homes set out to design the residences in its Cascade project in Coquitlam, the developer had certain buyers in mind: people like Dale Lambert and his wife.

Years earlier, the couple had purchased a four-bedroom home in Coquitlam’s Hawkwood Estates area. But after their three children grew up and moved out, the pair began to explore different real estate options in Coquitlam. And when the Cascade sales centre opened last October, the empty nesters were the first to put their names on the dotted line.

Jesse Nobbs-Thiessen, Liberty Homes’ director of development and planning, says the Westwood Plateau development was designed for people like the Lamberts.

“The vast majority of our buyers are in the 45-to 65-year-old age range, mostly couples that are 55-ish. They’re downsizing from an existing family home nearby, and have some apprehension about losing space. We want them to come away thinking ‘That’s more than I thought I would get.’ “

Nobbs-Thiessen drew from Liberty Homes’ past experience in developing single-family homes in the Tri-Cities; similar dimensions were applied to the Cascade condos so that “house-sized” furniture could be used, and a spacious feeling retained.

Eighty per cent of the units have two parking spaces, an acknowledgment of the fact that people who are downsizing still often need to get to work, run errands and help with grandchildren. Liberty also made the assumption empty nesters wouldn’t need a third bedroom, so built only suites with two bedrooms or two bedrooms and a den.

Nobbs-Thiessen says some Liberty Homes’ buyers may have lived in the company’s previous offerings; younger couples may have started out in townhouses, upgraded to detached homes as their families grew, and are now moving to condos as they become couples in semi-retirement.

“Those who know Westwood Plateau love mountainside living, and they want to stay close,” he says. “They love amenities like the golf course and the proximity to Coquitlam.”

Interior designer Martie Knockaert of

Different Designs Group also considered the target market when designing the colour schemes: light or dark maple, and rift oak.

“Some like a cleaner look with more texture, while others want rich and traditional,” she says. “But overall, it’s high quality, timeless, and classic, so you don’t have to keep replacing it or updating it.”

Nobbs-Thiessen says there was no skimping on the luxury interiors; there was a recognition that consumers would want the best of the best. Counters are granite, cabinets are solid wood, appliances are stainless steel, and floors are engineered hardwood.

Cascade was originally slated to go ahead in 2005, but it was put on hold when market conditions changed. Now the concrete buildings are going up on one of the last open spaces in Westwood Plateau, and look quite different from the nearby Whistler chalet-style houses and multi-family buildings.

The development, scheduled to be ready for occupancy in the spring of 2012, is designed to take advantage of the site: it slopes 35 metres from the top, just below Panorama Drive, to the bottom, across the street from a small shopping centre that includes a grocery store and other retail services.

Cascade is repeatedly terraced: underneath, on top, and between the two buildings. The towers have been pushed to the furthest possible points left and right to keep a sense of open space, and to maintain a southward view of Mount Baker and the Fraser Valley, or north to Eagle Mountain.

About 75 per cent of the units in the first tower have been sold, units in the second tower were released for sale March 13.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Bosa’s Affinity invites you to ‘love where you live’

Claudia Kwan
Sun

AFFINITY

Project location: 2200 Douglas Rd., Burnaby

Project size: Two towers of 24 and 29 storeys with 291 units total

Residence size: Studio, 457 sq. ft.; 1-bed, 538 sq. ft.; 1-bed + den, 614 to 621 sq. ft.; 2-bed, 753 to 1,034 sq. ft.; 2-bed + den, 910 to 1,071 sq. ft., town houses, 1,138 to 1,157 sq. ft.

Prices: Studio, from $235,900; 1-bed, from $263,900; 1-bed + den, from $315,900; 2-bed, from $359,900; 2-bed + den, from $492,400; town houses, from $499,900

Developer: Bosa Development Corp.

Architect: Rafii Architects

Interior design: Cristina Oberti Interior Design Inc.

Sales centre: 5695 Lougheed Highway (and Holdom)

Hours: Noon to 5 p.m. daily, Saturday to Thursday

Telephone: 604-453-5893

Web: affinitybybosa.com

Occupancy: Fall/Winter 2012

That “proximity factor” is something project marketer Cameron McNeill of MAC Marketing Solutions is banking on with Affinity.

