8495 Granville St (Safeway) | 59, 43M, 25M | 18flrs, 14flrs, 8flrs | Completed
 

The Safeway site at Granville and 70th Ave has been significantly reworked. Here is the current proposal from Westbank designed by Henriquez and partners. Not sure this one will be breaking ground very soon, but it certainly is progressing forward. Take a moment and look at the changes, I feel the new proposal is very fitting and an improvement over the original

Project Stats
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...Statistics.pdf

Building Program
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ingProgram.pdf

Changes from Original Proposal
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...alProposal.pdf

Landscape Concepts
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...peConcepts.pdf

Traffic and Loading
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...andLoading.pdf

Architectural Drawings
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ingsforWeb.pdf

I like! It's refreshing to see 3 bedroom units nowadays. A plus is also the short bus ride to the Marine Dr. Canada Line station.

this would change the feel of that entire area, i use to travel there all the time, it's suburban and small town...

good step toward urbanization and good for business

except for one thing, 24 floors seems better...

Yeah, short bus ride, but I think they need to make those buses more frequent, especially if they want to encourage the people moving into those units to be taking transit. on the smarter and wiser side of things. it's good that they have a safeway there. instead of people getting into their cars, and driving to the nearest safeway, or superstore (or whatever), they can just walk there now. much more convenient. if only translink can get their act together...hmm...

my friend lives down there - he says a lot of people down there oppose it cause they don't want to lose their liquor store
but isn;t it going into the new development?

understandable, a lot of alcholics and drug addicts live down that area, because it's a safe zone, many hide in the rented apartment, protected by a few drug lords, who have become apartment managers over the yrs

Wow, agreed that this will definitely change the feel of the area and give Marpole a nice jolt in the arm. People driving up into Vancouver from the airport will get a better first impression of the city proper.

As for transit, it's not bad in the area. The 10 runs through at something like 10 minutes during peak and the 100 is at 70/71st and Granville at 15 minutes during peak. Both feed straight to the Canada Line. When I lived in Marpole, I never felt lacking for transit options.

Also, and maybe this is just wishful thinking way down the road, this sits only a couple blocks from the Arbutus Corridor. If a tram/LRT/whatever ends up running through there someday, it'd certainly convenient to have that many more people living there.

This project pretty much epitomizes what Henriquez has become known for in Vancouver over the last few years, which is working the rezoning process at City Hall...he goes in with a plan that he knows has no hope of being approved (ie. due to height and/or density, massing concerns etc) then he scales it back as a perceived "concession" based on feedback at the open house stage. Most of the time, the public buys it.

Although I'm finding their designs increasingly bland - including this one, that in itself also plays into the process (at UDP stage) and I gotta give credit to the guy; he knows how to play the game at City Hall, and this is largely the reason he keeps getting hired.

Well... it actually looks nice... I'm surprised they almost managed to get it in there though. =O

There will be a much larger one(6390 sf) on the south side of the complex on 70th ave on the ground floor of the 14 storey tower. It shows it on page 7 of the architectural plans pdf.

I heard they will temporarily move the liquor store during construction to somewhere in amongst the shops at that part of Granville.

Does anyone else not feel the little bank at the corner of this development at granville & 70th is a bit of a nuisance?

Sort of... maybe they can integrate it a little better, but the bank looks too newly renovated or rebuilt to be just trashed within a few years though.

I'm assuming you are referring to RBC. Definitely is - they should try to integrate the bank into the apartments on the W. 70th Avenue side, then demolish the bank and create a small plaza/park area.

Anyways, this development in Marople would be the perfect catalyst for future redevelopments in the area, especially if Vancouver (ever) has a rail link via Arbutus down through the area.

A rail link down Arbutus would be ideal but a dream thanks to West Side residents protecting their isolation ;)

The development although a bit bland is a good scale imo for Marpole. It's great to see South Vancouver get some love with this and Marine Gateway. Hopefully one day 57th and Cambie could be revitalized and those concrete monstrosities are torn down

A) Those buildings aren't that bad.

B) Those buildings are pretty far away from Marpole, and even Marine Gateway.

C) That's a lot of people to evict for aesthetics.

But I do think this is a perfect Catalyst to get people looking at the Arbutus Corridor again. The development is only 2 short blocks away from the tracks, and there are quite a few newer buildings on the south side of 70th there too. It could be a pretty busy tram station.


But I will miss the classic curved roof style Safeway. That one must be one of the larger Safeway's built in that style. There can't be many more left after this one and the one in Burquitlam are gone.

I find it awfully frustrating that Safeway refuses to build overtop of their stores.

Should we be allowing them to shunt the density over to the other buildings just because they want a big open floorplate in their grocery store? It's very odd to have such a short building fronting onto a street as wide as Granville.

With any other development we would expect to see grocery at grade with residential above.... why is this so different?

doesn't that bank have a drive thru though? they probably wouldn't want to lose that cause i don;t think they would be allowed to open another one with the cities ban on drive thrus

Yes, the RBC does have a drive-thru. You can see in Westbanks plans that it is not affected, RBC will retain the small parking (and drive-thru) they have behind their building. Although it would be nice to have the bank integrated into the development, RBC likely owns this site and probably doesn't have much incentive to sell and lease back. Especially since they would lose their surface parking and drive-thru.

Since it's their site they can do what they want.
But it's nice for them to "allow" other development on their site as well.