Public hearing set for Lululemon site

Development plans for a Lululemon mega-complex in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats neighbourhood will go to a public hearing next week.

The 500,000-square-foot Lululemon Athletica mother ship, which the company hopes to build at 1980 Foley St., two blocks east of the new Emily Carr University campus, would be more than four times the size of their current Kitsilano headquarters — large enough to unite all Vancouver Lululemon staffers in one place.

But the 13-storey, futurist office building, with its focus on a ground-to-top atrium that brings daylight into the structure and a brise-soleil skin that provides shade without obstructing views, would also be nearly double the allowable height for a structure under city council’s current Broadway Plan interim rezoning policy.

Last July, Vancouver’s chief planner, Gil Kelley, said Lululemon’s application could be approved based on “exceptional circumstances,” and the item was referred to the public-hearing process in December.

The proposal, “to increase the maximum building height from 36.6 metres to 65.6 metres to permit the development of a 13-storey office building,” is listed on the agenda for the public hearing scheduled for Jan. 23.

While the primary land use for the proposed building is office, the amendment also would allow for a groundfloor restaurant and retail space, which was supported by Emily Carr students during a Lululemon-hosted community consultation at the university last June.