Opinion: Western Canada's tallest tower is worthy of Vancouver's setting | Daily Hive

Opinion: Western Canada's tallest tower, topped off by a world-class observation deck attraction, would give Vancouver a landmark worthy of its setting

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the social housing tower at 388 Abbott Street, Vancouver, which is associated with the Hudson's Bay parkade redevelopment project. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Before the Eiffel Tower became the Eiffel Tower as we know it today — the postcard image of Paris, the monument that tells the world where it is before a caption ever could — it was treated by some of the city’s most prominent cultural figures as an act of civic vandalism.

In 1887, two years before the tower opened to the public, a group of artists, writers, architects, and other leading figures in French cultural life published a furious protest in Le Temps against Gustave Eiffel’s project. This was not fringe opposition. It came from the establishment.

Their language now reads almost impossibly dramatic.

The still-unfinished tower was condemned as the “useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.” Critics warned it would disfigure and dishonour Paris. Public opponents mocked it as the “Tower of Babel,” a “gigantic black factory chimney,” and a “hateful column of bolted sheet metal,” according to the historic account by the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel — the operator of the publicly owned landmark.

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Other late 19th-century French satirists went further, comparing it to a tragic street lamp, a belfry skeleton, and a deformed piece of iron gymnasium equipment. The fear was not simply that the tower would be tall. The fear was that it would be too visible, too industrial, too unlike the Paris people already knew.

Then it was built. And the discourse around the tower changed.

The Eiffel Tower that was supposed to completely ruin Paris instead helped define it. The structure once dismissed as a monstrosity received about two million visitors during the 1889 World’s Fair and went on to become one of the most recognizable manmade structures on Earth.

Its opponents were not foolish for recognizing that it would transform the city. They were wrong because they assumed transformation itself was the problem.

Eiffel Tower as seen from the Trocadero plaza, with the Montparnasse Tower in the background, as seen in October 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Toronto had its own version of this unease with the CN Tower. While the backlash was not as literary or theatrical as the artists’ protest against the Eiffel Tower, the tower faced real concerns before and during construction. Aviation critics warned it could endanger aircraft, bird advocates feared it would harm migratory flocks, and some municipal politicians even unsuccessfully pushed to cut its height by 66 per cent.

And yet the thing that seemed too tall, too strange, and too bluntly ambitious at the time eventually became Toronto’s defining civic symbol and tourist attraction. It celebrated its 50th anniversary last month.

Not entirely dissimilar to the Eiffel Tower’s controversy, the Centre Pompidou was mocked for its exposed pipes and industrial presence before Paris learned to love it as part of the city’s cultural identity.

The Sydney Opera House was dogged by cost overruns, political controversy, and public criticism before becoming one of the world’s most celebrated works of modern architecture.

Bilbao’s Guggenheim, meanwhile, showed how one ambitious architectural project could help introduce a city to the world.

CN Tower in Downtown Toronto. (Mihir Ashar/Shutterstock)

Sydney Opera House. (structuresxx/Shutterstock)

Vancouver is not Paris or Sydney, but it suffers from a very Vancouver problem: we have long been too content to let the mountains do the work for us.

That is not a complaint about the mountains. Vancouver’s natural setting is, of course, extraordinary. The North Shore mountain backdrop and the postcard views are a huge part of the city’s identity. But a city cannot rely only on scenery as a substitute for civic ambition.

As one prominent local urban planner once put it, Vancouver is “a nice setting in search of a city” — although he might not necessarily endorse its use in this precise context.

At some point, Vancouver has to stop treating its scenery as the limit of its identity and actually start adding to it. Mountains cover about 75 per cent of British Columbia’s land area, but this corner of the province is where the region’s true urban experience can be built — and where it needs to be built well.

As I have said repeatedly over the years, Vancouver should offer the best of both worlds: the power of its natural setting and the energy of a truly urban experience. That combination is exceptionally rare, but the city has long fallen short on the urban experience needed to match its extraordinary natural one.

Yet some of the local resistance to this ambition — to building the urban experience needed to match the natural one — can feel strangely insular. There are people here who seem unable to comprehend why anyone would want Vancouver to be more than a beautiful backdrop, as though architectural ambition, civic landmarks, lively public spaces, economic vibrancy, and major urban attractions are somehow incompatible with the mountains and ocean that already define us.