“Brentwood is one of the key urban areas outside of downtown Vancouver,” he says. “It has all of the elements for excellent living now, and in the future.”

McNeill lists the nearby amenities, which include parks and three SkyTrain stations. A site within walking distance has been set aside for a future school, and a small area of green space is directly behind the project.

McNeill also points out the benefits of residing in a dense mixed-use area. Casual, fine-dining restaurants are a short distance away, as is a large grocery store. Brentwood Town Centre is close, but not close enough to overtake the neighbourhood. “It’s more livable here than many other urban centres where the focal point is a mall, like (Burnaby’s) Middlegate.”

McNeill says a wide range of purchasers is responding to the afford-ability of units, with nearly 90 per cent of the units in the phase-one tower priced at under $500,000. Keeping the price threshold there minimizes the effect of the harmonized sales tax to about two per cent, since homes that cost less than $525,000 are eligible for an HST rebate. (The tax does not come into affect until July 1, but pre-sale contracts signed now will be subject to the HST when those homes are completed.)

A diverse collection of buyers have snapped up many of the units in Phase 1. There are recent immigrants from Korea, mainland China and Taiwan looking for homes in which to live. There are Burnaby downsizers who want to stay in the Brentwood area and find the perfect floor plan. There are also investors who are counting on the reliability of the Bosa name -they know the project will be completed -and looking at the favourable market conditions in Brentwood.

The current rental return on investment works out to about $2 per square foot, just slightly lower than that for downtown Vancouver. (There’s a low vacancy rate in the area, and a lack of one-bedroom units; this is particularly affecting couples just starting out and looking for a home further west than the Tri-Cities, before making the jump to downtown.)

The ‘wenge‘ colour scheme for the Affinity condos includes a palette of rich, chocolate laminate flooring, caramel and toast tile, and double-thick finely grained granite countertops.

‘Graphite’ is more muted and subtle, incorporating honey-toned wood and countertops with a tinge of sage.

The show suite has been done in a mix of the two colour schemes, with the soft olive walls in the den contrasting well with the glossy white accents. To show off the space’s potential, a glass tabletop has been fitted between two slim storage cabinets on one side, with the other wall covered in an open bookcase displaying knick-knacks. A sliding-glass door projects a semblance of privacy and noise-proofing.

The master bedroom has a walkthrough closet to the ensuite. The wall-hung sink and cabinet unit “float” in the space immediately before the deep soaker tub, which is surrounded by a backsplash of large-format tiles. The same rectangular porcelain tiles appear in the shower, broken up at one point by a vertical streak of skinny tile mosaic.

The kitchen is a refreshing change from the galley style sometimes seen in other buildings; in this case, the sizable granite-topped island is accessible from all sides, and includes a breakfast bar overhang that can accommodate at least three. The refrigerator and stove are conveniently located almost side by side, while the central living area works well as an entertainment space.

The suite’s open area includes a lounging spot and two dining areas, although one of those dining areas could be changed to a children’s homework space or reading nook. The second bedroom also has a walkthrough closet leading to an ensuite, shared with visitors to the home.

The building also includes a guest suite.

Sales for the phase-two tower are scheduled to begin in a month, but could start sooner because of the strong demand. Construction is expected to start in late summer or early fall of 2010, with completion in late 2012.

Cameron McNeill’s tone is downright reverential when he talks about Nat Bosa.

“The man’s a visionary,” says the president of MAC Marketing Solutions.

Over the past four decades, Bosa has led the construction of more than 20,000 condos around North America.

“Look at what he [Bosa] has done for the Belltown area of Seattle,” says McNeill. “He built half of Brentwood, he was way ahead of his time with developing the waterfront in New Westminster and Citygate (in Vancouver.)”

McNeill says that at a meeting of the Urban Development Institute, other prominent members of the development community were seen to be visibly relieved that Bosa was making a return to the Greater Vancouver market with the Affinity project, his first development in the Vancouver area in about seven years.

Bosa downplayed any sense of self-importance in a rare interview. He pointed out that his sons continued building here while he focused on projects in California.

“Basically it got a lot worse down there than anybody expected,” he says. “While we wait for that to rebound, I said ‘Let’s revisit back home for a while.'”

