Social housing to be woven into upscale harbour community
LONDON: Social housing is set to be interwoven into an upscale harbour-side community development.
Already Haebler Construction has been awarded a CAD$70.6 million contract by Vancouver City Council for a project that will include a new complex on the Coal Harbour waterfront that would include an elementary school, childcare facility, and social housing. Construction is planned to begin in early 2022 and be completed by the summer of 2024. The facility will be built adjacent to the seawall at 480 Broughton Street, at the foot of Broughton Street, just west of the Coal Harbour Community Centre. The 127-foot-tall, 11-story tower will include a 43,000-square-foot elementary school for 340 students on the first three levels, a 9,600-square-foot childcare facility for 64 children on the fourth level, an outdoor play space on the school’s rooftop, and 60 units of social housing on the upper six levels.
The structure, built by Henriquez Partners Architects, will aim for LEED Gold and Passive House green building certifications. Even after accounting for GST, Haebler’s contract value is less than the municipal staff’s original project budget of CAD$80.8 million. The true worth of the granted contract is CAD$28.4 million for the school, CAD$9.9 million for the childcare facility, and CAD$32.3 million for social housing. The assessment process for the Coal Harbour project was accelerated by city officials owing to the pressing need to construct the new substation, which will replace the aging Dal Grauer Substation on Burrard Street close to the Scotiabank Theatre. With a growing population and big new buildings, Vancouver’s electricity consumption is predicted to increase by 75% over the next three decades.
A new replacement school, again sponsored by BC Hydro, will be erected above the underground substation by the end of the decade, allowing Lord Roberts pupils to return to Nelson Park. At this point, the Coal Harbour school would essentially become much-needed extra capacity for the elementary school system in downtown Vancouver.
