LEED Gold-Pursuant Retail Asset In Metro Vancouver Finishes Phase Two of Redevelopment
Ivanhoé Cambridge has announced it has completed phase two of the redevelopment of its fully owned Guildford Town Centre, located in Surrey, British Columbia, the fastest growing municipality in Metro Vancouver and Western Canada.
By Eliza Theiss, Associate Editor
Surrey, Canada—Ivanhoé Cambridge has announced it has completed phase two of the redevelopment of its fully owned Guildford Town Centre, located in Surrey, British Columbia, the fastest growing municipality in Metro Vancouver and Western Canada.
Currently the largest regional shopping center south of the Fraser River, the 1966-built asset kicked off an approximately $266.6 million (CAD280 million) three-phase redevelopment. The first phase finished in October 2011, while phases two and three were announced a month earlier. All in all, phases one and two have added a two-story parking facility, a 149,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter, an additional 70 stores of national and international brands such as H&M, Forever 21, The LEGO Store and others, amounting to an additional 213,500 square feet of retail space, mostly on the mall’s south side. A new 1,034-seat food court was created, along with a new grand entrance, new center court complete with water feature and glass-enclosed elevator, new seating areas, new, sizeable washrooms, including family and nursing rooms.
An almost 10,000-square-foot living wall, the largest of its kind in Northern America, has been installed on the exterior of the shopping center–one of several green features. As Guildford Town Centre is pursuing LEED Gold certification from the Canadian Green Building Council, several other environmentally friendly and energy reductive features are also available at the location. Among them cutting edge wastewater technologies, including low-flow water fixtures, food court waste compost system and bike storage.
Phase three of the redevelopment will add several new retailers and continue with additional general improvements, such as to the retail center’s lighting, landscaping, signage accessibility and such. When phase three completes in the fall of 2014, it will have created 4,000 jobs during construction and have added 750 new permanent jobs. It will have also increased its gross leasable area from 980,000 square feet to 1.2 million square feet.
The redevelopment was prompted by the necessity to modernize facilities, as well as to meet the needs of growing trade area. “Our goal is to position Guildford Town Centre at the cutting edge of design and retail trends,” says Daniel Fournier, chairman and chief executive officer, Ivanhoé Cambridge. “As one of the largest development projects in our portfolio, this endeavor drew upon our Company’s vast range of professional expertise to pull it off” he adds.
Guildford Town Centre is fully owned by Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s leading institutional fund managers.
