For the third part of our feature on U-Town, we spoke with representatives of two prominent developers in UBC housing, Intracorp president Don Forsgren and his counterpart at Adera, Norm Couttie.
We asked what the attractions to UBC were, how they were able to innovate and how Smart Growth concepts have affected their developments.
"With all the land opportunities we've been involved with in Vancouver over the last 30-odd years, it was a unique opportunity, and the nicest piece of property we've have had the opportunity to develop," said Don. "It's in an amazing location with outstanding views over Howe Sound."
Architectural inspiration
Intracorp's first UBC housing developments were at Chancellor Place. Argyll House East and West are the two buildings that flank the Carey Theological College. They were designed by the architectural firm Ramsay Worden, which designed six of Intracorp's seven UBC developments. Don said, "I just think it was one of their best pieces of work."
The granite-clad theological college was retained as part of this development, and it provided Intracorp with "an opportunity to do something extraordinary," said Don. "We responded to that by using hand-cut granite, building the building as if it was being built in the early 1900s."
Argyll by Intracorp
Don Forsgren on Argyll: "It was an opportunity to do something extraordinary."
Given the "second-to-none" location, Intracorp set out to design large high-end condos and townhouses (up to 4,100 sq. ft.) primarily targeted at people moving out of west side homes. After being involved in projects in Kerrisdale, Don said they became aware that many people wanted to downsize. And in most cases people would be putting cash in their pockets when they moved.
"There were not a lot of development opportunities to deliver that on the west side, so when UBC started to open their land for housing development we felt quite comfortable that people would move from Point Grey, Kerrisdale, Shaughnessy, the Endowment Lands because it was still in the neighbourhood so to speak. And our own market research, along with our sales success, proved that."
Smart growth in action
Norm explained a different draw to UBC for Adera. "We were attracted by UBC's vision for the transformation of the campus into a residential and university precinct," he said. "The quality of the infrastructure they put in was exceptional.
Adera's first UBC housing projects were at Hawthorn Place. "In that neighbourhood they put in all the roads and sewers and all the usual stuff, but they also had parks that went in early, which makes a difference. It helps people envision where they're going to live. And the parks had a lot of water treatment features in them, which went into creeks and flowed into the parks."
Adera's first three projects at Hawthorn Place were Journey, Reflections and Legacy, the latter being the last built in the neighbourhood. "It was our legacy to the neighbourhood," said Norm.
"We often use water in our projects and we ended up having these three projects all in a row, which we didn't realize at the start, so we ended up visually connecting the water features so it looks like it flows between them.
"It looks like it starts in Reflections, which has a little reflecting pool and waterfall, flows through the lobby of Journey and ends up forming a pond that flows into the park at Legacy.
"After that we got a parcel in the new development Wesbrook. Again, its [UBC's] commitment to both the environment and the infrastructure is incredible. On the east side of that neighbourhood all the storm water is treated on the surface [as ponds and gulleys], on the west side they can't do that because of grades and elevations, but this is a real statement about sustainability."
A life of the mind
"And then you've got the university, said Norm." It's got a huge package of amenities that I'd probably say are world class. The Museum of Anthropology, the Chan Centre, these are fantastic facilities within walking distance of your home."
UBC housing attracts home buyers who appreciate cultural amenities like Chan Centre
Don agreed. "That intellectual and cultural activity that happens at a university I think was attractive to a percentage of the people, and it set it apart from other locations. For some people it was the reason they were there.
"I would say 25-30% of our buyers had a direct connection to UBC," said Don. "Professors, people in administration, a husband who worked downtown and a wife who was doing something at UBC, doctors or researchers who worked at UBC Hospital.
"As we went through the program we started to introduce smaller-size homes because we did have people coming in looking to buy who weren't selling a house and moving down. They were either young professionals who might work at UBC or just starting out and looking to buy a condo. And we did have people, particularly Asians, who were looking to buy for their children who were going to UBC."
