PRIORITIZING PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Inside Grosvenor’s ambitious new masterplan for “Brentwood”

This March, international property developer Grosvenor unveiled plans for what will eventually become its largest mixed-use development in North America. Located in the town centre of Burnaby’s thriving Brentwood neighbourhood, the future pedestrian-only development will include the tallest rental tower in Western Canada, a new community centre, and 200,000 square feet of commercial space.

We are really excited about what this will mean for residents and the general public for meeting the housing and sustainability challenges facing our fast-growing region,” said Marc Josephson, senior vice president, development with Grosvenor. “These sorts of projects are usually exclusively for residents, but we’ve maintained from the beginning that it has to be for the entire community.”

If all goes as planned, the 60-storey rental tower will include 2,000 market and 450 below-market rental units, meeting the goals of the City of Burnaby’s non-market housing policy with rents set at 20 per cent below CMHC median rental rates. The tower will be ideally situated one block from the Brentwood SkyTrain station, making it a model for large-scale, pedestrian-focused, transit-oriented communities.

“This is a truly unprecedented development with more than half of the site dedicated to open space including landscaped plazas and courtyards,” added Ryan Bragg, principal,

Perkins & Will. “Typically, in this type of development there would be streets and space to support vehicles, but here there will be no cars, just trails and green space. It’s a complete paradigm shift for the region.”

With a plan that exceeds the City of Burnaby’s sustainability requirements for carbon and energy, Brentwood will also adhere to Grosvenor’s commitment of achieving net-zero carbon emissions across all its buildings by 2030. Significantly, it will be one of the first projects of this scale to be entirely pedestrian, with all cars forced to access the underground from the site’s periphery. The development will offer an abundance of green space for both residents and the general public, including landscaped trails for pedestrians and meandering bike paths for cyclists. “As an active owner and developer in the U.S. and Canada for over 70 years, our focus has been on vibrant, urban locations,” Josephson said. “In 2019, we were one of the first North American signatories to the World Green Building Council’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment and have been publicly reporting our annual consumption and reduction values for 10-plus years.”

Among other priorities, Grosvenor’s ESG business principles include achieving a 50 per cent emissions reduction from all its business operations by 2030 and supporting the creation and retention of both market and non-market rental housing. Grosvenor’s portfolio-wide sustainability commitments are to: • Actively manage utility consumption and conducting re-certifications, including

EnergyStar, LEED O+M, and Fitwell; • Execute green leases with new and rolling tenants to share utility data from tenant spaces; • Prepare asset-level retrofit plans based on

ROI duration and establishing annual Net

Zero Retrofit Fund; • Incorporate net zero requirements and resiliency-planning into acquisition and disposition decision-making; • Follow standards to define how development teams and consultants can address design and construction decisions with net zero considerations in mind.

“The scale and size of this development will enable us to bring our expertise in urban place-making to the Brentwood community and deliver on our objective to have a meaningful and positive social impact,” he said. “We’re excited to move forward on this project and deliver much-needed rental housing to one of the region’s fastest growing neighbourhoods.”

“Typically, in this type of development there would be streets and space to support vehicles, but here there will be no cars, just trails and green space. It’s a complete paradigm shift for the region.”

About the Brentwood development

In the coming months, Grosvenor will begin transforming the 7.9 acre, fullblock site in Burnaby’s booming Brentwood Town Centre. The masterplan for the Brentwood project includes six towers and approximately 3,500 homes, including 2,450 rentals and below-market rentals, and 200,000 square feet of commercial space. When complete, this will be Grosvenor’s largest mixed-use development in North America.