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Traditional industrial uses are rarely combined with residential development in North America, with such an approach being more common in parts of Asia and Europe, where limited urban land has led to the vertical integration of uses, including warehousing.

Currently, the only remotely comparable example in Metro Vancouver is the cavernous warehouse space home to Costco Wholesale in downtown Vancouver, built within the sunken base of four residential towers.

But for Marine Gateway 2, there are site-specific considerations for the inclusion of such a substantial traditional industrial use. Immediately south of Marine Drive Station’s bus exchange and the 2015-built first phase, the second phase development site of 8530 Cambie St. is a protected industrial site by Metro Vancouver Regional District.

As a result, the act of removing the protected industrial land use designation requires not only the approval of the municipal government but also the regional district. This site forms just one parcel of a large swathe of protected industrial lands along Vancouver’s Fraser River waterfront.

To mitigate this, the rezoning application incorporates 255,000 sq. ft. of industrial space into the base podium spanning the five-acre lot, including 202,000 sq. ft. of large bay industrial space fronting Yukon Street to the east with clear 33-ft-tall ceiling heights and direct loading bay access for freight trucks, and 53,000 sq. ft. of small bay industrial space fronting Cambie Street to the west with 15-ft-tall ceiling heights.

“We think there’s real opportunity there [for industrial uses],” Tim Grant, president of PCI Developments, told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview.

“I think the important thing about the Marine Gateway 2 site is because of its size and its slope, it has a really unique opportunity to be able to do it. And that we could, on the Yukon level, which would be the large industrial level that sits below the Cambie level’s which smaller bay type industrial use.”

The inclusion of a substantial industrial component is a deliberate response to concerns over the potential loss of protected industrial lands. With Metro Vancouver facing a growing shortage of industrial space, the regional district has been increasingly cautious about allowing such lands to be repurposed for other uses.

However, under the regional district’s 2023-approved Metro 2050 plan, the strategy prescribes transit-oriented, mixed-use development for industrial areas surrounding SkyTrain stations, given that many SkyTrain stations are located in traditional industrial zones. The plan prescribes a possible combination of some residential uses above industrial and commercial uses for such sites.

For decades, this five-acre site has not been used for traditional industrial purposes, instead serving as the longtime home of Don Docksteader Motors’ Volvo and Subaru car dealerships.

As well, last week, Vancouver City Council approved a member motion by Mayor Ken Sim to unlock the development potential of five “exceptional sites” in the city that currently see protected industrial uses, including the Marine Gateway 2 site.

The approved motion directed City staff to process without delay existing and new rezoning applications at the five sites — such as PCI Developments’ application for Marine Gateway 2 — as well as perform an analysis on the technical and policy implications of the redevelopment potential of each site, explore options for future land use that maintain or intensify employment uses while also enabling new housing and public amenities, and prepare formal requests to the regional district to remove the protected industrial land reserve designation for any of the sites.

“I think the mayor’s motion hopefully just reinforces to everybody the potential opportunity or maybe the need to focus on the application. So we’re certainly pleased with it from that perspective,” said Grant.

“Going back to even Marine Gateway 1, we’ve been advocating with the City now for almost 10 years to look at the phase two development on the Don Docksteader Volvo property. And 10 years ago, one of the impediments was the regional growth strategy. Metro Vancouver resolved that a couple of years ago by allowing for rental residential in connection with the industrial.”

Directly above Marine Gateway 2’s industrial uses is approximately 124,000 sq. ft. of flexible commercial space — suitable for retail, office, and/or even more industrial uses.

On the same level, there will be an approximately two-acre privately-owned public park, featuring a large open lawn, wooden decks, ample seating, a children’s play area, and pathways. This includes a main pathway that directly links to Marine Gateway’s first phase retail plaza via a new pedestrian overpass above the bus exchange.

“It’s going to be very hard to make that space work as industrial, particularly at the park level. It’d be three levels up from Yukon Street. So, our goal is to make that as open as possible. It could have elements of a kind of smaller type light industrial space. It could have elements of retail, and I think just recognizing that it’s an attractive location fronting the park, but also connecting directly to Marine Drive Station over the bus loop,” Grant told Daily Hive Urbanized.

