Bosa BlueSky submitted two interrelated rezonings for a pair of linked tower proposals in 2017. The two sites are on either side of Harwood Street’s 1000 block at Thurlow Street. While strata projects in this part of the West End were expected to provide 25% of the floorspace as non-market housing (given to the City of Vancouver as an airspace parcel), Bosa’s proposal was that all the non-market space (98 units) would be in one of the two towers, with 202 condos in total.
The 2017 towers were similar in design, but not a matched pair, and were proposed at 32 and 33 storeys high. They were designed, as many of the West End projects, by Henriquez Partners Architects.
The condo market stalled a few years ago, but rental still has a strong demand, and Bosa have a rental business, Bosa4Rent Homes.
The project was resurrected after a policy change allowed it to proceed with the social housing replaced with below-market rental, provided the whole project becomes rental. The rezoning showed two identical brick-clad 34 storey towers with 564 rental units, 113 to be leased at below-market rents.
Now the DP has been submitted, with a minor change in design. The north tower has 219 market and 56 below market apartments, (103 two and three bedrooms). The south tower has one less market unit, and 102 family-sized. For colour, they’ve opted with a “ying and yang” theme, in that one building starts off virtually black at the base, and transitions to a mostly white top, while the other does the inverse. They’ve now been addressed as 1098 and 1099 Harwood.
Changing City Updates 