30-storey hotel tower proposed for vacant Robson and Seymour corner

Vacant site of 809 Seymour Street, Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

In 2019, the single-storey retail and restaurant buildings at the southwest corner of the intersection of Robson and Granville streets in downtown Vancouver were demolished in preparation for construction.

At the time, the plan was to turn 809 Seymour Street (also known as 600 Robson Street) into The Seymour — a thin 215-ft-tall, 13-storey tower with nearly 62,000 sq ft of strata office space and 4,300 sq ft of ground-level retail/restaurant space.

But then, the pandemic happened.

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In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized last week, Kerry Bonnis, whose family owns and operates Bonnis Properties, said the strata office market — office that is acquired by tenants — has been hit even harder than the leased office market, which is more conventional and accounts for the majority of office market activity.

“With this property, the intention was to do strata office, but that market basically completely disappeared since COVID. There’s basically no active new-build office strata that works anymore,” Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“I think pre-COVID interest rates were desirable, when a lot of businesses factored in purchasing owner-occupier. The difference between their mortgage payment and the rent wouldn’t be that that far apart, so it made a lot of sense for people to consider buying strata office.”

809 seymour street 600 robson street vancouver

Vacant site of 809 Seymour Street, Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Cancelled project: 2020 artistic rendering of the strata office tower at 809 Robson Street, Vancouver. (Perkins&Will/Bonnis Properties)

Instead of proceeding with building the strata office tower, his company sold the lot to another entity — an “international hotelier.” Bonnis says the hotelier, which he did not name, recently submitted their application to the City to build a 30-storey hotel tower.

“An international hotelier approached us to purchase the site… and it just looks phenomenal,” Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“We’re really excited about that property. It’s going to be a welcome addition to the neighbourhood.”

This hotel tower could be comparable to the height of the adjacent 2011-built, 43-storey Capital Residences condominium tower. The application has not been made public at this time.

Cancelled project: 2020 artistic rendering of the strata office tower at 809 Robson Street, Vancouver. (Perkins&Will/Bonnis Properties)

With a land area of only 12,000 sq ft, the lot size is a tight fit for any high-rise tower development. For this reason, Bonnis Properties’ previous strata office tower project had a partnership with Capitol Residences to share the existing tower’s Seymour Street underground parkade entrance. To save space and create a more efficient design, the strata tower office project would have simply knocked out an underground wall to establish a direct connection to the underground parkade of Capitol Residences.

If approved by the municipal government, the hotel tower for 809 Seymour Street would be the second new major hotel in the immediate vicinity.

Less than half a block to the south, on the other side of the street, a 321-ft-tall, 30-storey hotel tower will be built at 848 Seymour Street. The rezoning application was approved by Vancouver City Council in December 2023, and the project team submitted the development permit application in February 2024.

2022 artistic rendering of the hotel concept for 848 Seymour Street, Vancouver. (Perkins&Will/Forme Development/Paul Y. Construction)

Bonnis Properties also owns the site immediately to the west — 800 Granville Street. Their massive mixed-use development for 800 Granville Street — reaching 17 storeys, and spanning almost the entire length of the city block — had originally contemplated significant office space for the primary use, along with major components of retail/restaurant and entertainment uses.

However, Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized the leased office component of 800 Granville Street is no longer economically viable, and they have now gone back to the drawing board on the concept design, with the potential inclusion of rental housing and/or hotel uses instead of proceeding with a proposal containing the same amount of office space.

When Daily Hive Urbanized asked Bonnis whether the office volume of 800 Granville Street could be replaced with a very large traditional short-term stay tourist hotel volume, he did not dismiss the idea outright, but said a major partner with both the financial resources and proven hotel operations experience would be needed, suggesting that such uses are not his company’s forte.

“I’m a big supporter of the growth of new hotels… If there was a group interested, absolutely. The difficulty with hotels is if a property owner doesn’t have experience with owning and operating a hotel, and they’re very difficult to find financing. The only way it could actually be done is if somebody were interested to commit their own financing to building a hotel. If an opportunity arose, we will definitely take a look at that because 800 Granville would be a fantastic site for a hotel,” Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“But to build one on spec without the experience and without a hotel partner, it’d be an understatement to say it’d be challenging.”

With that said, Bonnis believes the design of his other cancelled strata office tower further north on Granville Street within the Central Business District could be more easily convertible into hotel uses.

In July 2022, the previous makeup of City Council approved Bonnis Properties’ rezoning application to turn 524-526 Granville Street (near the intersection with West Pender Street) into a narrow 320-ft-tall, 24-storey tower with about 129,000 sq ft of strata office space. The lot has a street frontage of just 50 ft, with the sleek contemporary tower rising from its base of a retained heritage building facade, currently occupied by Moore’s Clothing.

524-526 Granville Street Vancouver office tower

Cancelled project: 2020 artistic rendering of the strata office tower at 524-526 Granville Street, Vancouver. (Perkins & Will/Bonnis Properties)

On behalf of Bonnis Properties, commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap recently listed 526 Granville Street for sale — both the property and the approved development plans.

The lot size is just 5,996 sq ft, which constrains most of the floor sizes to about 5,300 sq ft. But for this reason, Bonnis says this makes it a suitable floor plan for a hotel, compared to other properties with larger floor plates.

“We’ve actually told our agents that in our opinion, we’re quite surprised that no one has approached us for this property looking for a hotel project. We have explored that, and it actually converts extremely well to a hotel,” Bonnis told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“The smaller floor plates, unobstructed water and mountain views, and right in the core of the financial district… all of this would be a super candidate for a hotel. I think it would be a phenomenal hotel site, and especially since it’s just footsteps from subway stations, including the Canada Line that goes straight to the airport.”‘

Cancelled project: 2020 artistic rendering of the strata office tower at 524-526 Granville Street, Vancouver. (Perkins & Will/Bonnis Properties)

Cancelled project: 2020 model of the strata office tower at 524-526 Granville Street, Vancouver. (Perkins & Will/Bonnis Properties)

Cancelled project: 2020 concept of the strata office tower at 524-526 Granville Street, Vancouver. (Perkins & Will/Bonnis Properties)

Cancelled project: 2020 artistic rendering of the strata office tower at 524-526 Granville Street, Vancouver. (Perkins & Will/Bonnis Properties)

According to local tourism bureau Destination Vancouver’s forecast, as of early 2023, a total of 20,000 new additional hotel rooms will be needed across Metro Vancouver over the coming decades, including 10,000 within Vancouver and another 10,000 elsewhere in the region outside of Vancouver. Without the new hotel room supply, the tourism industry — one of the region’s few strong economic and job-supporting strengths — will suffer and become less competitive, including the inability to land conventions, meetings, concerts, and events. This would also impact Vancouver’s major film and television production industry, which depends on overnight accommodations for its various talent and staffing needs. Hotel rates would also continue to skyrocket, which would deter visitation — limiting the type of visitors the region sees.

The hotel room shortage would begin seasonally in Summer 2026 within Vancouver, and quickly grow into other periods of the year and other areas of the region over subsequent years.

And this forecast by Destination Vancouver was made long before the provincial government’s new regulations that effectively curb short-term rentals starting in May 2024. While the new regulations have improved long-term rental supply for people who live, work, and study in the region, it has placed even greater demand on the region’s already highly constrained traditional hotel room supply.

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