They are also looking to explore a potential collaboration with Marpole Community Centre to provide some satellite programming in the public park, which is fully accessible to the public via the pedestrian overpass, the complex’s internal vertical circulation, and a Cambie Street entrance with a staircase and elevator.

Although there are very significant industrial uses, the project’s primary use is residential, with exactly 1,000 secured purpose-built rental homes proposed in the application, including 200 below-market rental units and 800 market rental units. The unit size mix is 248 studio units, 395 one-bedroom units, 283 two-bedroom units, and 74 three-bedroom units.

Most of these homes are contained within two high-rise towers, both reaching about 452 ft in height with 43 storeys (a height calculation that includes the industrial and commercial levels). There is also a seven-storey residential structure above the base podium spanning the site’s length along Yukon Street, and three storeys of residential uses in a smaller structure attached to a tower.

Residents will have access to expansive shared indoor and outdoor amenities on the rooftop of both towers, as well as a garden on the lower rooftop of the flex commercial space — not to be confused with the aforementioned large, privately-owned public park on a separate lower rooftop level. On this garden level, in addition to resident amenities, there will also be a 7,650 sq. ft. childcare facility with 9,700 sq. ft. of dedicated outdoor play space, and a 2,000 sq. ft. seniors centre.

Below the industrial uses, the complex provides one underground parking level for about 507 vehicle parking stalls, including 350 for residential uses and 157 for industrial and flex commercial uses. Additionally, there will be over 1,900 secured bike parking spaces.

Vehicle access for the complex is aided by an internal looping one-way road, named “Cambie Mews,” which provides a passenger pick-up/drop-off for the residential and flex commercial uses, and assists with the loading needs of the light industrial spaces. Cambie Mews also opens up to a covered outdoor plaza that strategically fronts the bus exchange.

The project is designed by architectural firm Perkins&Will and landscape architecture firm PWL Partnership — the same teams behind PCI’s Marine Gateway first phase.

The design and uses outlined in the newly submitted rezoning application mark a significant departure from the early concept PCI Developments shared with Daily Hive Urbanized in 2021.

That previous preliminary plan envisioned four high-rise towers of up to 31 storeys, including a dedicated office tower with 260,000 sq. ft. of office space — a feature that has since been dropped due to the sustained weakness in the office market. The earlier concept also proposed over 1,000 homes, comprising 680 market rental units, 170 moderate-income rental units, and 203 below-market ownership homes. Additionally, the industrial space component was larger, at 300,000 sq. ft.

Grant told Daily Hive Urbanized that the below-market ownership home component was something the municipal and provincial governments had focused on several years ago. But today, the policies better enable a 100 per cent secured purpose-built rental housing approach for the residential uses, with the already-complicated application simplified by providing just one type of housing tenure.

The 2015-built first phase is now highly regarded, deemed a model example of a transit-oriented development. It entails residential towers of 36 storeys and 27 storeys — containing 415 strata market ownership condominium homes and 46 secured purpose-built rental homes — as well as 250,000 sq. ft. of office space, with tenants such as the City of Vancouver’s Engineering department, Intel, and WeWork. There is also 260,000 sq. ft. of retail/restaurant space, including the anchor-sized businesses of T&T Supermarket, Cineplex VIP Cinemas, Winners, and Shoppers Drug Mart.

The high residential density and concentration of major retail businesses, restaurants, and services have also served to boost public transit ridership.

As well, Marine Gateway’s first phase has also catalyzed other mixed-use, high-rise developments in the immediate area surrounding the public transit hub, including the redevelopment of the Ashley-Mar Housing Co-op immediately to the west into the newly-completed Signal complex of three towers with over 500 rental homes and 125 below-market co-op units.

Also under construction is the redevelopment of the area’s Denny’s restaurant into The Cascades rental housing complex of two towers with about 575 rental homes and retail/restaurant uses. It will reach completion in late 2026.

In terms of proposals, other than Marine Gateway 2, the largest project eyed for the area near the public transit hub is the redevelopment of Southwynd Place into four buildings — including three towers — with over 800 social housing units.

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