VANCOUVER I They’re aimed at people moving from single family, detached homes
Michael Sasges
Sun
What’s done and what’s to do are among the displays at the Creekside sales centre. Above, the Citygate model; below right, the Creekside model, Dennis Serraglio behind it. He expects the tower will be completed in July, 2007. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
What’s done and what’s to do are among the displays at the Creekside sales centre. Above the Citygate model; below right the Creekside model Dennis Serraglio behind it. He expects the tower will be completed in July 2007. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
What’s done and what’s to do are among the displays at the Creekside sales centre. Above the Citygate model; below right the Creekside model Dennis Serraglio behind it. He expects the tower will be completed in July 2007. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
Creekside’s granite is one symbol of change over the years. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
CREEKSIDE
Location: Main at Prior, Vancouver
Presentation centre location: 106 Keefer (at Columbia), Chinatown
Hours: Noon – 5 p.m., Sat – Thu
Telephone: 604-689-5222
Web: creeksidefalsecreek.com
Project size: 23 storeys, 148 high-rise and low-rise residences and 17 townhouses
Residence size: 734 sq. ft. – 1,820 sq. ft.
Prices: From $395,000 on homes still available for sale
Developer: Bosa Development Corp.
Architect: Perkins
Warranty: National
– – –
At Creekside, the Bosa development company is going out with a bang. At more than 1,100 square feet on average, the homes are uncommonly big for high-rise homes. That makes them a worthy conclusion to the Citygate new-home community on the east shore of False Creek, across Main Street from the old CNR railway station.
Just over 1,000 homes will be located in Citygate once the Creekside buyers move in. About 2,000 people will live in the community then, city hall estimates. Almost 24,000 square feet of retail has been built along Main; a Skytrain station is located there, under the VanCity office building.
For city hall and the local development community Citygate is/was a pioneering initiative and partnership. Almost 200 of the homes are non-market or co-op homes, for example. Thornton Park, between the railway station and Main Street, is the beneficiary of Bosa money. The substance of the Creekside solicitation to new-home shoppers — “life without compromise”– is a creature of a density decision city authorities made 16 years ago.
“It created our niche in the market . . . and our owners’ [niche] in the resale market,” Bosa’s Dennis Serraglio comments of the 1,000-home limit city hall imposed on Citygate.
While developers have reduced the size of new-construction downtown-homes over the years to ensure affordability, Bosa at Citygate either has not or has not reduced as much.
“What we’re really pushing is that we’re building large livable units, units that people who are sizing down from single-family [detached] homes can easily fit into,” Serraglio says of the company’s Creekside no-compromise pledge to shoppers.
“We’ve got certain parameters for master bedrooms, for example; we make them a minimum of 14 [feet] X 13 [feet]; living rooms, dining rooms, a minimum of 24 feet by at least the 12, 13 foot width. So we’re saying don’t compromise livability to downsize.
“The market, for affordability reasons, really has had the units shrink and shrink to the point where you’re putting in your dishes sideways in a lot of these kitchens, vertically instead of horizontally.”
Construction economies of scale have guided Bosa’s solutions to the affordability challenge, Serraglio says. Every fourth apartment in the high-rise component of Creekside, for example, is a two-bedroom plan. Nineteen of them, and all their electrical and mechanical, are stacked atop each other in the northeast corner; their 17 ”mirrors,” atop each other in the southeast corner.
The history of Citygate is a chronicle of changing new-home-shopper expectations and attitudes over two decades. “It’s pretty well standard, even in the suburbs now, that granite is the countertop of choice,” Serraglio comments.
Bosa didn’t need an options manager 15 years ago to receive and execute buyer preferences. It does now, partly because of buyer expectation, partly because it is selling mostly to buyers who will occupy the homes they are buying, not rent them out to others. ” . . . we won’t move walls and plumbing stacks, but we’ll give them alternate granites and cabinets and carpet and flooring,” Serraglio says of the options manager’s work.
He says he has not experienced the same “green building” demands from buyers that other developers have reported. He expects, however, the demand to grow.
“This project went through city hall probably 2 1/2 years ago. . . . there weren’t as many guidelines back then. [But] as more guidelines come in and as more is expected of developers, the public, as they go and shop around, will come around in their expectations will come around as well. It’s still early.”
The townhouses in the Citygate community may be the most enduring symbol of changing buyer attitudes. (City hall likes townhouses and shops anchoring downtown towers, as “eyes on the street,” a preference that made Citygate an educational tool.)
“They are a lot more popular now,” Serraglio says. “When we started, when I joined the company, in 1990 the first phase [of Citygate] was under construction. The last units in Phase 1 and Phase 3 were the townhomes. We almost couldn’t give them away. The people who were moving downtown were leaving their houses. They didn’t want stairs.
What happened? “I think people just started moving into them and people came to visit and realized, they’re a good alternative to the single family [detached] home. And now they’re the most popular units. You can live downtown in almost a detached home.”
The eight Creekside townhouses on Prior Street are a real test of buyer attitudes. These are big homes, with their own two-car garages under and generous roof decks and all-window studios on top, but they face the Georgia Viaduct. Only one had been bought by last week. Most of the Creekside project, however, has been bought.
The history of Citygate is also a chronicle of price movement over two decades – and not always upward.
To induce people to buy in a then derelict area, Bosa sold the first homes “at probably a 20-per-cent discount” from the three or four other competing high-rise products on the market 15 years ago, Serraglio recalls.
He remembers the square foot average price in the early years was about $370. He also remembers it later declined to about $270 when Asia-Pacific economies slumped after the 1997 currency crisis over there. The square foot average (asking) price at Creekside is about $540, Serraglio reports.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006