‘Main Alley’ transforming to new-school industry
Hootsuite founder, Westbank partner on project to develop block on Main Street
Westbank Corp. and Ryan Holmes, the founder and CEO of local social media giant Hootsuite, are partnering to redevelop a full city block on Main Street.
In addition to accommodating part of Hootsuite’s workforce, the space will house New York-based co-working company WeWork’s fourth Vancouver site.
WeWork leased two floors of a renovated building at the “Main Alley” campus at Main Street, between East 4th and East 5th avenues and Quebec Street.
The project will include renovations to two existing buildings on the site (including M1, the new home of WeWork), and the construction of three new buildings, creating space for about 5,000 to 6,000 workers, according to Westbank. (The developer said about 500 people currently work at the site).
The first new building, M2, will be located at East 4th Avenue and Quebec Street. It is expected to be completed in late 2020.
M2 is an eight-storey, mixeduse building with nearly 30,000 square feet of industrial space, 56,000 sq. ft of digital industry space and 56,000 sq. ft of general office.
It will also have five levels of underground parking, with 394 parking stalls and bicycle facilities, the developers say.
Gregory Henriquez of Henriquez Partners Architects is designing the campus. WeWork said Bjarke Ingels would become WeWork’s chief architect for their space.
“We’ve got two existing buildings on site that are retrofitted,” said Roslind McQueen, a leasing executive with Westbank. “One of (the buildings) is the WeWork building and the other is the Hootsuite building.”
She said the new buildings would go up where there are existing parking lots.
McQueen said the campus is “the last piece of the puzzle” in the area’s transformation from old-school industry to high-technology.
The existing alley that runs parallel to Main Street will become a new pedestrian-oriented walkway through the campus, acting as an artery for the neighbourhood, McQueen said. “That will help us to bring the public and bring the workers in that neighbourhood together.”
The project will add another 800 desks to WeWork’s quickly-expanding Vancouver portfolio and will mark its first location outside of downtown, said Gina Phillips, the company’s general manager for the Northwest region.
“We ... really bought into the vision of creating this campus in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, with its vibrant art scene and tech scene,” she said in an interview.
They hope to open the space in the first quarter of 2019, Phillips said, adding: “We plan to really keep going and investing in Vancouver in a big way.”
Hootsuite’s Holmes said the project is a 50-50 partnership between Westbank and himself.
“It’s not a Hootsuite project, although Hootsuite is a tenant of the campus,” he said, noting Hootsuite already operates its second Vancouver location at this site. (Their other location is at nearby 5 East 8th Ave).
Hootsuite first moved to Mount Pleasant in 2013, he said.
In that time, the neighbourhood has been transitioning from lowdensity industry to innovative service and tech businesses. “I think the neighbourhood has blossomed,” Holmes said.
“If you drive up Main Street, you can see a lot of development going on there right now. You can see a lot of great services and businesses that are in the neighbourhood (like) 33 Acres (and) The Juice Truck,” he said. “The list kind of goes on and on.”
He said the location has also proven to be good for workers due to transit connections and “because you have proximity to the city, and all the residential neighbourhoods”, he said. “It’s a pretty exciting and vibrant zone.”
The project marks yet another increase in the city’s co-working stock, which is an important part of the technology ecosystem, said Sean Elbe, a development manager at the Vancouver Economic Commission, the organization that led Vancouver’s failed bid for Amazon’s HQ2.
He said the bid application can be re-targeted and they are currently managing a list of about 64 foreign direct investment prospects in the tech sector alone.
“We’re repurposing that Amazon HQ2 bid content for that,” Elbe said.
New arrivals will undoubtedly be targeting co-working space like the Main Alley campus, Elbe said.
“It helps those global companies get a foothold in the market and they can decide how fast or at what speed they can scale without making that upfront financial commitment,” he said.
We ... really bought into the vision of creating this campus in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, with its vibrant art scene and tech scene.