Mixed-use building coming to Commercial Drive and East Pender corner

Mixed-use development coming to Commercial Drive and East Pender Street corner

Artistic rendering of 485 Commercial Drive, Vancouver. (TKA+D Architecture & Design/Cressey Development Group)

A modest mixed-use redevelopment is proposed for the northwest corner of the intersection of Commercial Drive and East Pender Street.

According to a newly submitted development permit application, Cressey Development Group will turn 485 Commercial Drive into a complex of three four-storey buildings.

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The east building fronting Commercial Drive will have three retail/restaurant units on the ground level to activate the street frontage and contribute to the northward extension of the Drive’s pedestrian-friendly high street. The second level will contain three office units, while the third and fourth levels will provide 10 market rental homes.

The remaining two buildings on the west side of the lot will contain 40 strata-titled homes, comprised of two two-storey stacked townhouses — accessed by the street, laneway, or internal courtyard. One underground level will be dedicated to vehicle and bike parking.

The total floor area will reach 56,600 sq ft, establishing a floor area ratio density of a floor area that is 2.19 times larger than the size of the 24,800 sq ft lot. The project is designed by TKA+D Architecture & Design.

Artistic rendering of 485 Commercial Drive, Vancouver. (TKA+D Architecture & Design/Cressey Development Group)

The site’s existing 1950-built, two-storey manufacturing building incurred significant fire damage in 2013.

It was the longtime production hub for Pine House Chinese Bakery’s locations, and then briefly used as the Woodhouse Smokehouse commissary kitchen, until the fire.

Some repair works were performed to the building over the years following the fire, but the restoration was never fully completed.

Instead of completing the repairs, the property was eyed for redevelopment.

The 2012 pre-fire condition of 485 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, when it was used by Woodhouse Smokehouse & Commissary. (Google Maps)

The 2022 condition of 485 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, nearly a decade after the 2013 fire and after some repair works were made, but never finished. (Google Maps)

Site of 485 Commercial Drive, Vancouver. (Google Maps)

Under the City of Vancouver’s Grandview-Woodland Plan, a building up to six storeys can be achieved on this particular lot.

For the lot immediately to the north at the southwest corner of the intersection of East Hastings Street and Commercial Drive, the community plan permits a building of 10 storeys or more. This adjacent site is set to be redeveloped into a sizeable mixed-use redevelopment with a new 50,000 sq ft Indigenous community centre facility for the operations of Urban Native Youth Association and Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, and up to about 200 affordable rental homes within two mid-rise towers rising above the community centre base podium.

Urban Native Youth Association Vancouver

Conceptual depiction of the new Indigenous community centre for youth by Urban Native Youth Association and Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, with affordable rental housing above. (Government of BC)

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