This includes those who instinctively fear change, as well as more traditional voices in local urban planning circles that remain accustomed to older, more conservative models of growth and city-building. Those perspectives have helped shape parts of Vancouver’s past, but they should not be allowed to limit the city’s future.

The energy found within a city reflects the ambition of its people.

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Vancouver’s Granville Street Pedestrian Zone during the FIFA World Cup, as seen on June 25, 2026. (Kenneth Chan)

Building Canada’s first “supertall” tower west of Toronto

That is why local developer Holborn Group’s redevelopment concept for the Hudson’s Bay parkade block in Downtown Vancouver deserves support. This is a multibillion-dollar project that has effectively been decades in the making, waiting for the right municipal policy conditions — and the collapse of outdated, inflexible considerations and policies — to unlock the full potential of a large, prominently located site in the heart of the Central Business District.

Let’s focus on the technical and tangible merits of this project alone, as opportunities like this come once in a generation.

The project does not waste the rare large contiguous city block-sized site; it rises to the importance of the highly central and accessible location — right next to CF Pacific Centre mall and SkyTrain’s Granville Station and Vancouver City Centre Station — turning an under-utilized parkade block into something memorable and city-shaping.

It is a rare attempt to create a true civic landmark in a city that has too often treated architectural restraint as a virtue and architectural ambition as a threat — even though those preferences are far more subjective than many people admit.

The project would bring Vancouver’s three tallest buildings to the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block — framed by West Georgia Street to the south, Seymour Street to the west, Dunsmuir Street to the north, and Richards Street to the east.

This would include a 1,034-ft-tall (315-metre) hotel tower that would become Western Canada’s tallest building and the first technical “supertall” tower in this part of the country. According to the Council on Vertical Urbanism (previously known as the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat), the universally accepted threshold for a supertall skyscraper is at least 300 metres (984 ft).

For further comparison, such a tower height would also be about 15 metres (50 ft.) shorter than the tip of the Eiffel Tower, and it would be 57 per cent taller than the city’s current tallest building, the Park Hyatt Vancouver (former Shangri-La Vancouver) tower.

501-595 West Georgia Street Vancouver Bay ParkadeHenriquez Holborn

Site of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St. (left) and site of the new social housing tower at 388 Abbott St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Western Canada’s tallest building would not be just another addition to the skyline. It would dramatically reset the Downtown Vancouver skyline’s sense of scale, creating a new architectural focal point for the city centre and giving Vancouver the kind of unmistakable vertical landmark it has long lacked. For a city so often content to let the mountains define the view, this tower would finally add something bold and deliberate to the foreground.

Designed by Vancouver’s Henriquez Partners Architects, this is an architecturally striking tower, with a diagrid-pattern exoskeleton inspired by the glass sponge reef and a giant enclosed glass dome crowning its uppermost levels.

The predictable criticism is that it is too tall, too different, and too much for Vancouver. But that is also what makes it worth taking seriously. Downtown Vancouver does not need another restrained glass tower that blends into the background.

A 100% hotel tower, with a major observation deck attraction at over 1,000 ft.

This supertall tower would have 68 storeys, containing 100 per cent hotel uses — including 920 hotel rooms, over 70,000 sq. ft. of convention and meeting space (including three large ballrooms), and a significant one-of-a-kind public observation deck on its uppermost levels at an elevation of over 1,000 ft. (305 metres).

This observation deck attraction, boasting stunning panoramic views of the Lower Mainland and beyond, is conceived within the glass dome and would feature lounge and restaurant space within a garden-like setting.

Altogether, a substantial 53,000 sq. ft. (4,920 sq. metres) of building floor area would be dedicated to the observation attraction. Given its impressive design, scale, and elevation above an attractive city, it has the potential to become a true world-class tourist attraction.

Observation deck attraction; preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Just as importantly, it would place a major attraction directly in the urban core of Downtown Vancouver. Most of the city’s most significant visitor destinations are located on the geographic edges of the downtown peninsula, such as Stanley Park, the Vancouver Aquarium, Canada Place, Flyover, the seawall, downtown beaches, Granville Island, and Science World, while others — including Grouse Mountain and the Capilano Suspension Bridge — are well outside the city. This project would give downtown itself a major new destination, drawing people into the geographic centre of the city centre rather than only around its edges.

