The Shipyards has been launched. It’s just east of Lonsdale at the North Vancouver waterfront – a mixed-use commercial development at the centre of the City of North Vancouver’s Central Waterfront
The commercial offerings (the restaurants, the boutiques, the Cap U extension) are still to come. Nearly complete, however, is a great new public space that will serve not just Lower Lonsdale (LoLo) but the whole North Shore.
The Shipyards replaces the bloodlessly named Lot 5 in the plan below. The green-coloured Commons’ fulfils almost exactly the vision that informed the project from the beginning. The Commons is a covered year-round public space big enough, at 12,000 square feet, to accommodate major events while still providing a flexible intimacy needed to give sparkle to what mayor Linda Buchanan calls ‘the jewel in the crown.’
The design is by Dialog, among whose principals, Norm Hotson and Joost Bakker, were the architects of Granville Island. This space is not just what’s on the floor and at first level. There is also the spectacle of the walls and ceiling: a cathedral-like industrial legacy above, a retractable roof extension over the water park alongside, with galleries surrounding the space to the east and south. There’s constant animation around, over and above, with people looking down, up and across. Irresistibly moving around to capture views and Instagrammable moments both front and back. It’s dynamism in three dimensions.
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