Tall & Urban News

A proposal to build a 25-story rental housing high-rise as the fifth phase of a Main Alley tech campus in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant district is moving forward. The building will be constructed with a hybrid timber structure and this will be the first case study for the developer’s Net Zero Lifecycle Carbon prototype, with the design intended to be replicated.

New artistic renderings and details outlined in a newly submitted rezoning application show how “M5” or Prototype Phase 1, the name of the building, will fit into a surface parking at 2015 Main Street at the northwest corner of the intersection of Main Street and East 4th Avenue.  Glotman Simpson Consulting Engineers is the structural engineer for the project. 

Designed by Henriquez Partners Architects, the building will also be connected to Creative Energy’s district cooling system in the area, owned by Westbank. While there will be four underground levels, there will be zero vehicle parking. All underground level spaces will be dedicated to rental tenant storage uses and 377 secured bike parking spaces. Tenants seeking vehicle parking will use the available parking spaces within the adjacent future Main Alley office buildings, which have been designed with extra parking supply. This project also takes into account that it is within close walking proximity to SkyTrain’s future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr and Mount Pleasant stations.

The building will contain 210 secured rental homes, including 168 market units and 42 below-market units. The overall unit size mix is 53 studios, 84 one-bedroom units, 53 two-bedroom units, and 20 three-bedroom units. A commercial retail/restaurant space of about 353 square meters will be located within the ground level. The building's top floor will be entirely dedicated to both indoor and outdoor amenity spaces for residents. The project is being developed by Westbank Projects Corporation.

There are plans to redevelop Main Alley’s first building of M1, a two-story building, previously used as the RBC Visa Centre, and was extensively renovated in 2019 prior to its current uses as office space. Westbank has indicated it will seek to redevelop M1 in a future separate rezoning application into a 22-story building — named M6 — with a three-story base podium containing retail/restaurant uses and a fitness gym, and residential uses in the floors above.

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