Bonnis Properties has released a revised plan for a major redevelopment in the 800-block of Granville Street, and straddling the historic Commodore Ballroom.
Principal Kerry Bonnis told BIV that it is very important for the street that city staff move fast to approve the proposal and get it ready for council to consider a rezoning by summer if not fall.
"What is important from our view is that things get approved and announced so that the public at large can know that things are improving," he said. "With new, bigger projects, there will be greater density that further will drive positive activity."
Bonnis scuttled his previous plan for the site, which had been in various approval stages going back to around 2017, last April. It had proposed a 17-storey commercial building that would rise up to 260 feet.
One of that project's key components was that Bonnis would donate a 14,700-square-foot, three-storey performance venue, valued at $45 million, to the city. The space could host arts and culture performances and provide expanded rehearsal space for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
His new concept is for a 43-storey tower on site, immediately north of the Commodore Ballroom, and a 39-storey tower just south of that iconic concert venue. Those towers' proposed heights are 451 feet and 395 feet.
The towers would combine to have 500 rental homes, 100 hotel rooms, five levels of retail, restaurants and entertainment. There would be connecting floors between the towers built above the Commodore Ballroom.
Residential units would be in the top two-thirds of the development, Bonnis said.
The project would also have 15,000 square feet of social housing, which would replace 73 vacant rooms at the State Hotel.
"What has been problematic with Granville Street is city staff's delay with all things Granville," Bonnis said.
"Business owners, stakeholders, and the public at large have been very vocal for years, indeed decades, for Granville Street triage. Multiple reports and public feedback have been clear in their assessment. We need changes with the city to allow for immediate processing of permits for project quick-starts urgently. The Granville Street planning program study, and zoning changes, were to be completed last year with new policy in place. Yet it is still not completed, and is scheduled for later this year – again delaying projects getting off the ground, or killing them because holding costs are unsustainable."
In the past week many Granville Street bar owners have told media that they are frustrated with the level of street homelessness, open drug use and violence in the city's main entertainment strip.
Cadillac Fairview has been taking its time to decide what to do with its empty 230,000-square-foot former Nordstrom location on the northwest corner of Granville and Robson streets, since that U.S. department-store chain left in June 2023.
Combine that with the Hudson's Bay Co. being in creditor protection and earlier this week asking for court approval to liquidate inventory and close all stores, and the outlook for Granville Street does not look good. HBC owns a majority stake in a 637,000-square-foot site at 674 Granville Street and there is wide speculation that it could vacate that space.
These developments heighten Bonnis' fears that a slow-moving city bureacracy could hasten the street's decline.
"Failure to effect policy that can allow for immediate change is the main cause of the failure of Granville Street – and planners are simply not being held accountable to timelines," he said.
"Therefore, the decline of the street is exacerbated as businesses fail and storefronts remain vacant."