This observation deck attraction would also be Vancouver’s first new major tourist attraction since Flyover opened in 2013. For a city where tourism is one of the economy’s greatest competitive strengths and a major source of jobs, the lack of private investment in new visitor attractions for well over a decade should be seen as deeply concerning.

Vancouver has one of the most naturally dramatic urban settings in the world, yet it has never fully capitalized on that advantage with a modern, world-class observation deck attraction. A few blocks to the north, Harbour Centre’s Vancouver Lookout observation deck attraction has served the city since the tower was completed in 1977, but at a relatively modest height of 458 ft. (140 metres) — now the 10th tallest building in the city — its once-commanding views are increasingly being crowded out by the growing skyline around it. This existing observation attraction has also seen relatively limited reinvestment over the years. Vancouver is overdue for something far more ambitious: a modern observation experience that matches the scale of the city’s setting and gives residents and visitors a new way to see it.

An observation deck above 1,000 ft. (305 metres) would immediately become one of Vancouver’s defining visitor attractions. It would be the kind of place tourists plan around, locals bring out-of-town guests to, and residents rediscover on clear winter days, summer evenings, and during major civic events. The height of this attraction would be comparable to the height of the CN Tower’s observation deck levels at just over 1,122 ft. (342 metres) above ground level.

Moreover, while out-of-town visitors would pay admission, Vancouver residents would have free access to the observation deck — a major civic benefit for a privately developed attraction. As a condition of the project’s rezoning approval, that free access would be guaranteed through a legal agreement registered on the property title, while the observation attraction itself would be secured through the site’s new zoning.

It should give people a reason to come downtown not just for work or errands, but to look up, stay awhile, eat, meet, and experience Vancouver from a place the city built for that purpose.

Based on global precedents, if designed, operated, and programmed to its full potential, this new observation attraction could draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually — and possibly approach or exceed one million visitors per year. It would encourage visitors to look both outward at the surrounding city and region, and inward at the immersive experience within the attraction space itself.

Concept of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

The hotel uses within this supertall tower would also make a meaningful dent in Vancouver’s growing hotel room shortage, with Destination Vancouver forecasting the need for 20,000 additional hotel rooms in Metro Vancouver over the coming decades. It would be the largest hotel in B.C. in terms of the number of hotel rooms, and one of the province’s largest conference centres within a hotel — another hotel type in very high demand, according to the local tourism bureau. This hotel would contain three large ballrooms.

This matters because a hotel and conference centre of this scale would do real work for the downtown economy.

The redevelopment of the former department store’s parkade site also includes two mixed-use residential and commercial towers reaching a height of 889 ft. (271 metres) with 79 storeys, which would be Western Canada’s second tallest building, and 783 ft. (239 metres) with 68 storeys. Both towers would contain 1,546 homes — a mix of 1,270 strata market-ownership condominium homes and 276 secured purpose-built market rental homes — and over 40,000 sq. ft. of retail/restaurant space on the ground level to activate a significant event-friendly plaza.

This includes a large multi-level destination restaurant pavilion building at the prominent northeast corner of the intersection of West Georgia Street and Seymour Street, with this building also serving the dual purpose of providing a new additional street-level subway entrance into SkyTrain’s Granville Station. This would be a major in-kind public benefit funded by the developer.

As well, there would also be a direct underground subway station entrance into not only the hotel, but also the observation deck attraction’s welcome centre on the second level of the building.

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

Public benefit of an off-site social housing tower in Gastown

The more important housing piece may be off-site at 388 Abbott St., next to Woodward’s on the southern edge of Gastown, where the developer would build a 25-storey tower with 237 social housing units, a 37-space childcare facility, and cultural and/or commercial space on the ground floor, with the completed building transferred to City of Vancouver ownership.

This off-site social housing tower would be tied to the first phase of the Hudson’s Bay parkade redevelopment to ensure the bulk of the public benefits come sooner rather than later.

