Vancouver office buildings share their storied past with a dynamic present

VANCOUVER In 1910, the Dominion Building at 207 West Hastings opened as Vancouvers first commercial highrise, and its still functioning as an office building today. It was the tallest building in the British Empire at the time.

Many similar early office buildings, a few stories high, built around the turn of the 20th century, have come down to make way for taller ones. But others remain, granted extended life by heritage status and major upgrades, and by tenants who prefer the unique working atmosphere those buildings offer.

If you are working in a nice wood-and-brick building with large windows, says Eugen Klein, a commercial real estate broker and principal of the Klein Group at Royal LePage, it feels soft. You have this sensation of being in a building that is sort of a staple. When your customers come in, they feel the longevity of the business, they feel these human touches.

Some of those old brick office buildings in Gastown, in Yaletown, have excellent life in them, he says. If you go to other parts of the world London, Vienna their buildings are 400 years old, with old brick and solid construction. Those are still very functional.

Because Vancouvers mid-size older office buildings are cheaper to lease than their newer highrise neighbours, they serve an important function in the economy of downtown, says Lonnie Neufeld, an appraiser and consultant at Burgess, Cawley, Sullivan and Associates.

If those smaller office buildings came down, he says, those tenants cant be in the downtown core any more. For example, the Vancouver Block on Granville they have things like physiotherapists in there, they have a hair salon, a lot of small mining firms.

At the low end, tenants in those buildings might pay between $15 and $25 per square foot plus operational costs, whereas space in a newer tower can cost up to $70.

But at the same time those older, smaller buildings are sitting on prime development property, so owners and developers have to weigh all the costs and benefits of demolition and re-construction, including the state of the office space market and whether the site would run afoul of one of the 18 city-designated view corridors that criss-cross downtown Vancouver.

Klein says the next generation of office buildings, taller towers built in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, tend to have a lower standard of construction.

They were not built to the same level. They are very cookie-cutter, the spaces feel very plastic, its just a box. They are harder to rent. Tenants dont want to spend money on those, and so they can only compete by cheapening the rent.

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Vancouver office buildings share their storied past with a dynamic present