New renderings of Brentwood rental towers and community centre

New renderings of Brentwood's major rental housing and community centre project

2024 artistic renderings of Brentwood Community Centre and the towers of Brentwood Block in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

Just before the end of this decade, if all goes as planned, Brentwood Town Centre’s high-density residential uses will be served by its own major public community and recreational centre.

Earlier this month, staff with the City of Burnaby shared newly released artistic renderings showing the detailed design concept of Brentwood Community Centre by architectural firm Perkins&Will.

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The multi-level facility will have a total building floor area of about 100,000 sq ft, featuring a gymnasium, indoor running track, fitness gym, multi-purpose rooms, and creative spaces for arts, crafts, and music, as well as a childcare space, a rooftop play area, and a partially covered outdoor plaza space suitable for community gatherings and outdoor spaces.

The community centre will be fully integrated into international developer Grosvenor’s Brentwood Block mixed-use redevelopment project, which is on an eight-acre site at 4612 Lougheed Highway and 2040-2150 Alpha Avenue — located immediately southeast of the Brentwood Town Centre SkyTrain Station. The block is framed by Lougheed Highway to the north, Alpha Avenue to the west, Dawson Street to the south, and Beta Avenue to the east.

The community centre building will be located on the southern side of Brentwood Block, fronting Dawson Street.

Site of Brentwood Block in Burnaby’s Brentwood Town Centre district. (Grosvenor)

Grosvenor will oversee the community centre’s construction as part of the overall Brentwood Block project. Upon completion, the facility will be owned and operated by the municipal government.

Burnaby City Council has provided the community centre with a $140 million budget, which is entirely funded through development fees collected from developers, specifically the Community Benefit Bonus Policy. This is deemed to be a high-priority civic facility project for the municipal government.

In an update to the City this month, Grosvenor stated the community centre’s budget includes a considerable cost escalation contingency to protect the project from the currently challenging inflationary environment and any unexpected costs.

The target is to begin construction on the entire project, including the community centre, before the end of 2024, but this could change due to the marketplace challenges. The building permit application was submitted in November 2023, and the presentation centre is complete and ready for the start of pre-sales.

“It remains Grosvenor’s full intention to proceed as planned with the community centre, and the thousands of new, primarily rental housing units envisioned by our approved plan,” stated Grosvenor.

brentwood block brentwood community centre grosvenor burnaby 2024

2024 artistic rendering of Brentwood Block’s towers (background) and Brentwood Community Centre (foreground) in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

brentwood block brentwood community centre burnaby 2024

2024 artistic rendering of Brentwood Community Centre at Brentwood Block in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

2024 artistic rendering of Brentwood Community Centre (left) and the towers of Brentwood Block (right) in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

Designed by Perkins&Will, Brentwood Block will feature six towers up to 65 storeys, including a 60-storey tower that will be Western Canada’s tallest 100% secured purpose-built rental housing building.

There will be approximately 3,500 homes across all buildings, including 2,450 secured purpose-built rental homes, with 2,000 market rental units and 450 below-market rental units. The remaining 1,000 units will be market strata condominium homes; about 75% of the total unit count is secured purpose-built rental housing, and the remaining 25% is market strata condominium housing.

Within the lower levels of the buildings, there will be roughly 250,000 sq ft of commercial office, retail, and restaurant uses. There are no internal roads for vehicles, as the project will instead create a four-acre landscaped pedestrian-oriented public realm surrounding the buildings. Underground parking will be accessed from the existing public streets on the perimeter of Brentwood Block. Furthermore, the vehicle parking supply found underground is 20% lower than what would otherwise be expected for a project of this size and its uses.

Currently, the Brentwood Block development site is occupied by a car dealership, a low-rise office building, and surface vehicle parking lots.

2024 artistic rendering of the towers of Brentwood Block in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

2024 artistic rendering of Brentwood Block’s towers (background) and Brentwood Community Centre (foreground) in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

2024 artistic rendering of the towers of Brentwood Block in Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/Grosvenor)

To accommodate the area’s high-density uses and the growing population and cluster of commercial uses, both on the Brentwood Block site and the surrounding area, TransLink is currently in the midst of a major capacity expansion construction project for Brentwood Town Centre SkyTrain Station. The station’s south entrance, closest to Brentwood Block, reopened early this year after upgrades, and work is now progressing on similar upgrades to the north entrance, as well as the installation of two new escalators between the platform and concourse levels and additional fare gates. The entire $33-million station upgrade is expected to reach completion later in 2024.

Just to the north of the transit hub, Shape Properties is in the midst of revising its master plan for the remaining development parcels of The Amazing Brentwood mall, which will now include significantly taller towers for thousands of additional condominium and rental homes.

Brentwood Community Centre is amongst the first projects in the City of Burnaby’s building boom this decade of new municipally-owned and operated major community and recreation facilities to better meet the needs of the growing population.

The forthcoming projects later this decade include the redevelopments of Cameron Recreation Complex in Lougheed Town Centre, Confederation Park Community Centre in Capitol Hill, and Burnaby Lake Aquatic Centre, which has since gone back to its drawing board in design due to escalating construction costs. Earlier this month, the new Rosemary Brown Arena in the Edmonds area, the first facility of this building boom, opened for public use.

The Amazing Brentwood and SkyTrain Brentwood Town Centre Station. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

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