Massive Victoria, B.C. rental housing project gets green light

A massive new rental housing development in Victoria’s downtown core has been given the green light, following debate about how much parking should be included.

The Harris Green Village will eventually include five towers housing more than 1,500 rental units, along with a plaza, a park and a community centre.

Developer Starlight Investments has been working on the proposal for about three years, but the project hit a recent snag when the city’s new council pushed for several changes including a reduction of the number of parking spaces included.

The developer agreed to several of council’s requests, including car share parking spaces and improved bike access, but won approval to proceed with the originally proposed number of parking stalls in the first phase of development.

“It’s going to add people to our downtown core who are lost as a lot of the office workers have left the downtown core. It’s going to revitalize this part of the city,” Victoria Coun. Matt Dell told Global News.

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“Our council was happy 1,500 more people were coming, but it was the thought of could we handle 1,500 more cars downtown, I think a lot of us would already agree downtown is pretty heavy with traffic.

Dell said the push for less parking came from council’s focus on walkability, car share and bike lanes as it works to reduce congestion in the city’s core.

Removing parking spaces could also help cut the cost of new housing, he said, as each underground parking spot can add up to $100,000 to the cost of a build.

“This changes the economics of buildings, and I think is going to make housing a lot easier to build if developers don’t need to add as much parking, because a lot of folks these days don’t want parking as they’re using different kinds of transportation.”

That cost effect is something other municipalities will likely be watching closely as the project proceeds, with the company agreeing to follow the city’s bylaws regarding provision of parking phases when it applies for the development’s latter phases.

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“This would be one factor that would be bringing the average rent down to lower than it would otherwise be if you were providing a more conventional parking supply rate,” transportation engineer Peter Joyce explained.

Construction on two towers, which will sit between Cook and Vancouver streets in central Victoria, is slated to begin later this year.

Phases two and three, which will deliver another 1,000 units between Vancouver and Quadra streets, are scheduled for completion before the end of the decade.

“We are seeking to bring in better use. A mix of purpose built rental and commercial use,” said Starlight Investments vice-president of development and construction.

The approval will mean big changes for nearby business owners like Rob Reid, whose Frontrunners Footwear is located in the footprint of the project’s latter phases.

Reid told Global News densification in downtown Victoria was inevitable, but that phase one construction will inevitably have business impacts.

“You’ve got to really reach out to your customer base and find out ways to entice them to make that drive or bike ride or walk to get into your store,” he said.

“For us its really important that maybe the city looks at ways of assisting businesses also.”