One of Vancouver's most prominent blank spots took a crucial step toward development this week, with city hall giving a conditional approval for an office tower on the parking lot beside Waterfront Station. In the 25 years Cadillac Fairview has been trying to develop this prominent waterfront downtown parking lot, this is the closest any proposal has come to fruition, said architect James Cheng.
Conditional Approval with Significant Changes
The city's development permit board approved the preliminary development application Monday for the 22-storey building, but with significant changes. That means the building will look substantially different than the eye-catching design circulating in recent months, which started from a narrow base at ground level and widened as it went up. Aiming for a more slender tower, city hall directed the developer to reduce the floor plates of the tower's widest section by about a third.
City staff believe the amendments will result in a high-quality landmark that can proceed without interfering with the long-delayed revitalization of the central waterfront area. However, some urban experts and city councillors expressed concern about the decision.
Background of the Development
Cadillac Fairview, which owns the parking lot and adjacent Waterfront Station, has tried repeatedly to build on this site over the years. They proposed a futuristic tower that the public derisively dubbed the ice pick in 2015, and then a revised version in 2018. Those proposals met with significant backlash and never went ahead.
For their latest crack at developing the site, Cadillac Fairview enlisted one of Vancouver's most prominent architects, James Cheng, who produced a striking and controversial design he says was inspired by a maple tree.
Approval Process and Next Steps
Because the development does not require a rezoning, it does not need a decision from council. Instead, it was considered by the development board, a body of senior city staffers who review major projects. After a three-hour meeting Monday, the board unanimously approved the application.
Next, the architects will need to design a new building and return to apply for a final permit. Matt Shillito, Vancouver's director of special projects, emphasized the conditional nature of the approval: It is a conditional approval, and the word conditional needs to be emphasized and underlined because of the very significant nature of the conditions in terms of what they mean for the redesign. He noted that the conditions require a fundamental, real redesign of the form of the tower.
Site Context and Future Plans
The building is planned for the northwest corner of the parking lot, which would leave space for a public plaza as well as a planned north-south roadway that would connect Cordova Street to the waterfront. Immediately north of the parking lot is a stretch of foreshore that has languished for decades as an uninviting dead zone made up of gravel lots and railway lines.
This central waterfront between CRAB Park and Canada Place has been the subject of plenty of discussion and planning efforts for several decades now, but nothing significant has been built there since Expo 86. The lack of progress can be blamed, in part, on the complicated mix of public and private ownership. There was some optimism in 2024 that the waterfront development might finally progress, after a deal was signed by the key property owners, including the City of Vancouver, the B.C. government, Transport Canada, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, and the two major private landowners, Cadillac Fairview and the holding company of Vancouver Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot.