That is not a minor public benefit being delivered to the municipal government. It would also meaningfully offset the unexpected loss of the 500 Dunsmuir St. SRO building, which was already in very poor condition when its last residents left more than a decade ago. The project would not merely provide a one-for-one replacement of the former SRO rooms; it would create a significant net gain in social housing units. Before the building’s unplanned demolition in 2025, the developer had intended to incorporate elements of the former Dunsmuir Hotel into the redevelopment, specifically its facade — similar to how the project proposes to preserve the facade of the 1929-built Randall Building along the Hudson’s Bay parkade block’s West Georgia Street frontage.

There are legitimate debates to be had about growing the concentration of social housing within and near the Downtown Eastside, and those concerns should not be dismissed, but the overall public benefit here is tangible.

According to City of Vancouver staff, the project’s total public benefits package across the two separate sites is worth about $305 million, including the construction of the new Abbott Street social housing tower, a $20 million cash contribution for downtown public realm improvements, public art, and other cash and in-kind value components.

388 Abbott Street Vancouver social housing tower f1

Preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of the social housing tower at 388 Abbott Street, Vancouver, which is associated with the Hudson’s Bay parkade redevelopment project. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

388 Abbott Street Vancouver Henriquez Holborn

Vancouver’s natural setting is not an excuse for civic underachievement

The design of the Hudson’s Bay parkade site redevelopment concept has already been endorsed by the City of Vancouver’s Urban Design Panel and Heritage Commission.

Since the project was first publicly unveiled in Spring 2025, Henriquez Partners Architects has also received several design awards and accolades for the concept — even though it has yet to be built. These include WAN Awards’ Future Projects — Multi-Use Bronze in 2026; the Green Good Design Award for Green Architecture in 2026; a Special Mention in the Architizer Vision Awards’ Vision for Vertical Living category in 2025; the BLT Built Design Awards’ Architectural Design — Skyscraper award in 2025; and the Future House Awards’ Mixed-Use Buildings award in 2025.

For years, much of Metro Vancouver’s most visible private-sector ambition has been directed elsewhere — to Oakridge Park, Brentwood Town Centre, Lougheed Town Centre, Metrotown, Surrey City Centre, and other emerging urban centres that are actively trying to build larger, denser, more mixed-use destinations of their own. This has also included the rise of towers outside Vancouver that now exceed the height of Downtown Vancouver’s tallest buildings.

Downtown Vancouver will always be the region’s symbolic and economic centre, but in recent years it has not always behaved like it. This project would represent the single most significant private investment in the city centre, while sending an important signal that Vancouver’s city centre is not static, not complacent, and not content to rest on its laurels.

So, is Vancouver willing to let its downtown evolve?

This question will also be answered by the City of Vancouver’s ongoing review of the Higher Buildings Policy, which could create new broader policies enabling taller towers in more areas of the downtown peninsula.

There will always be discomfort with a project of this scale. That is inevitable, and frankly, it is part of the point. A skyline-changing project should provoke debate. It should be scrutinized. It should be improved where possible. But the existence of trade-offs is not, on its own, a reason to retreat into small thinking.

Yes, this project incorporates significant residential uses, but it also delivers a profound amount of active commercial space (hotel, conference centre, and observation deck attraction) and public benefits — benefits that are, in part, made possible by the density of market housing. This is effectively an additional economic engine for Vancouver’s city centre.

Taking the long view, Downtown Vancouver needs more homes, but it also needs more commercial activity, employment space, attractions, public places, and reasons for people to come into the city centre. This is especially true in a downtown that is already heavily residential. A successful city centre cannot be reduced to housing supply alone.

Vancouver has long benefitted from a setting it did not create. The mountains, ocean, and forests will always be central to the city’s identity, but they should not be used as an excuse for civic underachievement.

Downtown Vancouver should be the most intense, memorable, and magnetic part of Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, and Western Canada.

Vancouver will always have the mountains. This project gives Vancouver something it has been missing: a prominent landmark that belongs to the city itself, not just the landscape around it.

View from the top of Queen Elizabeth Park; concept of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (City of Vancouver)

Concept of the Hudson’s Bay parkade city block redevelopment at 501-595 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

bay parkade towers holborn vancouver tallest

Comparing the heights of the three towers on the Hudson’s Bay parkade site with Vancouver’s existing tallest buildings. (City of Vancouver)

Comparing the heights of the three towers on the Hudson’s Bay parkade site with Vancouver’s existing tallest buildings. (Henriquez Partners Architects/Holborn Group)

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