This ability to react to consumer demand was one of the major aspects that set Intracorp's UBC developments apart from its others. "We were able to tailor the next building to be specific. We had a pool of buyers [from previous interest] so we would call them and say we've got a new development coming, we've got homes in this range, here's the floor plans, and we sold a lot of homes at the beginning to these people.
"Usually you don't have that opportunity. You might be building in downtown Vancouver but you'll be in Yaletown and then in Coal Harbour and there's subtle changes, whereas here they're all together and that allows you to build a program around that."
Don also noted a greater emphasis on outdoor space and large windows, to take advantage of the views and light; fewer in-development amenities as residents preferred to use the gyms and clubs they already belonged to; and a heavy investment in public art and art within the buildings for "a very cultured group of buyers."
Smart growth in a smart place
Sustainable and environmentally aware development has been at the forefront of UBC's philosophy for building out the live-learn-work campus. Both Don and Norm said that smart growth has since become part of the fabric of their projects.
"So much of that is in our developments now, said Don. "It's just part of what we do. UBC pioneered that, it was a pretty good approach: 'We don't want to tell you what to do we want you to be as innovative as you can, but we have certain things we want to achieve.' And we very much liked that approach.
"[UBC's planners are] Interested in finding better solutions, not just regulating it for a political reason or it was the flavour of the day. If you give people the goal and let them do the research and collectively solve the problem you get a better outcome. It's a university ethic, and it helped the industry become more green as a lot of it is now standard building practice."
Similar to use of storm water at Wesbrook, Don described how they used this resource at Chancellor Hall to create a pond between it and another development called Folio using an underground detention tank. "It retains all the storm water from the area and it uses that water to irrigate. It has a capacity to stay quite deep and maintain that level and then drop down over the summer.
"[The city of] Surrey required you to do something similar at the time, but it had no lifestyle benefit to the residents. These people look out over this beautiful pond. It's an attractive feature and of huge environmental benefit."
Sail by Adera is the first six-storey wood-framed building in the city.
Green as it gets
For Adera the involvement in sustainable development ran even deeper. The company worked with UBC to develop REAP, the Residential and Environmental Assessment Program. It was the UBC planners' version of LEED(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a US commercial program that did not translate well.
Norm said: "You get lots of points for air conditioning, and we don't do air conditioning. They were dealing with things we didn't have to deal with in the Lower Mainland so we had a hard time meeting their requirements. We started working with Built Green[another development accreditation program], which is at least residential and Canadian. But then REAP came along so we abandoned the other two and helped UBC develop the REAP program."
This accreditation was not in place during the development of Journey and became refined for their next project. "When we did Reflections we had the first draft of REAP and we had consultants design and model the building three different ways to find out what the best bang for the buck is for REAP," said Norm.
"[We were] finding out things like the most cost-effective thing you can do is insulate more up to a point, and then the value of that drops off, then you jump to better windows how do you spend your money wisely. So we did all this modelling to help them develop the program.
"Legacy was the first one to be built under REAP. We promised them Bronze [the grade] and we actually came in at Silver. Ever since then we've come in at Gold or Platinum. We've worked with them to refine REAP as it went along.
Since then, LEED has become more relevant to local home building, and Adera is using it as a standard as well. "The first LEED Platinum building we did was in North Vancouver. As soon as LEED came along with a program we could do we went after it and did a great job. It was the first LEED for Homes Platinum building in Canada."
UBC has done much to promote smart growth throughout the industry and in doing so has created an excellent community and university.
According to Norm, "It's unfolding very closely with the master plan. Having been on the design panel, I saw a lot of projects go through and you see how they're all fitting together.
"A lot of the money developers are paying for these sites goes toward financing academic buildings. The money being generated by Wesbrook and all these sites has really spurred a major building program at the university, and the people living in the neighbourhoods are using all these things. There's a lot of synergy.
"And all these new buildings are attracting better professors and more students. If you've got the latest labs and better equipment you attract a lot of people that may have gone elsewhere. It all builds on itself.
"We're getting a world-class neighbourhood and community beside a world-class university."
See also:
If You Build it They Will Come: The History of UBC
We're Building It And They're Coming: The Present and Future of UBC
UBC campus Vancouver BC
