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J UNE 2019 | 63 Fair Haven Homes McKay Apartments PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW LATREILLE/COURTESY NSDA ARCHITECTS Fair Haven Homes McKay Apartments by ROBIN BRUNET T he interiors with their clean lines and bleached wood finishes look for all the world like beachfront accommodations, with huge win- dows bathing everything in sunlight – and these apartments, in a build- ing overlooking generous amounts of well-planned green space, are a prime example of what rental living can be in B.C. for people 55 and older. The 113 studio and 32 one-bedroom apartments that comprise the McKay Apartments in Burnaby were devel- oped by Fair Haven Homes Society, with help from BC Housing and Colliers International. The property was designed to encourage active, indepen- dent living, and features outdoor patio and landscaped grounds, raised garden plots, a multi-purpose room with fire- place and kitchen, and underground parking with bike and scooter storage. The L-shaped wood frame building's bays of various depths, furred-out wall panel siding, and materials pushing in and out provide visual interest while reducing the scale of the three- and four-storey facility. Most remarkably, McKay, which replaces a series of aging duplex cottages, was created under strict budget guidelines (the prov- ince, through BC Housing, provided $3 million in capital funding and $20.6 million in construction financing), with an unusual construction delivery method employed to keep costs down, while maintaining quality. McKay is part of the B.C. govern- ment's initiative to develop more affordable rental housing for seniors, and early on in the planning stage Fair Haven opted to create studios 350 square feet in size as well as one-bed- rooms in order to reach that goal. "We tried to keep the rents as low as pos- sible, so our studio units rent for $975 per month," says Fair Haven Homes Society CEO Joy Parsons. "It's still high for a senior who's on a limited income, but it's more affordable than in other areas of the Lower Mainland." One of the most challenging aspects of the project for Ken Wong, princi- pal at NSDA Architects, was to create a pleasing building on a 62,000-square- foot site with a 20-foot slope from one end to the other. "This dictated the form of the building to a degree," he says. "To maintain uniformity, we designed a four-storey wing of the building for the lower slope and a three-storey wing situation at the higher elevation with the parking underground and the courtyard filling out these two wings." Brick was proposed mainly at the basement level to reduce the massing of the four-storey facade along Rumble Street, and an articulated wall panel cladding siding system in two colours would also reduce scale and provide visual interest. Although the percent- age of glazing to exterior wall surface is kept low at below 40 percent, the tops of the windows were kept high as possible to allow for natural light pen- etration as well as increase the thermal performance of the envelope. MCW Consultants ensured that heat recov- ery from the suite exhausts and ducted air supply to the suites would add energy savings, while providing a quiet ventilation option for residents (low- flush toilets and low flow plumbing also contributed to energy efficiency). One of the most beneficial tools in the project came about when the archi- tect and JBR Construction relied on CadMakers to create a 3D virtual con- struction model that interfaced with the consultant drawings, to highlight mechanical and other co-ordination issues and resolve them before ground broke on the project in April of 2017. JBR also saved considerable time and money by constructing McKay using a pre-fab panelling system. Seagate Constructors manufactured all the walls, floors, and roof of the facility in sections (some as large as 10 by 40 feet) and transported them to the site, where JBR moved them into the proper positions by crane and fastened them together. Parsons says her Society couldn't be more thrilled with the outcome. "McKay is a great template for future projects, and in fact we're currently using it along with lessons learned during the design and construction to develop a similar property in East Vancouver. "Our board had worked for at least seven years to bring the McKay project to fruition, and we're so happy that the architects and builders have given us an apartment complex with wonderful homes and plenty of common spaces and other elements that encourage the interaction of residents." A LOCATION 4341 Rumble Street, Burnaby, B.C. OWNER/DEVELOPER Fair Haven Homes Society ARCHITECT NSDA Architects GENERAL CONTRACTOR JBR Construction STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Krahn Engineering MECHANICAL/ ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT MCW Consultants LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT ETA Landscape Architecture TOTAL SIZE 65,710 square feet TOTAL COST $23.6 million

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