Francis Bula
Sun
The Woodward’s project: Is 1.1 million square feet in size. Will cost $280 million. Will include 200 social-housing units, 500 condo units, urban plazas, an SFU arts school and commercial space. Faces a shortfall of $32 million.
Vancouver’s most ambitious urban-renewal project ever — the development of the former Woodward’s department store in the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside — is coming to council for final approval Tuesday, a year after the bid from a private developer was okayed.
The project is now 50 per cent bigger, at 1.1 million square feet, with a total price tag of $280 million, and a $32-million shortfall largely caused by the rising construction costs that are hitting hard everywhere.
Along the way, it has also gone through an extensive redesign process that will now see the project incorporate 200, instead of 100, social-housing units, add two new lots to the west, build two towers on the site instead of one, and include several urban plazas, along with the already-planned 500 condo units, SFU School for Contemporary Arts, commercial space, daycare space, and offices for non-profit organizations.
Woodward’s project manager Mike Flanigan warns in his report to council that the development “remains a complicated challenge in an environment of consistent and unprecedented construction cost escalation.”
Just over $22 million of the $32-million shortfall comes from the increased construction cost for the social housing and child-care space. As well, there are added costs for hazardous-waste clean-up that have appeared in the last year. The city is also stuck with costs for some infrastructure work.
Flanigan’s report says that staff thought the developer should have paid those costs, which Westbank Projects/Peterson Investment hadn’t included in its original bid.
But, he wrote, “it is the Woodward’s steering committee conclusion that the [shortfall] challenges are all of the project partners’ problems to solve collectively in order to move forward and achieve the public benefits council has envisioned.”
The provincial and federal governments have each committed $7 million more to cover the social-housing costs. Developer Westbank/Peterson has also agreed to put in $5 million. That leaves $13 million to be covered by the city.
Coun. Jim Green, who has worked for 20 years as a housing advocate, provincial government bureaucrat and city politician to redevelop Woodward’s, said the report brings together all of the complicated partnership arrangements for the building.
“If council approves this, we will know exactly what we are doing.”
Green also praised the partnership work that went into the project.
“This has worked so well — the free market, the unions, the non-profits, the developers, the city.”
The SFU board of governors still has to give its final approval for the 120,000-square-foot School of Contemporary Arts at a Sept. 29 meeting.
The city bought the site from the provincial government for $5 million shortly after the Coalition of Progressive Electors came into power in 2002. It will be selling the site to Westbank/Peterson for $6.3 million. It will get back a 31,000-square-foot space for city use.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005