Partial demolition underway at Burnaby's landmark Telus 'Boot' office tower on Boundary Road

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While the main 21-storey tower will remain intact, construction crews are dismantling the attached 10-storey podium that fronts Boundary Road. This structure formed the “toe box” and “arch” of the building’s boot-like shape when viewed from Boundary Road.

Its removal will reduce the office building’s total floor area from 687,000 sq. ft. to 512,000 sq. ft. For decades, up until some recent new office building completions in downtown Vancouver, this was the single largest office building in the Metro Vancouver region.

The boot-like appearance will still be partially preserved when viewed from the south side of Kingsway — the Swangard Stadium side — due to the retention of the jutted terraces that front Kingsway.

The Boot office tower was built in 1976 for BC Tel, before being taken over by Telus from the merger of British Columbia and Alberta’s telecommunications firms just before the millennium. It was previously formally known as BC Tel building and then the Telus Brian Canfield Centre.

According to Burnaby’s municipal archives, The Boot was designed by Musson & Cattell — now known as Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership (MCMP) Architects — and built by Dominion Construction.

As well, archival photos reveal that the 10-storey north base podium currently undergoing demolition was actually an expansion wing of the office complex, not part of the tower’s original construction in the 1970s. This addition was built sometime after construction began on SkyTrain’s Expo Line in 1983 — which runs along the property’s north side — and before the early 1990s.

Currently, site preparation activities, involving this extensive demolition work, are being performed across the 6.6-acre property to prepare for the infill development of adding five high-rise residential towers immediately adjacent to the existing office tower. This requires the temporary closure of the north-south pedestrian overpass above Kingsway between the office tower and Swangard Stadium.

In March 2025, Burnaby City Council provided the green light for this major redevelopment, called “Central Park Commons.”

The project was originally spearheaded by developer PC Urban, before it was taken over in 2024 by developer Anthem Properties following H&R Real Estate Investment’s Trust’s sale of a 50 per cent ownership interest in the development to Crestpoint Real Estate Investments. The project’s architectural design firm is Arcadis.

Dwarfing the existing office tower — long considered a local landmark for its height, wide form, and distinct architectural design featuring thick horizontal white bands — the five new towers planned to surround The Boot will rise to heights of 31, 38, 52, 60, and 64 storeys.

The second phase’s three towers — entailing the project’s three tallest buildings — will be built on the demolished office structure footprint.

The first phase of the initial two towers — containing secured purpose-built market rental housing uses and some commercial retail/restaurant uses — will be built on the surface vehicle parking lot at the southeast parcel of the site, fronting Kingsway. Although the overall project involves the partial demolition of the existing structure, most of the new tower footprints will replace existing surface parking lots.

The project’s first phase involves the construction of not only the two towers fronting Kingsway, but also the partial demolition of the existing structure to prepare for the second phase. This work also involves the refurbishment of the existing office tower’s facade and other upgrades to ensure the retained office building is more closely aligned with modern building codes and safety standards.

The concept of the second phase is subject to change and depends on market conditions.

Currently, Central Park Commons is conceived as a mixed-use project with 43,000 sq. ft. of retail/restaurant space and about 2,535 homes, including 725 secured purpose-built market rental homes in the two towers of the first phase and 1,559 strata market ownership condominium homes and 252 secured purpose-built below-market rental homes in the second phase’s three towers.

When both phases are fully complete, the site’s total building floor area could reach 2.55 million sq. ft., including 540,000 sq. ft. in the first phase, 1.5 million sq. ft. in the second phase, and the reduced size of the existing office building.

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