Transit oriented development in Canada

vanman · #1 Posted **Jun 13, 2012, 6:36 PM**

I'm surprised this subject hasn't been touched on more here given the price of gas these days:

Quote:

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Transit-oriented buildings fetch higher rents

Jun. 11 2012

By FRANCES BULA

Quote:

Office vacancies are creeping up in buildings that are sometimes only a few crucial blocks away from a transit site. And the vacancy rates are even grimmer for many older business parks that were built kilometres from transit at a time when it seemed savvy to construct whole campuses on cheap land far from central business districts. “What we are hearing from tenants most often these days is that priority one is access to transit and it can’t even be a walk down the street,” says Brett Miller, president of Jones Lang Lasalle Real Estate Services in Canada.

- That was a priority for Vancity Credit Union when it built its new head office in 1995, a unique building where the SkyTrain literally runs right through the building. “We wanted to be on rapid transit and our stats show our staff use transit now 50 per cent more than the average for office workers,” said Jeremy Trigg, Vancity’s director of facilities and environmental management. It’s also a key factor for the giant engineering-consulting firm Fluor Canada, which has hung onto its downtown locations in Vancouver. “We felt it was the most efficient situation for our company,” said vice-president Vasee Navaratnam. A just-completed survey of the company’s 800 employees, who are spread out in three buildings near the Burrard SkyTrain station in downtown Vancouver, showed that 65 per cent arrive by transit.

- But Mr. Miller’s company decided to test the whole thesis in a way that went beyond anecdote. Jones Lang Lasalle has published two reports now, one at the beginning of this month, looking at the importance of transit in the Vancouver market. The latest of their “rapid transit office index” reports concluded that tenants are willing to pay considerably more to get into a similar building that’s closer to transit. The statistics-stuffed report concluded that tenants will pay a 22-per-cent premium in Vancouver, Surrey and Burnaby, three of the largest office markets, to be within 500 metres of a transit station. As well, vacancy rates for buildings outside that 500-metre range can go up to 25 per cent higher than a transit-oriented building in the same suburb.

- The situation is worse for some of the older business parks in suburbs without even a hint of reasonable bus transportation. “Richmond by far and away is our worst performing office market,” says Darrell Hurst, a commercial broker at Avison Young who handles Station Tower and other properties. Its business parks on the east side, far from the new Canada Line, are older and without some of the amenities – basketball courts or multiple restaurants – that newer ones have. And they are just plain hard to get to. Both Microsoft and BC Lottery Corp. moved out of Richmond in the past five years and into Vancouver. Mr. Hurst said some business parks are trying to grapple with the transportation issue by providing their own shuttles to the nearest transit station.

Read More:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle4248615/

The Skytrain travels underneath Vancity Credit Union headquarters in Vancouver. June 5, 2012. (Jeff Vinnick/Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail)