New Westminster's third tallest tower to include condos and hotel

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

Local developer Reliance Properties is pushing forward with its plan to redevelop 811 Carnarvon Street in the core of downtown New Westminster into a major mixed-use tower development with market condominium and hotel uses.

The project has now entered the rezoning application stage, following its pre-application inquiry to the municipal government in 2018.

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The sloped development site is located at the northwest corner of the intersection of Carnarvon Street and Eighth Street. This site is immediately north of SkyTrain New Westminster Station, the bus exchange, and Old Spaghetti Factory, and just south of Douglas College’s 20-storey academic space and student housing campus expansion, which is now under construction.

Currently, the site is occupied by old low-rise commercial buildings and a surface parking lot.

811 Carnarvon Street new westminster condo hotel tower reliance

Site of 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

Site of 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (City of New Westminster)

Existing condition:

Site of 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Google Maps)

Future condition:

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

The 2024 revised detailed concept is consistent with the preliminary 2018 concept, carrying the same types of uses and general architectural design form. But there are revisions in scale and size — it now has more density and height.

The revised concept calls for a 44-storey tower height of 469 ft, making it New Westminster’s third tallest building after Bosa Development’s newly built Pier West towers of 472 ft and 584 ft on the riverfront. This is up from the 2018 concept’s height of 437 ft.

This 469-ft-tall tower will also appear taller in the skyline due to the ground plain’s higher elevation compared to the city’s tallest towers.

As well, there will be a total building floor area of 460,500 sq ft, establishing a floor area ratio (FAR) density of a floor area that is 9.62 times larger than the size of the 47,900 sq ft lot. This is up from the 2018 concept’s total building floor area of 410,000 sq ft with a 7.86 FAR density.

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster, in relation to other new/future towers in the area. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

The 44-storey tower at the northern end of the development site, fronting Agnes Street, will contain a total of 469 market condominium homes, with a unit size mix of 328 one-bedroom units, 86 two-bedroom units, and 55 three-bedroom units.

At the southern end of the development site, fronting Carnarvon Street, there will be an eight-storey hotel building with 145 guest rooms and a hotel restaurant. The hotel building’s rooftop will serve as outdoor amenity space for guests.

Furthermore, the hotel building spans east-west over Blackie Street — forming a bridge over the publicly owned street. To create this structural bridge, the developer will acquire the air rights over a portion of the street, and maintain public access for vehicles and pedestrians.

“The space below the hotel forms a portal that creates a gateway into the site from the west, and helps to define the special character of Blackie Street. The warm bronze-coloured soffit is continuous with the corner restaurant soffit, providing scale and unifying element,” reads the design rationale by Yamamoto Architecture.

“Linear lighting is integrated into the soffit, creating a directionality that picks up on the vertical cladding fins of the hotel, and draws pedestrian up to Blackie Street. The regular, striped lighting also provides a contrast to the more random striped paving of the roadway below.”

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster, with the eight-storey hotel building highlighted in red. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster, depicting the eight-storey hotel building. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

The 44-storey condominium tower and eight-storey hotel building will be connected by a two-storey terraced base podium in the middle of block, with 11,000 sq ft of retail/restaurant uses primarily fronting Carnarvon Street on the east side.

On the west side of the base podium, fronting Blackie Street, there will be townhouse units.

The shared amenity spaces for condominium and townhouse residents will be situated above the commercial space of the base podium.

“The project components are treated as individual forms and landmarks throughout the site, with the residential tower operating at the scale of the City’s skyline, and the hotel balancing the tower with an urban street wall that responds to the surrounding context and development across Carnarvon Street,” continues the design rationale.

“Great attention has been paid to the slope of the site, and creating a comfortable pedestrian realm that will support the hotel as well as the retail spaces fronting both Carnarvon and Eighth Streets.”

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

As a public benefit, the developer will create a new 1,720 sq ft publicly accessible dog park immediately adjacent to the building development footprint at the southwest corner of the internal intersection of Blackie Street and Victoria Street.

Four underground levels will contain 407 vehicle parking stalls, including 219 resident stalls, 24 residential visitor stalls, 82 hotel stalls, and 10 commercial retail stalls. There will also be over 700 bike parking spaces.

The project’s hotel component will help address Metro Vancouver’s forthcoming hotel room shortage, with Destination Vancouver forecasting a shortfall of 20,000 hotel rooms over the coming decades, including 10,000 rooms within Vancouver and 10,000 rooms in other areas of the region outside of Vancouver, such as central locations adjacent to SkyTrain in downtown New Westminster.

2024 concept for the dog part as part of 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Reliance Properties)

2024 concept for 811 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster. (Yamamoto Architecture/Reliance Properties)

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