COSMO
Project location: Georgia and Beatty, downtown Vancouver
Project size: 253 apartments, townhouses
Residence size: studios, 455 sq. ft.; 1 bed, 531 sq. ft. - 601
sq. ft; 1 + den, 607 sq. ft. - 796 sq. ft.; 2 + den, 790 sq. ft. - 939 sq. ft.
Prices: studios, $218,800 - $258,900; 1 bed, $259,900 - $316,900;
1 bed +, $289,800 - $374,400; 2 +, $369,800 - $513,800
Sales centre: 88 Pacific Boulevard at Carrall
Hours: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily
Telephone: 604-899-8800
Web: cosmovancouver.com
Developer: Concord Pacific
Architect: James KM Cheng Architects
Interior designer: Portico Design Group
Tentative completion: Summer 2012
- - -
The inaugural Cosmo households will share a landmark address
at prices tabulated for them by Canada's largest residential developer over a
winter of economic infamy.
Cosmo is not the first downtown pre-sell resurrected this year
after withdrawal last year. That distinction belongs to Richards, from Franceso
Aquilini, owner of the Vancouver Canucks.
Almost unsellable in September when their average asking price
was just under $800 a square foot, about 170 of the almost 230 Richards homes
were sold last month, at $585 a square foot.
Like Richards, the Cosmo homes have been newly priced. The price
now is "under $600 a square foot average," Concord Pacific's Grant Murray
reports.
"Originally, when we priced this building, at the height
of the market, we were around $825," he says. "So we said, 'Okay, what
are we going to do.'"
Internally, the Concord Pacific vice-president says, his championship
of prices that were competitive with Richards prices was a challenge.
That pride of place that any property-owner must negotiate when
setting a selling price was present during the Cosmo pricing-deliberations at
Concord Pacific, even at Concord Pacific (almost 70 residential highrises over
20 years in Vancouver and Toronto) would be better: The property is remarkably
located and the eventual common areas will be commensurately appropriate.
"I said, 'Look, I'm not out to knock any another developer.
I'm excited that they took the first plunge, and have done so well, with 70 per
cent sold in 18 days.'
"To me, that was an indication that the market is really
quite active and is there. We didn't want to get greedy."
The Cosmo building will rise 23 storeys above the northeast
corner of an intersection that defines prominence in metropolitan Vancouver, Georgia
and Beatty.
More than 22,000 vehicles eastbound on Georgia pass this intersection
every day, city hall says.
Thousands of hockey and football fans pass Georgia and Beatty
on foot on their way to and from Canuck and B.C. Lion games in GM Place and BC
Place Stadium. Thousands of concert-goers pass by, again on foot, on their special
nights downtown.
"I call it [the immediate neighbourhood] 'Funtown,'"
Murray says. "It's at the forefront of the entertainment district; it's on
the upper side; it's leading into that."
The Cosmo common area that passersby will see, the building's
lobby, has been designed and will be furnished to be seen.
Furniture and furnishings will be by Armani Casa, the nine-year-old
home-furnishings foray by one of the legends of haute couture, Italian Giorgio
Armani.
Walls will be clad in laquered panels. A fireplace will be framed
by a full-height surround of marble and metal. More marble will be underfoot.
A concierge will be present 12 hours a day, his or her desk
backlit by a fabric-and-glass overlay.
"When we talked to [architect] James Cheng about the lobby,
we said, 'Let's do a lobby that says, I'm welcoming you, and would, at the same
time, be visually impressive.' This is a Georgia Street address and every time
you come down there you will look squarely into it," Murray says.
"We said when people look in here we want to showcase something
... it doesn't have to be super high end ... that would suggest elegance and warmth,
that this is a place to live, that you would enjoying living yourself, as opposed
to being just investor indicative."
The lobby will share the main floor with another common area.
Below the main floor will be yet another common area, a two-lane bowling alley,
with lounge seating, a large-screen TV and a bar.
Eleven floors above the main floor will be the outdoor common
area. The Cosmo terrace will include a hot tub, a firepit with built-in seating
and an outdoor kitchen and barbecue.
Cosmo households will also have the use of the amenities in
the next-door Spectrum towers, first of which is the indoor pool.
Spectrum is an important part of the Cosmo story. Part of the
Concord Pacific brief to architect Cheng was to distinguish the Cosmo tower from
the four Spectrum towers that he designed.
At 23 floors, the Cosmo highrise will not be as tall as the
Spectrum highrises, at 32, 30, 27 and 26 floors.
The Cosmo highrise will step upwards, the break in its ascension
occurring after 11 floors, and at the outdoor terrace; the Spectrum highrises
thrust upwards.
The Cosmo highrise will also eschew the soaring decorative columns
of red, blue and yellow, and the red railings and multi-coloured townhouse entrances,
that have made the Spectrum highrises the most colourful in the downtown peninsula.
Intersection and neighbouring residences aren't the only physical
proximities germane to Cosmo: a new neighbourhood, at city hall called Northeast
False Creek, is rising, if only on paper right now, to the east of Cosmo.
"One of the largest undeveloped areas on the downtown peninsula,"
in the words of a city hall review document, Northeast False Creek will be the
creation of negotiations between city hall, the provincial government and the
principal property owners, Concord Pacific, Francesco Aquilini (GM Place), BC
Pavilion Corp. (BC Place) and Canadian Metropolitan Properties (Plaza of Nations,
on the former Expo 86 site).
City council last year gave Pavco 1.4 million square feet of
"development potential" at the stadium site. (The Woodwards building
has almost 1.23 million square feet of floor space, not to suggest an equivalent
is about to rise above BC Place Stadium, but to provide a comparison with a building
in the news right now, as the inaugural households prepare to move in.)
Cosmo, in other words, is a Concord Pacific piece in a new-neighbourhood
puzzle.
"With another dozen buildings to go, and all centred around
the 'entertainment district,' we are at the start of our final hooray," company
vice-president Murray says.
"As the largest of the four developers in this area, we
want to make a real statement and go out with a real 'bash' over the next years.
We're going to do it right."
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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