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Canada—an immutable, time-proven
formula for successful business investment."
As for the types of business driving
growth,
CBRE data reveals that 43 per
cent of future office growth is tech or
tech-related tenants. "That's another
thing we should be excited about: all this
activity, at a time when two of our biggest
economic drivers—forestry and mining—are
in the tank," says Quattrin. "Just imagine
how good it will be when the resources
industries rebound."
While real estate trends are many,
Gordon Harris is focused on just one. The
internationally known urban planner is
president and
CEO of SFU Community Trust,
overseeing the continued development of
the award-winning UniverCity community
adjacent to the Simon Fraser University
mountain campus.
To date, UniverCity consists of over
1,800 homes and a rapidly growing town
centre. "By this summer over 5,000 people
will live here, with 60 per cent of that
population having no affiliation with
SFU
at all," he says. "Ultimately, our goal is to
accommodate upwards of 10,000 people
by 2023, by which point we hope to have
moved beyond our current reputation as a
model sustainable community and become
an inspiration for many similar communities
throughout Western Canada and beyond."
Raising the bar for sustainable building
practices is UniverCity's hallmark: all new
buildings have specific requirements to
ensure that their energy performance
exceeds the new national energy code. A low-
carbon district energy system is also in place.
Absolutely no facet of the community,
which first broke ground just over a dozen
years ago, has been overlooked: the
UniverCity Childcare project will be the
first in Canada to meet the Living Building
Challenge, which is widely considered
the ultimate in green benchmarks.
SFU
Community Trust also refurbished an unused
university building to create University
Highlands Elementary School, which meets
LEED Gold standards and includes energy
and water efficiency upgrades.
Aside from its environmental benefits,
the main point of UniverCity as far as Harris
is concerned is that it is economically
feasible. "For example, our Childcare Centre
is designed to harvest more energy and
water than it uses, and was built for 18 per
cent below the cost norm under the code,"
he says. "There's nothing sophisticated in
the materials or systems we use, we simply
make the right choices—and as a result,
UniverCity is both scalable and replicable."
With the City of Vancouver considering
Passive House standards and green
building practices becoming steadily more
prevalent in other jurisdictions, Harris
thinks profitable sustainable development
is becoming a significant facet of real estate
development overall. "But we have to talk
more about the issues that will spur growth
in this regard, such as livability, regional
economic development and our aging
population," he says. "The more we explore
the challenges facing us as a society, the
more we'll realize that the solutions lie in
the way UniverCity is currently evolving."
