Early plans for Block 2 show a 10-story office building with ground-floor retail. (Courtesy of TVA Architects Inc.)
A 10-story office building is set to rise on Block 2 at The Waterfront Vancouver, allowing future business tenants a front-row spot to the river. The proposed delivery date is set between 2022 and 2023.
The preliminary designs for the building show 157,000 square feet of space available for office tenants, with 10,880 square feet of ground-floor retail, according to designs obtained by The Columbian on Tuesday.
The building’s second floor is 21,200 square feet, and the upper floors are stacked in a tower on the west side of the building, according to the renderings. Each upper floor is 14,200 square feet, according to the design packet. The plans also call for underground parking.
The developer and owner of the building depends on the anchor tenant and how they want to proceed, wrote Barry Cain, president of Gramor Development, in an email to The Columbian.
“It’s a preliminary design meant to show the development possibilities of the site,” wrote Cain. “Depending on anchor tenant needs, we may alter that design to a certain degree.”
Cain wrote in the email that Gramor Development has “some interest in larger uses” for potential tenants, but it’s nothing official.
Block 2 sits just east of the roundabout at the intersection of Waterfront Way and Esther Street between the future Hotel Indigo to the west and the AC Hotel by Marriott to the east.
The new building will be the second waterfront building to hold office space, joining the Murdock building, two buildings to the west. About 90 percent of the Murdock building is rented as of Tuesday, according to its website; about 8,000 square feet is still available for lease of its 85,000 square feet of total space.
“Our office leasing has gone extremely well at The Murdock, and we are almost fully leased,” Cain wrote. “We are not only pleased with the quality of tenants that have leased space in the Murdock, but the continued interest of new parties that we can no longer accommodate in the building. Therefore we feel strongly about the future office leasing market at the Waterfront.”
“We would like to break ground this year but don’t have further detail on when,” Cain wrote.
The building in its current design will take about 30 months to complete, according to Cain.
Will Campbell: 360-735-4507; will.campbell@columbian.com; twitter.com/wtcampbell
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