Welcome to Southgate City the largest new master planned community you’ve probably never heard of, I know I hadn’t until adverts started popping up in the Vancouver Sun. Developed by Ledingham McAllister on the site of the former Safeway distribution facility in South Burnaby, the 60 acre site features a whopping 19 residential towers above podiums. Site amenities including 5 acres of park space, a gourmet grocer, restaurants, cafés, and a community centre all located internally within the development.
Southgate City’s utopian-like glass towers are anchored in floating green space and numerous water fountains with a resounding lack of colour or use of materials. The architectural renderings show building forms that appear difficult to engage with on a human scale once you get pass the street level podium.
It will be interesting to see how it feels when finally constructed but the master plan appears starkly opposite to recent developments such as Olympic Village and UBC’s Wesbrook Village built around a denser street grid with a range of building types.
Olympic Village aerial from Google Earth
Aerial of Wesbrook Village on the University Endowment Lands from Google Earth
I’m amazed at the scale step down from Southgate to the existing single family neighbourhoods across the street. Perhaps this intense density could have been spread throughout the single family zoning with two and three story walkups rather than concentrated on this commercial/industrial land.
The loss of significant Commercial/Industrial space in a central metro location is also something to be debated. A friend was lucky to find a location for his large business two years ago near Boundary and Lougheed Highway but he reports there is currently next to nothing on the market for lease regarding buildings accommodating light-industrial activities in Vancouver and Burnaby.
The development looks to be ringed by 3-4 storey transitional apartment buildings, which will marginally assuage the ‘context’ crowd. You also don’t need to be too torn up about those single-unit residentials across the street. They won’t last long.
Reblogged this on The St Louis Contrarian.
Really Ken? Corrigan is above criticism apparently.
If only Vancouver could be as ambitious
Ambitiously stacking people in faceless developments surrounded by highways?
its near Edmonds Skytrain and the highway is not close. We have a housing crisis we should see lots of new very tall buildings near metro stations with lots of ground level commercial on the ground floor.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I used highways metaphorically, referring to Burnaby’s massive roads that cut through or surround every ‘town centre’. Roads and signals are designed to move cars, not for people living in the area, walking or biking.
Sure I agree I wish Burnaby had put more of an emphasis on non SOV movement but does that mean we say Burnaby do not build anything? This is probably one of the best places that Burnaby can build lots of density so for that reason we should encourage more residential like this.
Not against the density per se, but is it nice to walk or bike in any of the Burnaby town centres? What does Burnaby do with all the revenue from rezoning to high density? Where are the pedestrian zones, parks and bike routes? Sure you can walk from your tower (dodging cars that don’t yield at crosswalks) to the nearby Skytrain station and be in a few minutes in Vancouver. But walking or biking around the town centre isn’t exactly attractive or even safe.
The most direct comparison would be the redevelopment of the former light industrial lands around Joyce SkyTrain station with a similar built form – shorter near the edges, taller in the middle.
… opportunistic redevelopment of historically large consolidated sites instead of rezoning and consolidating single family houses.
Southeast False Creek in total is a bit bigger – 80 acres, of which 30 were privately owned and 50 acres owned by the City of Vancouver. It would be interesting to know how many people Southgate Village is expected to have once completed – SEFC will have an anticipated 12,000 to 16,000 residents at build-out. The biggest difference (apart from the retention of six heritage buildings in SEFC) is the park space. Southgate has five acres: SEFC has an anticipated 26 acres.
That whole area between the old part of Edmonds and this new development is set ot densify.
The one thing I find questionable is how far from rapid transit the NE side of the development is. It’s about 1.4km from the far side to Edmonds. I think a second rapid transit line from Metrotown through Uptown New West, down to Columbia may eventually be in order. Perhaps down Kingsway…
I wouldn’t be so sure about the single family homes surrounding densifying. According to the Edmond’s Town Centre land use map they are set to stay. Too bad as they are the perfect spot for rowhouses or similar in between density. Edmonds as a whole is interesting as there are multiple cores of high density with townhouses and single family homes surrounding. It is more spread out than Burnaby’s other town centres without a big mall stuck in the middle. Totally flies under the radar.
Yes! Chinese Ghost cities are finally here! And whats with the bloody water fountains in a town where it rains 8 months of the year. Back to the drawing board City of Burnaby, another developer pump and dump.
Grand visions usually end badly.