The Senakw Indigenous-led housing development is being built on the traditional lands of the Squamish Nation, and will have more than 6,000 rental units when completed in 2030.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The private developer who had partnered with British Columbia’s Squamish Nation to build the country’s most ambitious Indigenous-owned apartment project to date has sold the last of his stake to a major Ontario pension fund.
The move by Ian Gillespie’s Westbank Corp. is the latest in a series of divestments by the company as it grapples with a dramatic slowdown of the Vancouver residential market. The Squamish announced Thursday that the Senakw project, which is just completing the first three towers of a planned 11, will now be a “restructured partnership.”
OPTrust, the Ontario government employees’ pension fund with assets of $27-billion, will be a 50-50 partner with the Nation for the first two phases of the project. Westbank, which started the development in 2019 as a 50-per-cent partner, had previously reduced its stake to 30 per cent by 2022, selling 20 per cent to OPTrust.
The Squamish, one of B.C.’s most entrepreneurial Indigenous groups with hundreds of millions in real-estate assets and $232-million in revenue for 2023-2024, will assume 100-per-cent control for the second two phases. In 2022, the Senakw development got a $1.4-billion low-interest construction loan from the federal government, the largest of its kind in the country.
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The Senakw project, which is being built on Vancouver’s west side near False Creek and downtown, is anticipated to comprise 6,000 apartments by the time the 11 towers are completed. The project was previously slated to be finished by 2030.
Documents from the Nation say that it will rent 1,200 of those units at rates 30- to 40-per-cent lower than elsewhere in the city. But it has also said in recent months that development of the next eight towers may be slowed down because of the decline in rental rates and the glut of new rental apartments coming onto the market.
Neither the Nation, OPTrust or Westbank would provide any information about the actual dollars involved in the deal.
However, the 2023-2024 annual report for the Squamish Nation, released last September, noted in its financial accounting that Westbank had contributed almost $120-million up to that point.
“In the last fiscal, we recognized the second instalment of the Nation amenity contribution from our development partner, Westbank, for Senakw. The amount of $60.6-million in 2023/24 and $57.8-million in 2022/23 is a key contribution to the increase of Nation generated income,” it said.
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Mr. Gillespie, who has developed some of the most distinctive – and expensive – towers in Vancouver, has been shedding assets and partnership interests in various projects for the past two years. His company is still involved in a number of large projects that have recently been completed or are under way, including the Butterfly and Kengo Kuma towers downtown and the massive Oakridge mall redevelopment.
Westbank issued a statement Thursday saying it was proud to have helped the Squamish Nation acquire expertise in development in the early phases of the project.
“This transition reflects the capacity the Squamish Nation has built through this project and their readiness to lead development on their ancestral lands. We are proud to have supported the Nation through this first phase and look forward to continuing our strong relationship on future initiatives,” spokesperson Ariele Peterson said.
OPTrust CEO Peter Lindley said in a statement the fund is proud to deepen its partnership with the Squamish Nation.
“Senakw is a transformative development that supports the long-term retirement security of our members while delivering critical housing supply to the Vancouver community, including much-needed affordable housing units. This is one of the largest First Nations, non-resource, economic development projects in Canadian history,” he said.
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The Squamish Nation expressed enthusiasm for the new arrangement.
“Today, we are celebrating OPTrust’s increased commitment to the Senakw development, a project that represents a significant step in the return of Squamish People to our ancestral village,” council member Sxwíxwtn Wilson Williams said in a statement from the Nation.
Mindy Wight, CEO of Nchkay Development Corp., the Nation’s development group, said the new arrangement will allow her team to have more control over project planning and execution.
“Nchkay will have greater oversight related to certain aspects of construction and development while continuing to collaborate closely with the Nation on all cultural, artistic, and language elements of Senakw,” she said in the Nation’s statement.
Editor’s note: In a previous version of this article, the photo caption incorrectly stated that the development will have more than 6,000 rental units and 1,200 homes when completed. The development will have 6,000 rental units only. The article also stated that the development's units will be rented at rates 30- to 40-per-cent lower than elsewhere in the city; only 1,200 below-market units will be rented at those lower rates.