In Vancouver’s earliest days, they represented the heart of Vancouver’s financial district.

If all goes according to plan, they’ll come back to life – almost a century later – as part of a 37-storey green office condo and retail tower at the corner of West Hastings and Hornby streets.

They are the Class-A heritage Ceperley-Rounsefell Building and Class-B heritage Royal Financial Building in the 800 block of West Hastings. Jameson Development Corp., a private Vancouver-based subsidiary of Papajohns, is proposing to incorporate the two heritage sites into the new mixed-use structure in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

“It’s going to set a new standard for both architectural design and environmental sustainability,” said Chuck Brook, principal of Brook Development Planning Inc., the project’s planner.

Image courtesy of Brook Development Planning
Plan call for incorporating two heritage buildings into a 37-storey project that evokes memories of city’s earliest days.

The 24,500-sq.-metre Hastings Tower, as it’s currently known, is slated to contain eight storeys of office space, 25 storeys of condos, approximately three storeys of retail and an underground parking lot. Size-wise, the building will consist of 8,000 sq. metres of office and retail space, and 11,500 sq. metres of residential.

The building will be 112 metres high – the maximum height allowed under the city’s 10th and Cambie view corridor. Brook intends to apply to reduce the parking lot’s original size and encourage residents to use the Co-operative Auto Network when they want to drive somewhere.

Brook has also applied to change the site’s current zoning to comprehensive district from downtown district zoning and construction permits are expected by 2005. Construction is expected to be completed by 2007.

“I don’t see anything that I would call a capital-C challenge,” said Brook, a former city development planner.

The main challenge, he added, will be to show that the building is “a new design direction for downtown Vancouver in terms of being a sustainable city.”

Jameson has retained the services of Foster and Partners, a London, England-based architectural firm that has designed more than 100 buildings worldwide – including the HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, the rebuilt Reichstag in Berlin and the Swiss Re building in London.

Nigel Dancey, a senior partner with Foster and Partners, attended a recent information session for industry insiders in Vancouver.

Local architect Walter Francl is also collaborating on the project.

Brook said the 37-storey structure will consume as much energy as a 12-storey conventional building because it will not require as much conventional air conditioning or heating machinery.

“We do need some of it, but far less than your typical building needs,” said Brook.

He said the building’s design will move heat and air from the residential area in the morning to the office area in mid-day and back to the residential area at night – rather than just emitting it into the atmosphere. The tower’s skin will combine different types of glass and varying degrees of fins and heat deflectors on the west and south sides to take advantage of air flow and maximum sunlight.

The building’s floor will also be an unusual shape to best incorporate prevailing winds.

“I’d like to think this is a new vanguard for the future of downtown Vancouver,” said Brook.

That future will have strong links to the city’s past as the two heritage buildings, built in the 1920s, are featured prominently in the retail component.

The Ceperley-Rounsefell building was the home of Ceperley & Ross, which became the city’s largest real estate and investment firm. The company was founded by Henry Ceperley, a real estate tycoon from Oneonta, N.Y., who arrived in Vancouver in 1886, the same year it was incorporated as a city.

Ceperley influenced the creation of several Vancouver-area landmarks that became public property. He and his business partner Arthur Wellington Ross helped turn a former military reserve into Stanley Park after successfully lobbying Ottawa and the Canadian Pacific Railway, which controlled the land. Ceperley and Ross had both owned property in the area, but surrendered it for park purposes.

Ceperley Park, a children’s playground at Second Beach in Stanley Park, is dedicated to the Ceperley family. Henry financed the playground in accordance with his second wife Grace’s will, after he sold their Fairacres retirement mansion on Deer Lake in Burnaby in 1922. The Fairacres mansion is now the home of the Burnaby Art Gallery.

The second part of the Ceperley-Rounsefell building is named after Francis William Rounsefell. About two hours after arriving in Vancouver from his hometown of Wolfville, N.S., then 20-year-old Rounsefell showed up at the office of Ceperley and Ross and asked for a job.

He was told to report the next day and start work as an accountant. A few years later, he became a partner in the firm. Rounsefell is the namesake of the Rounsefell Cup, which goes annually to the B.C. Rugby Union’s champion.

Brook said it was “sad” to see what had become of the Ceperley-Rounsefell building because a recent owner put in a second floor and destroyed the original two-storey ceiling space. Seismic bracing, to prevent damage in case of earthquake, was also installed on one side of the building, but several steel beams were exposed. Brook said builders will take out the second floor and the steel beams, and the interior will be completely restored to its original state with a skylight intact.

The second heritage building – the Royal Financial building – served as the home of the B.C. and Yukon chapter of the Canadian Chamber of Mines. It currently contains a small art gallery.

According to the chamber’s website, the group purchased the site, also known as the Dukes building, for $85,000 in the late 1950s, with $15,000 down and the remainder mortgaged at seven per cent over 20 years.

The Royal features pre-Second World War architecture that is expected to be retained in the new office, condo and retail tower.

Brook said several companies and area residents have already expressed interest in moving into the new complex. Bob Rennie of Rennie Project Marketing, already consulting on the project, is expected to sell units on behalf of the developer.

Sales will not begin until zoning and building permit applications are approved.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)