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With some of the recent events and policies south of the Canadian border it’s no surprise that there is a squish for office space, as reported in the Province by Sam Cooper. While vacancy rates have dropped from 8.3 per cent to 6.8 per cent and sound healthy compared to the housing market, they are not.
“The report from professional services firm JLL says a tight Vancouver commercial real estate market will be driven by new demand from technology companies. Vacancy rates could dive from about seven per cent currently to three per cent in 2019, the JLL report says, which would be “the lowest vacancy rate on record.”
How low is a low office vacancy rate? Cushman and Wakefield estimated that by 2019 “Vancouver is predicted to have the second-lowest office-vacancy rate in the Western hemisphere. ” The vice-president of the services firm JLL noted that he had never seen such a great demand from companies for Vancouver office space in 25 years of work . “A lot of the companies are from the U.S. The low Canadian dollar is attractive, and also we are a market where it is easier to bring in (high-technology) workers from overseas.”
To put that in better perspective, there was 2.3 million square feet of new office space built in the “downtown market” in the last two years. With the swift uptake of office space, it is expected that suburban Metro Vancouver communities will reap business relocations, with higher vacancy rates and lower rents, not to mention the fact that employees would have access to more affordable and varied forms of housing.
The City of Vancouver observes that there are new rezonings in Railtown, the False Creek Flats and in Mount Pleasant for new office space. The challenge is going to be finding the large floor plates and area amenities necessary to accommodate hundreds of new employees working in one office location. Will this be a driver for further office development in other parts of Metro Vancouver?
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The Broadway corridor is a great candidate for additional office space.
Indeed. It’s already No. 2 in the region not just in office floor area but in jobs and population density.
There are still lots of office buildings already announced that are planned for downtown Vancouver.
– Post Office redevelopment
– Budget site kitty corner to the old Post Office
– site of the dome at Grant Thornton Place
– site just west of that next to the heritage Royal Bank Building
– Oxford tower on Melville (the biggest of the proposals)
– tower at Pender & Thurlow
– Hudson’s Bay parkade redevelopment
– 2 towers at the north end of Larwill Park
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Council shouldn’t have approved so many condos in the downtown core in the Nineties an early 2000s.
Why? A mixture of land uses keeps a place lively and well used through the week, and not just Monday to Friday. It also puts less strain on our transportation system.
If employers are unable to find office space in Vancouver they will find it in the suburbs where potential employees live . Metro Vancouver needs balanced zoning where people can get to work without excess subsidized car or transit mobility . Most offices have no need to be downtown.
That reads like a call to urbanize the suburbs. I can agree with that.
Central Surrey is another place that’s being developed by the City for the future as well.