ICBC considering four locations in Metro Vancouver for new headquarters

Broadway Tech Centre in East Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

North Vancouver’s Lonsdale district’s loss will be Vancouver’s or Burnaby’s gain, as ICBC has made a shortlist of where it is considering to relocate its major headquarters office.

“We’ve found multiple properties that can provide features important to our employees and company,” ICBC spokesperson Lindsay Wilkins told Daily Hive Urbanized this week.

Working with a broker, they have identified multiple properties in four areas, including the False Creek Flats and Broadway Tech Centre in Vancouver and Brentwood and Metrotown in Burnaby.

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But what do all four of these areas have in common? They are well-served by SkyTrain — now or starting in the very near future.

There is a growing cluster of major office buildings along Great Northern Way in the False Creek Flats, which is already served by VCC-Clark Station and will soon see the addition of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station as part of the Millennium Line extension.

East Vancouver’s 17-acre Broadway Tech Centre, owned by Quadreal Property Group, has eight buildings with a combined total of 1.1 million sq ft of office space. Some of the prominent tenants at this office complex include the headquarters of BC Lottery Corporation and offices for BC Assessment, BC General Employees’ Union, Nintendo, RBC, and HSBC. Broadway Tech Centre is directly served by Renfrew Station.

And both Brentwood and Metrotown districts are, of course, served by their respective namesake SkyTrain stations. Metrotown is already the notable home base of Metro Vancouver Regional District. Both areas are seeing a growing number of new major office spaces integrated into mixed-use developments.

When ICBC first told Daily Hive Urbanized in September 2022 its decision to leave its longtime Lonsdale headquarters location, they said regional accessibility for the North Vancouver site was a driving factor for the relocation. Moreover, only 30% of its headquarters staff live on the North Shore, and the vast majority, 70%, live elsewhere in the Lower Mainland, south of Burrard Inlet. At the time, they said a new location adjacent to a SkyTrain station would be an “absolute priority,” which would enable more of their staff to come to work by public transit instead of driving.

151 West Esplanade Avenue North Vancouver ICBC headquarters office 3

ICBC headquarters office at 151 West Esplanade Avenue on the Lonsdale waterfront, North Vancouver. (Shutterstock)

151 West Esplanade Avenue North Vancouver ICBC headquarters office

ICBC headquarters office at 151 West Esplanade Avenue on the Lonsdale waterfront, North Vancouver. (Google Maps)

Since 1980, the ICBC headquarters has been located within the landmark six-storey Lonsdale waterfront building — next to the SeaBus terminal — at 151 West Esplanade Avenue, where the Crown corporation has 290,000 sq ft of office space for its headquarters headcount of 1,500 staff.

But ICBC previously suggested its new headquarters will be smaller than the Lonsdale location, given the enduring changes to workplace behaviour since the pandemic. Even if accessibility issues were not an issue for the Lonsdale location, the aging building is now in need of major reinvestment.

Last week’s 2024 provincial budget provided ICBC with a $338 million capital budget over the coming years, including $164 million for the headquarters relocation.

Wilkins says the headquarters relocation budget is an estimate based on the market rates for space in the locations being considered.

Currently, she adds, the timeline to relocate headquarters staff from the Lonsdale location is between 2025 and 2027.

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