More families are moving to Vancouver’s downtown core than any other region of the city, choosing to live in a smaller, centrally-located home over a much larger house in the suburbs.
Developers are recognizing the trend and are now trying to meet demand.
“The city has had a policy for quite some time of 20-25 per cent two-bedroom units or larger and the development community used to be uncomfortable with that,” said Jon Stovell of Reliance Properties. “But we’re now more and more seeing that there’s a real uptick in that kind of unit.”
That pick-up in the market means increased demand on public services such as schools.
“Our primary concern would be schooling, the availability of space for them at an elementary school locally and then high schools and whatnot later on,” said parent Michelle Jones.
The Vancouver School Board is proposing to build its first four-storey elementary school on Expo Boulevard. They hope to complete construction on the 48,000-square-foot facility by January 2017.
“I think more and more you’re going to see schools as sort of a public amenity component of major downtown rezonings where some of the funding comes from the development projects themselves,” said Stovell.
-with files from John Hua
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