Shangri-La dethroned: BC's tallest building is no longer in Vancouver

Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place, as of October 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The King is dead, long live the King.

It is now official. Daily Hive Urbanized can report the Gilmore Place II tower, currently ascending in Burnaby’s Brentwood district, is now the new tallest building in the Metro Vancouver region, and for that matter, all of British Columbia.

It has dethroned the Living Shangri-La tower in downtown Vancouver, which has been the region’s tallest building since 2008.

Westbank’s Living Shangri-La is 659 ft with 57 floors. Gilmore Place II’s ultimate height will be roughly 708 ft, with 64 floors.

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Gilmore Place II has gained the superlative from the recent concrete pour of its 64th floor, which is the high-ceiling residential penthouse level, effectively squeaking past the Living Shangri-La in elevation. The building still has more height to go in order to fully top out, specifically the private outdoor amenity level for the penthouse and the tall elevator overrun and building mechanical structure on the rooftop.

Prior to Living Shangri-La’s completion, the region’s tallest tower was the 2001-built One Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver.

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Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place as of October 4, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

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Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place as of October 5, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

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View of Paradox Hotel (right) and Living Shangri-La (left) from the rooftop of The Stack office tower in downtown Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

But Gilmore Place II’s crowning height is expected to be short-lived. In 2025, construction is expected to reach completion on Concord Pacific’s 755 ft tall, 65-storey Grand Tower at Sky Park, located at the northeast corner of Metropolis at Metrotown mall, also in Burnaby.

This is the start of a new wave of successive projects that will establish Metro Vancouver’s new tallest buildings, with all of the projects located outside of the city of Vancouver’s boundaries. At least about a dozen future towers proposed, planned, or already under construction in the region’s suburban municipalities will be taller than Living Shangri-La. The tallest tower in the pipeline is Pinnacle International Development’s proposed 850 ft tall, 80-storey Pinnacle Lougheed tower within Burnaby, which would also become Western Canada’s new tallest building — exceeding Edmonton’s Stantec Tower by 27 ft.

It marks the start of an unusual pattern for the urbanization of a major metropolitan region, where the region’s tallest buildings are located not only outside of the primary city centre but more broadly also outside the region’s principal city. Building height restrictions in downtown Vancouver and the Central Broadway areas are highly limited due to the City of Vancouver’s strict regulatory impediments, particularly with protected mountain view cones and increasingly shadowing considerations.

Earlier this year, Westbank’s 587 ft tall, 57-storey The Butterfly tower reached a stage of construction progression that made it the new third tallest building within Vancouver — edging out the nearby 550 ft tall, 54-storey One Burrard Place tower by Reliance Properties completed just two years earlier. Construction also reached completion in early 2023 on the 530 ft tall, 37-storey The Stack tower by Oxford Properties in downtown Vancouver, which is Metro Vancouver’s new tallest office building.

Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place as of October 5, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Gilmore Place II is amongst the three towers under construction for the first phase of Onni Group’s Gilmore Place mixed-use development surrounding SkyTrain Gilmore Station, located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Lougheed Highway and Gilmore Avenue.

The region’s new tallest building includes 60 residential floors with 643 condominium homes — all on top of a four-storey, high-ceiling base podium, with three levels for office, retail, and restaurant uses and one level for shared amenities for residents.

The residential component of Gilmore Place II carries a total building floor area of about 615,000 sq ft, which does not include the commercial podium that also supports Gilmore Place I tower.

The Gilmore Place I tower, located immediately to the south, fronting Gilmore Avenue only, and sharing the base podium with the tallest tower, has already topped out with 51 floors, including 47 residential floors. It has 510 condominium homes.

Immediately to the east, fronting Lougheed Highway only, the Gilmore Place III tower will have 43 floors, including 40 floors for residential uses and a three-storey base podium with resident amenities and commercial uses. This third tower will contain 410 condominium homes.

Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place as of October 5, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The three floors of commercial space in the base podium for all three towers in the first phase carries a total floor area of 272,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant space and about 80,000 sq ft of office space.

In real height, Gilmore Place II and Gilmore Place III are roughly 586 ft and 487 ft, respectively.

Altogether, the first phase of Gilmore Place will carry a total floor area of about 1.9 million sq ft, including almost 1.5 million sq ft for residential uses.

The first phase of Gilmore Place is expected to reach completion and open in 2024. The tenants for the commercial spaces have yet to be announced.

In accordance with the municipal government’s minimum parking requirements, the first phase will provide over 2,600 vehicle parking stalls, including about 1,700 for residential uses and 900 for commercial uses. Construction on the first phase began with digging a 3.5-acre pit of about 100 ft for the foundations and seven levels of underground parking, which was a feat of engineering given how it envelopes the deep foundations of Gilmore Station and SkyTrain’s elevated guideway.

But the amount of parking for a transit-oriented development has gained some criticism, along with the contributing factors to some construction impacts on the immediate area and adjacent buildings. The City of Burnaby has indicated it is looking to change its parking minimum policies for new developments near SkyTrain stations.

Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place as of October 5, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Gilmore Place construction progress as of October 26, 2021. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

On the east side of the SkyTrain station within the city block, future phases of Gilmore Place will generate up to seven more mixed-use towers with residential, office, and retail uses. This includes a 37-storey office tower with nearly 700,000 sq ft of office space, making it amongst Metro Vancouver’s tallest and largest office buildings.

The area underneath the SkyTrain guideway cutting through the site will become a linear public plaza activated by the immense retail and restaurant uses.

Gilmore Place’s overall retail and restaurant space component across all phases on the 13-acre site is comparable to the floor area of the new-build retail and restaurant portions of The Amazing Brentwood. The project’s architectural firm is IBI Group, now known as Arcadis.

Site plan of the first phase of Gilmore Place. (Onni Group)

Artistic rendering of the first phase of Gilmore Place. (Onni Group)

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