City of Vancouver staff urge rejection of 15-storey downtown hotel building proposal | Daily Hive

Concept of the hotel at 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Arno Matis Architecture/Bene Group)

A rezoning application for a 163-ft-tall, 15-storey hotel building on Seymour Street is set to be the first considered by the new makeup of Vancouver City Council following the October 2026 civic election — but in a consideration stage before a potential future public hearing.

The mid-block site for the proposal sits between Robson and Smithe streets, just across from the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Vancouver. The project as currently envisioned would also preserve the narrow development site’s historic two-storey front facade of the 1926-built Great War Veterans’ Association Hall.

The project is designed by Arno Matis Architecture for local developer Bene Group. It would contain 151 hotel guest rooms, plus a 2,500 sq. ft. restaurant/bar at street level.

At its Nov. 17 public meeting, City Council will consider the referral report for the proposal at 852-872 Seymour St. In a rare move, City of Vancouver staff recommend sending this application to a public hearing at a later date, with a recommendation to reject it following that hearing.

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In its rationale for recommending the application’s rejection, City staff acknowledged the benefits of adding hotel rooms, but assert that the project’s particular design would cause significant problems for the buildings immediately to the north and south.

“These significant form of development issues would have negative impacts on contextual fit and surrounding properties. If this project were to be approved by Council, staff’s opinion is that it would create undesirable conflicts with the adjacent hotel and residential development sites,” state City staff.

Site of 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Google Maps)

Site of 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Arno Matis Architecture/Bene Group)

Concept of the hotel at 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Arno Matis Architecture/Bene Group)

One of the main concerns is the gap between the proposed hotel building and the 2009-built, 29-storey Vita condominium tower at 565 Smithe St., which is immediately to the south of the development site.

The proposed hotel development site has just 62 ft. of street frontage along Seymour Street and is about 120 ft. deep. The proposed design would leave as little as a 36-ft-wide gap between the 15-storey hotel building and the Vita condominium tower, falling short of the City’s typical standard of a minimum 60-ft-wide separation from adjacent residential uses.

This spacing is intended to protect residents’ privacy, access to daylight, and views of the sky. City staff assert that following this requirement on such a narrow property would require a substantial redesign, with a building with a lower height.

As previously noted by Daily Hive Urbanized, the hotel design includes privacy glass and a climbing-vine wall on its south side to help limit views into the residential units of the Vita condominium tower.

A separate concern involves the future 30-storey hotel tower under Marriott’s Moxy and Elements brands, which is currently under construction immediately to the north at 848 Seymour St. — replacing a surface vehicle parking lot. It is expected to reach completion and open in 2028.

Seven guest rooms in that separate 390-room Marriott hotel tower project would face exclusively into a small lightwell proposed along the new 15-storey hotel building’s northern property line. A lightwell is an opening in a building’s layout intended to allow natural light into otherwise enclosed spaces.

City staff assert the proposed lightwell would not give those seven guest rooms enough daylight, sunlight, or an adequate view outward. Moreover, the developer of the Marriott hotel tower has also raised significant concerns about the proposal’s impacts.

Concept of the hotel at 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Arno Matis Architecture/Bene Group)

According to City staff, when the Marriott hotel tower’s rezoning application was approved in 2023, the plans for the adjacent site of 852-872 Seymour St. contemplated a new building of about seven storeys. That expected height led to the strategic placement of rooms and windows in the Marriott project.

Bene Group’s hotel proposal would span about 82,500 sq. ft. of total building floor area. That represents a floor area ratio density equivalent to 11 times the size of the roughly 7,500-sq-ft lot size. The hotel plans include indoor and outdoor amenities, including rooftop space, as well as two underground parking levels with about 18 vehicle parking spaces. Due to the lot’s narrow width, the underground parking levels would be accessed by two car elevators from the laneway.

Built 100 years ago, the former veterans’ hall later became a gathering place for Vancouver’s LGBTQ community, housing nightclubs including Playpen Central and Hollywood North, as previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized.

The previous makeup of City Council protected the front facade through a heritage designation in 2023. The current proposal would preserve that protected portion, with City staff determining that the proposed heritage preservation is sufficient.

Although City staff note that a public hearing is not legally required, they recommend holding one because of the public feedback and potential impacts on the two adjacent properties.

City Council could ultimately choose to approve the project despite City staff’s recommendation to reject. The report includes draft zoning provisions and approval conditions for that possibility.

Concept of the hotel at 852-872 Seymour St., Vancouver. (Arno Matis Architecture/Bene Group)

City staff’s rare recommendation to City Council to refuse a proposal comes as the municipal government works toward adding 10,000 net new hotel rooms over the coming decades. Destination Vancouver estimates 20,000 net new hotel rooms are needed across Metro Vancouver over the next few decades, including 10,000 within the city of Vancouver, where the demand is greatest.

City staff assert Vancouver is now on track to meet that hotel guest room target. Their September 2026 tally identifies seven rezoning proposals with 1,480 hotel rooms under City staff review, 13 approved rezonings with 3,380 hotel rooms, and four projects with 1,060 hotel rooms moving through the development permit and building permit steps.

That total includes six projects with 1,010 hotel rooms under construction, and eight projects with 540 hotel rooms that recently reached completion.

Altogether, there are 38 projects in various stages of the development, with a combined total of about 7,500 hotel guest rooms.

However, City staff’s figures largely reflect projects still at the proposal, approval, or permitting stages. Given challenging economic conditions and high construction costs, it remains uncertain how many will proceed to construction in the foreseeable future, even with the municipal government’s approval of the rezoning and permitting.

Currently, there are about 25,000 hotel rooms across Metro Vancouver, including 13,000 within Vancouver. Remarkably, Vancouver currently has fewer hotel rooms than it did in the early 2000s — a quarter century ago — largely because older hotels have been renovated for residential use or demolished for redevelopment, and because governments, at the height of the pandemic, purchased older, lower-tier hotel properties for rapid conversion into supportive housing.

848-850 Seymour Street Vancouver Marriott hotel

2024 revised design of the Marriott hotel tower at 848-850 Seymour Street, Vancouver. (Perkins&Will/Paul Y. Construction (B.C) Ltd.)

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