Business in Vancouver - Developer partners with non-profit

Posted on November 23, 2016

Unique alliance will turn dilapidated seniors complex into mixed-use project with 44 spiffy, low-cost rental units for East Vancouver seniors.

A unique partnership between a private developer and a non-profit seniors housing group will deliver brand-new but low-cost rentals under the City of Vancouver’s Rental 100 program.

Hungerford Properties is moving ahead with plans to build a 161-unit development, including new seniors housing suites, in East Vancouver. The partnership includes the non-profit Odd Fellows Low Rental Housing Society, Terra Special Projects, GBL Architects, the City of Vancouver and Hungerford.

The redevelopment at 3595 Kingsway, from an aging, dilapidated seniors residence into a new, six storey, mixed-use development, will provide 44 affordable homes for seniors. It will also deliver 117 rental apartments and commercial units on the ground floor, according to Hungerford.

The Rental 100 program encourages the development of projects where all of the residential units are rental, with capped rental rates. The policy is part of the city’s goal to create 5,000 new units of market rental housing by 2021.

The Odd Fellows Society, which operates without government subsidies, will own its non-market units and Hungerford will retain the market-rental homes through a strata arrangement. Odd Fellows residents will be relocated and current residents will have first right of refusal to move back into the new homes.

The development partnership allows the project to happen at no cost and no risk to Odd Fellows.

“We are happy to replace the building because it’s on its last legs,” said Marie Olsson, the interim CEO for Three Links Care Society that manages Odd Fellows Manor. Rents for new tenants in the project will range from $754 to $807 per month, she estimated.

Construction will start in spring 2017, with completion scheduled for mid- 2018.