Holborn Group has submitted a rezoning application for a $2.8-billion mixed-use development project in downtown Vancouver.

If approved, the massive project would include the tallest building in the city and all of B.C. The proposed 1,033-foot tower would hold a hotel. It is part of a three-tower complex spanning two city blocks bordered by West Georgia, Richards, Seymour and Dunsmuir streets.

The towers would rise 68, 69, and 80 storeys, with the development expected to create thousands of jobs during and after construction.

“I’ve always had a vision of doing something of this size, but the stars needed to align, the timing had to be correct, and I think all that’s coming together,” Joo Kim Tiah, Holborn’s president, told Business in Vancouver.

Vancouver-based Henriquez Partners Architects is designing the project.

The rezoning proposal calls for 1,561 new homes, a 920-room hotel, over 70,000 square feet of conference space, a 250-seat restaurant, and a large public plaza featuring First Nations art. A three-level observation deck and garden accessible to the public are planned for the hotel tower.

The development site includes 500 Dunsmuir, where Holborn was required to demolish a condemned heritage hotel because the single-room occupancy structure was rendered uninhabitable.

“It’s not something that was a part of our plan,” lead architect Gregory Henriquez said of the demolition in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “It was an unforeseen event and unfortunate in the sense that it doesn’t allow us to maintain the façades, but fortunate in the sense that it does allow us to give back to the public realm in a far more significant way.”

Holborn is looking to capitalize on Vancouver’s relaxed view-cone policy that allows for taller buildings in certain parts of the city and, in turn, more revenue for developers. (View cones restrict building heights in certain areas to prevent obstruction of North Shore mountain vistas.)

The company is also offering a community contribution at 388 Abbott Street on the poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside, proposing 378 non-market homes, a 37-space childcare facility, an Indigenous art gallery, and artist-in-residence spaces for local First Nations. This would mark the largest standalone social housing contribution in Vancouver’s history.

The buildings’ design draws inspiration from glass sponge reefs found off the B.C. coast and aims to significantly reduce embodied carbon emissions. Completion could take over a decade, pending council approval.

Pictured: Proposed three-tower mixed-use redevelopment project in downtown Vancouver.

Rendering: Holborn Group/Henriquez Partners Architects

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