Rendering: GBL Architects

Location: 8655 Granville Street, Vancouver
Developer: Buffalo Investment
Architect: GBL Architects

Buffalo Investment recently submitted a development application with the City of Vancouver for an 11-storey mixed-use tower featuring 58 market residential units.

Located at 8655 Granville Street in South Vancouver’s Marpole neighbourhood, the 126-foot-tall development would fill a vacant 15,076square-foot, mid-block lot.

The project is expected to include four commercial units on the ground level, providing 7,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. Over 7,700 square feet of office space is earmarked for the second floor, with residential units taking up the building’s upper levels.

Upon completion, the building would include 28 one-bedroom, 24 two-bedroom and six three-bedroom units. 

Indoor and outdoor amenity spaces would be available on the third level, with a 1,000-square-foot south-facing patio included in the plans.

GBL Architects is spearheading the project’s design. Inspired by the geological formation of coastal sea stacks, the exterior design will feature horizontal bands to give the building a layered effect.

“Vancouver’s beautiful coastal line inspired the idea of layered rocks, carved and etched by ocean waves though millions of years,” states the project’s design rationale. “To create variation within the repetition of the floor layout, we took advantage of the corner unit’s balconies, changing their orientations and size, and together with the horizontal bands created ‘running ribbons’ throughout the building.”

Three underground levels will provide 57 vehicle parking stalls and 109 bike parking spaces.

The tower is designed to provide a smooth transition from Westbank’s adjacent Safeway site development Granville at 70th, a 19-storey tower completed in 2015 that contains 312 residential units.

The project adheres to development guidelines laid out in the city’s Marpole Community Plan, which mandates that “existing developments along Granville Street, between 64th and 71th Avenues, will be developed to provide a two- to three-storey street wall with a sawtooth pattern of higher forms above.”

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