Real-estate expert warns rates may hit record levels by Olympics
Susan Lazaruk
Province
Realtor Bob Laurie says downtown Vancouver is being ‘taken over by residential real estate.’
A shortage of new office space in downtown Vancouver will drive rental prices to record heights by the time of the 2010 Olympics, a real-estate developer told the Vancouver Board of Trade yesterday.
“In the next five years, we’re going to see record-setting rental rates that we’re not used to seeing in this area,” said Norm Taylor, who specializes in office leasing for Colliers International.
He told the forum on the future of downtown Vancouver that there are no buildings, now or planned, that could provide a large corporation with continuous office space.
The only new office tower, Phase II of the Bentall 5 office building now in construction, is already 95-per-cent pre-leased, said Taylor.
He said the shortage coincides with a trend by corporations to move headquarters downtown to make jobs more attractive to employees who commute by mass transit.
At the same time, residential construction downtown has boomed to the point that the city has put a stop to more condo projects.
The forum also heard that jobs are growing faster in other cities in the Lower Mainland, particularly in communities south of the Fraser River, where already 30 per cent of the population lives.
The downtown Vancouver condo boom has raised fears of the “Whistlerization” of Vancouver, but senior city planner Ronda Howard said growth and diversity of jobs in what she called Vancouver’s “metro core,” which includes Vancouver’s east side, shows that isn’t a concern.
Jobs increased in the core since 1971 in professional/commercial services and in health/education/public administration, while decreasing in retail and industrial.
The fastest-growing sectors were computer services, law offices, accountants, education and training, arts and entertainment and personal services (such as laundry services and photofinishing), a city study found.
“Some are worrying that we are going to become a resort city but this shows a diversity,” said Howard.
The study shows the city maintains a higher share of the region’s jobs (34 per cent) than of the region’s population (27 per cent).
Realtor Bob Laurie said downtown Vancouver is being “taken over by residential real estate.”
Taylor said residential development has a higher rate of return because people will pay more to live in high-rise buildings than businesses will to use them.
The panel agreed the trend downtown is toward mixed-use residential/commercial buildings, such as the Shaw Tower in Coal Harbour.
© The Vancouver Province 2006