The Wesbrook is also the first highrise in growing south-campus neighbourhood
Michael Sasges
Sun
In the Wesbrook kitchens and… Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
…bathrooms the cabinetry is Italian, the counters quartz, marble or limestone and the floors, porcelain tile (kitchens) and limestone or marble (bathrooms, and heated). The developer has installed mostly German appliances in the kitchens. Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
Lily Korstanje, the organizer of the Wesbrook sales and marketing campaign, walks (below left) on the stairs connecting the penthouse and its roof-top patio. The marketing of the Wesbrook is another signal of recovery in the local real estate market. Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
Last year at this time, Korstanje reports, developers closed down at least eight sales and marketing campaigns Magnum was organizing. Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
A grocery store, like a residential lobby, is rarely news. But the first grocery store on the University of B.C. campus recently opened across the street from the Wesbrook new-home project. Until this summer, UBC households had to leave campus to do their grocery shopping. Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
THE WESBROOK
Project location: 16th and Wesbrook Mall, University of B.C.
Project size: 65 apartments and townhouses, 17-storey tower
Residence size: 2 bed, 1,640 sq. ft.; 2 bed + den, 1,910 sq. ft; 3 bed + den, 1,910 sq. ft.; townhouses, 2,400 sq. ft.
Prices: apartments, $1.47 million – $1.84 million; townhouses, $2.22 million
Sales centre: 107 – 5838 Berton, UBC
Hours: noon – 5 p.m., Sat – Thur.
Telephone: 604-224-8878
Web: thewesbrook.com
Developer: ASPAC
Architect: MCM
Occupancy: immediately
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I cannot say the Wesbrook is an economics textbook definition of luxury. (I do not understand income elasticity.) I can, however, tell you the homes are ready for occupancy, a luxury; they are spacious, a luxury; and they make the most of an exquisite site, a luxury.
The Wesbrook is not the first new-home project in the south-campus neighbourhood of the University of B.C. But it is the first highrise.
Put another way, the Wesbrook is the first new-home project in the south-campus neighbourhood to robustly acknowledge the mountain-and-water outlooks. All the apartments are view homes and all are corner homes.
On each of floors three through 14 are four homes; on floor 15, three; on floor 16, one; and on the top floor, one, with a roof-top patio.
In other words, 48 apartments have two exterior walls of glazing with which to admit natural light and breezes, and from which residents can take in the outlooks. One has three exterior walls, and two have four.
If the highrise isn’t a pencil of iron and concrete, a four-to-floor configuration makes for bigger apartments.
The smallest Wesbrook apartment is a 1,600-square-foot residence. The largest apartments in the most recent new-construction highrise residences profiled by Westcoast Homes are, in one, 950 square feet and, in the other, 885 square feet.
The bigger-home status of the Wesbrook apartments also says that they were built for a purchaser, local and foreign,
whose residential needs are different from purchasers who pioneered the insertion of residential neighbourhoods on campus.
“In the past, UBC was looked at, by buyers, as a transient spot, to park their children, to study …” says Lily Korstanje of Magnum Projects, organizer of the Wesbrook sales and marketing campaign.
“After four years, they might go the States to do their masters. It is not known as a place where ‘imported’ people would make their homes.
“So they would buy smaller units, one bedroom, two bedroom, 800 square feet. But as they got to know this area, they liked it: they want to work here; they want to stay here. They’re coming from campus, they’re looking for larger spaces, because they want to stay.”
The local prospect is a west-side Vancouver property-owner.
“Those people are used to 2,000 square feet, if not more. Where are they going to put their dining table and hutch? They’re looking for a larger space.”
They may not necessarily be looking for an environmentally friendly space, but they will reside in one.
The building was designed and built to standards developed for the local climate by the University of B.C.’s Residential Environmental Assessment Program.
Lastly, Wesbrook purchasers will buy a finished home. Building and grounds are not artist’s renderings. The homes are neither renderings nor floor plans. Their doors can be opened and closed; the floors can be walked; the appliances tested; the walls tapped; the views seen.
Some of them were sold before or during construction and are occupied. Most of them, however, are unsold and unoccupied.
“So, often you go into a project and what is represented is totally day and night. It happens,” says Korstanje, who, with brother George Wong, is a pioneer of the sale and purchase of a home before construction, a business model the international financial crisis shattered last September.
The first Wesbrook homes to be sold were from a sales centre in Coal Harbour, a location that reflects the Wesbrook developer’s history locally. ASPAC is the lead developer in the transformation, now mostly completed, of industrial Coal Harbour into a residential neighbourhood.
“A show home in the Guinness Tower wasn’t really the most relevant exposure,” Korstanje says.
“Eventually, it was decided it’s best to have people touch and feel the homes when they’re done. The product is so different.'”
That is why, of course, a Wesbrook address is a luxury address: It is different because four attractions of a new home — location, spaciousness, green content and ready occupancy — are all present. They rarely are. And rarity is a component of luxury.
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