Tall & Urban News

During a public hearing in early October 2020, Vancouver City Council will deliberate on Westbank’s rezoning application to build a residential tower at 5055 Joyce Street—the redevelopment of the YMCA building immediately north of SkyTrain’s Joyce-Collingwood Station, at the northwest corner of the intersection of Joyce Street and Vanness Avenue.

There have been major revisions to the proposal, designed by the Vancouver office of Perkins & Will, since it was first proposed in Fall 2018.

Instead of 298 condominium homes, the tower will contain all rental homes, entailing 360 secured rental homes and a single floor of below-market rental housing at 20 percent below the average Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation rents for the neighborhood. The unit mix as a rental tower is 15 studio units, 217 one-bedrom units, 93 two-bedroom units, and 35 three-bedroom units.

The podium is now 20 feet (6 meters) narrower, after the northernmost portion of the building footprint was shaved to create a new east-west laneway. The blank wall of the adjacent existing building to the north will be improved as a green wall.

Four additional floors have been squeezed into the building, increasing from 32 floors in the original proposal to 36 floors in the reconfiguration for rentals. This is accomplished by lowering the ceiling heights of every floor, and a minor overall tower height increase from 305 feet (93 meters) to 315.3 feet (96 meters).

The loss of ground level retail floor area from the narrowed building width has been partially offset by a significantly smaller residential lobby. Instead of 5,080 square feet (472 square meters) of retail, there is now 4,523 square feet (420 square meters) of retail, but the length of storefront has increased by 34 percent.

A new landscaped public plaza has been designed for the south side of the tower, which will offer patio opportunities to the businesses. 

The original proposal called for six underground levels with 197 vehicle parking stalls and 533 bike parking spaces. The revised application is drastically different in this regard, with four underground levels accommodating 103 vehicle parking stalls and 727 bike parking spaces. 

As for the tower’s architectural concept, the revised design remains true to the original application, with an industrious appearance from the distinct bronze color and an exterior structural system of scaffolding-like private patios that, along with planters, provide the tower’s façades with a distinct rhythm.

Westbank acquired the three story property from YMCA in 2017 in a deal worth CAD$55 million (US$41.3 million).

For more on this story, go to Vancouver Urbanized.