Bosa is 65, but shows no signs of slowing down. He’s a little battered and bruised after weathering the stormy economic conditions down south, but says he’s still biking, skiing, and enjoying life.

Bosa believes the love affair the Lower Mainland has with real estate has never faded; with a stable banking system and a level of demand sustained by immigration, it’s a place he’ll always return to.

He particularly believes in the Brentwood neighbourhood, situating the family-operated company’s head office there. “This area’s just got nowhere to go but up,” Bosa says. “The match has been struck a long time ago. Right now it’s expanding, this is not any more pioneering.”

Considering the local market conditions, he believes it will always be healthy. “We are a place that people like to live. The only time we get messed up is when the government changes. We need business friendly policies, and we can’t be in for big surprises from the government.”

Bosa agrees that he’s never been afraid to be a market leader and to enter a new area. “When I bought Citygate, people thought I was nuts.”

So what does coming back to Vancouver mean now? “Yeah, I could say it’s a vote of confidence in the Lower Mainland, because I come in, get on this project, and I start building. Obviously, I gotta have confidence, otherwise I’m losing it!”

To Bosa, the slowdown in construction has allowed the market to level off a little. The vacancy rate continues to be low, and people are continuing to move to Vancouver; Bosa sees that as an issue of supply and demand weighed heavily toward demand.

He is also discounting the potential cooling-off effects of the HST, recalling that consumers eventually got used to the GST after its introduction in 1991. “There’s no question, HST is a big cost, I don’t like it, and for a little while, you’ll see some negotiations around it. But after a while, it just becomes part of the cost of doing business or buying a home.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Jack Keating
Province

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against a high-profile Vancouver real-estate developer and author and his partners, alleging “high-handed, reckless and wanton” misrepresentation in a strata-condo development in Prince Rupert.

The suit against Ozzie Jurock, his partners David Barnes and Ralph Case and three joint-venture partners in the condos was filed in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver by close to 30 owners of the Roosevelt Apartments. Shannon Stange, who owns three units in the 45-unit building and is part of the lawsuit, said Thursday the building is in disrepair and requires at least $500,000 in repairs. The suit alleges that information on the condition of the building was withheld from purchasers in early 2007 and that the defendants maintained the building did not require “any significant maintenance repairs or capital expenses” at the time of purchase.

“The defendants made the disclosure statement representations to the representative plaintiff and the other members of the class negligently or alternatively, recklessly, not caring whether they were true or false and those representations were false, inaccurate or misleading in that the Roosevelt Apartment buildings comprising strata plan BCS2210, including the units, were not free from material defect, rather the deficiencies existed and would require a significant cost for their rectification,” the suit alleges in a 10-page statement of claim filed at the Vancouver Law Courts Wednesday.

The statement alleges the defendants’ conduct “was high-handed, reckless, wanton, entirely without care, deliberate, and in wilful disregard of the plaintiff’s rights and the rights of each class member and indifferent to the consequences” and seeks punitive damages.

“We’ll let the courts decide [the amount],” said Stange. “We know it’s going to take a minimum of $300,000, if not $500,000.” The suit alleges the defendants commissioned an engineering firm to determine the buildings’ condition but requested a “quick assessment of the condition of the buildings and grounds and specifically requested the engineer not to provide a more detailed inspection, which the engineer would otherwise normally have provided for such a property.” The field review identified a number of maintenance problems, said the statement-of-claim information that was withheld from the disclosure statement, which did not indicate it was a “quick assessment” and 18 months old by that date.

The suit alleges that the defendants’ “misrepresentations” have caused the plaintiffs to suffer “loss and damage, including the difference between the purchase price [of approximately $75,000 per unit] and the market value of the real property acquired” and “consequential expenses.”

Jurock and counsel for the defendants were unavailable for comment. However, in a recent letter sent to the plaintiffs’ counsel, lawyers for the defendants disputed the allegations.

“Please make no mistake that our clients take these allegations very seriously and will spare no expense in defending their reputations in a court of law,” wrote lawyer Alex Eged of the law firm Richards Buell Sutton on Dec. 30, 2009. “Further, be assured that our clients will doggedly pursue their wrongful accusers for all costs and expenses incurred in dealing with specious allegations.”

The defendants have two weeks to file a statement of defence.

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