Emerald: Developer has permission for three, plans to install a garden instead
Province
The Emerald is the Fifth development in Richmond in a quarter of a century by the Liu family of Singapore. — SUBMITTED PHOTO
The Emerald developer has specified a Maytag stainless-steel appliance package for the homes. Engineered quartz will top counters.
Bath and shower will be separated in the ensuites. Tile will be oversized.
The Facts
What: 227 apartments and townhouses, 2 towers
WHERE: Richmond
SIZE: from 527 sq. ft.
PRICES: from $293,000
TELEPHONE: 604-244-8338
EMAIL: emerald6888@telus. net
WEB: emeraldrichmond. com
All involved in the Emerald development in Richmond are treating it in a manner becoming a master jeweller preparing a setting for a gemstone.
What’s absent is one source of the comparison. City hall gave the developer permission to build three towers, but the developer is only building two towers and installing a garden where the third tower could have risen.
The Bennett Group’s Liu Shek Yuen is treating the garden as a potential contributor to property appreciation in the years ahead.
“Properties surrounding Central Park in Manhattan and Hyde Park in London are always in demand,” Liu Yuen says.
“We wanted to create our own park within the Emerald.”
What’s present, or will be present, is another source of the comparison.
An Emerald home, inside and outside, will profess an Asian-Pacific look and feel.
“To some extent British Columbia is an Asian transplant as a culture, [firstly] because of the first nations who crossed over from Asia,” says the Emerald architect, Richard Iredale.
“There is that reverence for nature in both cultures. It’s a cultural continuum from Asia to the West Coast.
“It’s a sense of respect and delight in natural materials.”
The high-rises, he hopes, will remind residents and passersby of two trees, getting thinner and thinner the higher they go.
” … they start very strong with these kind of pier elements interspersed with glass, and then as you move up the piers sort of stop and the glass gets wider and [it looks like] the thinning out of the branches until you get to the roof. The roof is like this canopy of foliage floating overtop of the trunks.”
The Emerald is the Liu family’s fifth development in Richmond in a quarter of a century.
“We have been in love with Richmond from our very first project here, in 1984,” Liu Shek Yuen says.
Liu and his wife, Emily, were on a world tour when they discovered Richmond.
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