NAVÍO: DOWNSIZER’S DELIGHT
False Creek location offers amazing lifestyle choices, developer says
Many people reaching retirement look forward to downsizing to a quiet place in the Okanagan or on Vancouver Island. Not the Joe Frank family.
Ten years ago, the Surrey elementary school principal built a 4,700-square-foot oceanview home in White Rock, where he and his wife raised their two sons.
But now they are eager to move to False Creek, where they can live in the centre of things near their two sons in the Olympic Village and the West End — even if it means downsizing to a condo about one quarter of the size of their former home.
“I am retiring this year and we’d been thinking about moving to the city for the last five or six years but we hadn’t found the right spot until now,” said Frank.
“We got into the spot we wanted, which is in NAVÍO.”
“We love the city because we go to plays, we go to concerts. We go to the Canucks, the Lions and the Whitecaps. We go every Saturday to visit our sons. If we live down there, I don’t want to have a car when I retire.”
Helping make the Franks’ downsize possible is a 900-squarefoot terrace and balcony space that dramatically expand their 1,200-square-foot living space and allow the couple to carry on their gardening hobby, albeit in pots.
The Franks are part of an emerging group of buyers fuelling a trend toward larger and more expensive properties in the maturing False Creek community, says Colleen Anderson, Concert Properties’ senior vice-president of sales and marketing.
“The downsizer market is starting to see the value of False Creek and the lifestyle it offers,” said Anderson.
“With the (Metro Vancouver) housing values, there are many people who are realizing the value in their homes. And when they have been looking to downsize, there hasn’t been a lot to offer a lifestyle like this.”
While NAVÍO at The Creek’s first building offered more modestly priced one-bedroom-andden homes under a 1,000 square feet, the second building (along with the last phase of NAVÍO being launched next year) will offer larger homes at higher prices.
NAVÍO has just 15 units remaining in its second phase, ranging from 1,358 to 2,035 square feet and priced from $1.9 million.
The Franks’ recent purchase ended several years of surveying several Vancouver neighbourhoods.
“We’ve been looking at Kits Point, Coal Harbour, Stanley Park area, Marinaside and Yaletown,” Frank said.
“We almost bought a few times, but we have either backed out or it wasn’t the right time for us, or we didn’t like the location. It was too loud or it was too small or the sundeck wasn’t big enough. There was always something that kind of held us back.”
Along the way, they also learned some lessons, including one from a friend, he said.
“A friend of mine lived down by the Vancouver Public Library. He had a penthouse suite up there, but he had to move out last year because it was just too loud. He didn’t like it at all. He moved back to White Rock, and now he is looking to buy in NAVÍO.”
By contrast, False Creek is bustling without being too noisy and at the same time, close to everything.
“We love this location right in the heart of the Olympic Village with Mount Pleasant just around the corner. It’s a changing area. We see the area changing so much for the better as far as the energy goes. Young people and families are down there. Grandparents are moving down there. I see a lot of retirees down there. It just felt like home to us.”
The Franks also researched the developers on the major projects and “found that some are just better builders” and that Concert was among them. “That was part of our decision to buy from them.”
A more affluent market has also led to a higher quality of finishings in NAVÍO’s homes, she said, things like quarter-cut solid core wood veneer entry doors with a high end Italian-made mortise set and an elegant quartz threshold. Townhomes, for instance, feature a twostorey stone facade entrance with gated patio, and a contemporary fibre glass door with frosted glass insets.
Inside, great room spaces have eight-foot-eight inch to 10-foothigh ceilings and expansive windows overlooking a landscaped park or courtyard. Wide-plank engineered floors will be used throughout living spaces.
In the kitchens are wood veneer and contemporary highgloss white acrylic cabinets and seamless quartz slab countertops with matching back splashes. The kitchen island features a granite slab countertop with waterfall gables and wood veneer cabinetry.
Appliances are top-of-the-line Bosch packages with an integrated and panelled bottom-mount 24- or- 30- inch refrigerators, dishwashers, touch-control electric cooktops, built-in double-wall ovens with speed ovens or single built-in ovens with under-counter microwaves.
Underground parking provides for substantial bicycle storage for riding around the seawall and some parking stalls come equipped with outlets for charging electric vehicles.
There is a fully equipped fitness room with cardio machines and weights, including indoor and outdoor spaces for stretching.