Today’s Straight has this advertisement for The Regent, located at Cambie and King Edward. When big voices pound away at the declining opportunity in Vancouver to own the classic detached single-family home, complete with front and back yards and a driveway for BOTH Buicks, it seems that some are taking a different approach.
Check the demographic in this Straight ad.
The developer (Regent International), is betting on a decent location near the Cambie Village, with a broad mix of transportation options. Including a City of Vancouver bike-share docking station and free membership in onsite Modo. The building will be 6 stories, 66 units, 56,000 sq. ft. To quote the web site (theRegentVancouver.com):
The Regent has the most accessible address in the Cambie Corridor when it comes to accessing the King Edward Canada Line station for a convenient ten-minute ride to downtown Vancouver or to Richmond. Travel to UBC in under thirty minutes by bus, or in about twenty by car. As an added transit option, homeowners will have a free membership to Modo’s onsite car share program, and will have access to a docking station as part of Vancouver’s upcoming Public Bike Share System. All of this will help make life at the Regent even more convenient.
Another one bites the dust, and another one gone …(with thanks to John Deacon).
Whatever happened to?
Mike Madill
Vice President, Operations CMBC
Mike’s career in public transit started in 1991 as a Labour Relations Advisor for CMBC (then BC Transit). Since then, he has held numerous positions at CMBC, including VP, Labour Relations and VP, Regulatory and Consulting Services. In 2008, Mike was seconded to TransLink as VP, Olympic Transportation, where he led the planning and implementation of TransLink’s enterprise-wide transportation plan. Following the 2010 Games, Mike became TransLink’s VP, Enterprise Initiatives. He re-joined CMBC in 2014, where he oversees operations at all seven transit centres, Community Shuttle, HandyDART and Contracted Services. He’s also responsible for overseeing the implementation of the new Compass Card at CMBC on behalf of TransLink. Mike holds a degree in Commerce specializing in Transportation from the University of British Columbia.
Another on bites the dust.
Is anyone keeping track? How can TransLink continue to employ all of their programmes when so many top executives have bitten the dust within the past year? These people are not moving on after completing projects, they’re being shown to door.
I have to chuckle. That marketing image clearly ignores the Cambia Star development currently under construction adjacent to and extending over the King Edward Station, just across the lane from the Regent which will block perhaps half the views to the west. I wonder how many pre-sales deposits will be forsaken or cancelled once the Star buyers discover this?
http://cambiestar.com/assets/life-starts-here.jpg
They are also wrong about the train time to downtown. It’s only six minutes from boarding the train at King Ed to arrival at City Centre Station.
i think it’s actually worse than that. Parc 26 looks to be on the SW corner opposite King Edward Station. Regent is a block away from the station. They’ve put the station at 26th and Cambie.
Oops. I thought Regent was on Cambie.
South of the station across King Edward, Arno Matis has design a beautiful building (although the underground garage shared with Parc 26 (further to the south) means that the level of the garage under it forces a wall along the sidewalk).
http://arnomatisarchitecture.com/images/kinged/1.jpg
http://arnomatisarchitecture.com/king_edward_rental_architect_vancouver.html
Intriguing cantilevers!
Right by transit. It should have been a lot taller. The plan of lining Cambie with low rise was not really a good idea. It would have been much better to have really dense nodes around the transit stations.
Plus they really need protected bike lanes along Cambie especially with bike share coming.
I’m hoping that over time (20 years?), when even more density will be required, the parcels in behind the arterial frontages will be allowed to go taller – so, in effect, the buildings will step down to the streetfronts.
(Wishful thinking?)
I agree that it was crazy to spend all that money rebuilding Cambie without proper bike lanes.
However, until TransLink finds the money to run more frequent trains on Canada Line there’s not much point building enormous towers. The massive new development and new station at 57th will put further pressure on a system constrained by a contract that ensures the private operator makes a huge profit while passengers do their best to imitate canned sardines.
I don’t know how big a profit they’re guaranteed, but if there are smart business people running the company it should be in the neighbourhood of $5 billion over the course of the 35 year contract. That’s a lot of money that could have been used to beef up transit across Metro Vancouver instead of lining shareholder pockets.
These are the facts usually ignored by the proponents of P3 arrangements.
Is the agreement even public? Can we review the contractual maintenance levels, or are we to expect broken down trains along with increased overcrowding? How much would it cost to buy out the contract? What would be the long-term savings of doing so be over the remaining three decades?
Contracts can always be amended.
They’ve already added one more rush hour train to the Canada Line.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/09/one-canada-line-train-added-morning-peak-hours-richmond-brighouse-station-relief/
So they hare now using 17 of 20 trains (i.e. 3 spares kept at the ready if a train breaks down). And remember, the trains are run on a schedule (like buses), not “as fast as they can go”. So when the 57th Ave Station is added, train speeds can be increased to make up the dwell time at the new station.
The underlying requirement for making changes, is, of course, funding.
That would also apply if the line weren’t a P3 – it’s just a question of degree, not “can or can’t do”.
Whenever service frequency increases for a special event – hockey game, football or soccer game, fireworks or the Vancouver Sun Run, there’s a cost associated with that.
For example, all 3 lines increase service for the Vancouver Sun Run – and there would be a cost associated with that on all 3 lines (if there wasn’t, then Sunday schedules wouldn’t be less frequent than weekday schedules).
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/translink-stepping-up-service-for-vancouver-sun-run-1.2333979
The price for increasing service would be even steeper if we had manually driven LRT trains (where union contracts may require minimum length shifts or prohibit split shifts).
Are they really going to have a docking station for the Public Bike Share System? I thought it was only extending as far south as 16th avenue.
Correct, the public bike share system was announced as going to 16th. Even Phase 2, which extends west to MacDonald and east to Commercial, doesn’t come further south.
Maybe they are providing an annual membership in the public bike share system. They don’t say the docking station is on site, as they do with the car share.
LOL, boasting “10 minutes to Richmond” tells you all you need to know about who they’re marketing to, and it’s a demographic that won’t be trading their Bimmers for bikes any time soon.
Don’t look now, but BMW is in the bicycle business. They see the future….
http://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/New-BMW-Bikes-1.jpg