The former Anglo-Canadian Warehouse building at 837 Beatty St. is being reimagined to align with the site’s original vision. Its adaptive reuse will include the addition of four more storeys, with the entire building being allocated toward retail and office space, as well as a shared terrace.Office of McFarlane Biggar Architects and Designers/Supplied
A 1911 heritage building at the west end of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Vancouver has been saved from demolition as a local developer and architect are reimagining it into a burgeoning brick-and-beam mixed-use property.
What was once the site of the Anglo-Canadian Warehouse, 837 Beatty St. lies close to the waterfront in between the city’s Yaletown and central business district.
To preserve the building’s heritage while accounting for modern-day demands, local developer Reliance Properties and McFarlane Biggar Architects and Designers decided to transform the two-storey warehouse into a seven-storey mixed-use structure with four floors of office space, two levels of retail space and a shared rooftop.
The transformation is an example of adaptive reuse – the process of repurposing unused buildings into mixed-use spaces – and is a growing trend in commercial real estate.
Other Canadian developers are preserving heritage structures, such as downtown Toronto’s vintage banks or an old post office in Waterloo, Ont., and transforming them into functional modern-day landmarks. The opportunity to unlock the benefits of building reuse is significant, with Canada housing nearly 160,000 pre-1970s commercial and industrial buildings, 33 per cent of its building stock, according to a 2020 report for National Trust for Canada
Ahead by a century
The original two-storey Beatty Street building at the west end of the Canadian Pacific Railway, now CPKC, was erected during a real estate boom in the first half of the twentieth century.
Since the departure of the Anglo-Canadian Warehouse, the Edwardian-era, industrially designed site served as a home to a wide range of organizations such as food manufacturers and distributors.
Working with heritage consultant Donald Luxton and Associates, the adaptive reuse of the former warehouse conserves the building’s heritage and heavy-masonry façade on all three sides by restoring the original brick to its natural color. It also aligns with the site’s original vision, which was imagined by the building’s original designers Wright, Rushforth and Cahill.
“During our first site visit with the structural engineer, we were in awe at the size of the columns and the thickness of the walls,” says Bryan Lemos Beça, associate principal at McFarlane Biggar Architects and Designers. “Afterward, we visited the archives to look at the original architectural drawings and discovered the building was originally planned to include an additional four storeys.”
Due to the 1913 economic crash, followed closely by the First World War, the four storeys were never built.
“The planned expansion of this building never materialized,” says Mr. Lemos Beça. “It stayed in its stunted form [until today] for 108 years.”
Projected for completion this summer, 837 Beatty St. is the only new commercial office development to be delivered in downtown Vancouver for the foreseeable future, according to a recent CBRE analysis.
The property offers tenants 30,000 square feet of commercial office space (approximately 6,000 square feet per floor), along with a shared rooftop terrace that includes a full kitchen and dining room to entertain clients or staff.
The property offers tenants 30,000 square feet of commercial office space (approximately 6,000 square feet per floor), along with a shared rooftop terrace that includes a full kitchen and dining room to entertain clients or staff.Office of McFarlane Biggar Architects and Designers/Supplied
To date, the only confirmed tenant at 837 Beatty St. is the Shamrock Storehouse, a beloved local Irish pub that has leased the building’s unique rear laneway space. The building’s ground-level still has room for another retail tenant, while the rest of the structure will be offices for lease.
“Currently there is only one other commercial building on the market, so this is a pretty unique offering for downtown Vancouver,” says Luke Gibson, senior vice-president at CBRE. “This state-of-the-art hybrid building comes at a time when the market does not have any competition for new products.”
Landing on mass timber
When Jon Stovell, president and CEO of Reliance Properties, first approached McFarlane Biggar Architects and Designers, he requested that the firm consider the feasibility of using mass timber.
“Reliance Properties were interested in adding on to the building, looking at a heritage, adaptive reuse addition and they were very interested in having us consider mass timber from the beginning,” says Mr. Lemos Beça. “We studied different structural systems and eventually landed on mass timber.”
Mr. Lemos Beça says his firm specializes in mass timber, which is part of what fueled interest in the project.
“Because our design approach is generally very contextual, we always want to create something that responds to its surroundings,” he says. “That approach guided the design of both the exterior and the interior.”
Redesigning the Beatty Street building was a balancing act that required the architects to consider the structure’s heritage elements, original blueprints and modern, mass timber construction.
The result is four additional storeys that use a laminated-exposed mass timber structural system, featuring high ceilings that blend with the original old-growth wood used to construct the building more than a century ago. The original restored brick has been augmented with masonry and precast concrete.
To offset construction costs, the project received $500,000 from the British Columbia Forest Industry Innovation Investment Mass Timber Demonstration Program.
“There’s a funny saying I heard once that there’s money makers and there’s award winners,” concludes Mr. Stovell. “We try to get ‘money-making award-winners’ and this is going to be one of them.”