-
The heritage building is for sale, though a price hasn't been released yet
For anyone asking, "What's going on the with Bay Building in downtown Vancouver?" there's now an answer.
It's being sold.
On Wednesday, Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis and Marcus & Millichap announced the two firms were appointed as the advisory team behind the sale of the iconic downtown Vancouver retail space.
The store is (or rather, was) huge, and was home to the Hudson's Bay Company before closing earlier this year.
"Comprising approximately 617,628 square feet across seven floors and two underground levels, the property occupies a 1.76-acre site at the highly visible intersection of Granville and West Georgia streets," reads a press release.
The age, size and location make it a unique property. The building at 674 Granville St. is listed on the city's heritage register.
"Situated at centre ice in Vancouver’s financial and retail district, investors have the ability to unlock significant upside through repositioning or redevelopment strategies while preserving the building’s architectural and historical legacy," says CBRE's Jim Szabo.
But the firms haven't publicly disclosed how much the property is selling for.
However, there are some clues to its price range. A conditional agreement was signed in 2018 with an offshore buyer to sell the historic site for $675 million, but the deal never completed.
Currently, the property is assessed at $194.7 million. Of that, the property value itself makes up $162.8 million. The valuation is affected by regulations, according to BC Assessment.
As of publication time, neither the CBRE nor Marcus & Millichap have the property listed on their websites.
The Hudson's Bay Building is well over 100 years old. Built in 1913, it's been a staple of Vancouver's Granville Street for more than a century.
-With files from Jami Makan
03-12-2025 -
Challenging times create opportunities for smaller offices
Ontario-based Lennard Commercial Realty has opened up shop in Vancouver, the first office outside of Ontario for a firm that describes itself as one of the fastest growing commercial real estate brokerages in Canada.
All offices are broker-owned, with the Vancouver office led by partners Allon Shapiro, managing broker, and Aaron Ulinder, executive vice-president.
“Every office — of which there are now seven and counting, as we do have further expansion plans — is partner-led, so the people that are doing the work own the business,” Ulinder said. “It’s usually two to three partners with an equity stakehold in each office.”
He said the model is a stark contrast to those at the big shops like Colliers, Avison Young, and CBRE, where Shapiro and he spent most of their careers. It means Lennard can be more nimble and flexible in decision-making and the partners can be more entrepreneurial, benefiting both the business and their clients.
“Lennard is a private institution. We’re not publicly traded. We have no debt,” said Ulinder. “Pretty much every other large brokerage across the nation is riddled with debt and some are in and out of insolvency. That’s very much not the case [with Lennard]. When you don’t have any debt, you can be far more nimble.”
The model is also “materially more favourable” for high-performance brokers. Despite what can objectively be described as a down market, Ulinder believes this is actually a great time to launch a new brokerage office.
Ulinder was first approached by Lennard around five years ago, and when the conversation resumed earlier this year, he was ready.
Judging by the initial response to the firm’s debut, so is the market, with Ulinder anticipating the office to have a team of between 15 and 20 brokers by this time next year. (They are also talking to people in Calgary and Edmonton.)
“We couldn’t have launched Lennard Vancouver at a better or more opportune time than the market we’re in right now because the whole industry is looking for a better model and we, without question, have it,” he said. “I’ve been told that what we’re doing right now is sort of what some of the major shops looked like 30 years ago. But as major shops have grown, and some have gone to a publicly traded model, things get far more bureaucratic and far less nimble.”
A similar principle guided the succession plans for the Vancouver office of Lee & Associates, another broker-owned office that saw long-time partners John McIntyre, Scott Primrose and Bob Saunders quietly hand the reins to principal Steve Caldwell and new partners James Bayley, Sebastian Espinosa, Chris McIntyre, Neil McAllister, Arash Rezai and Ryan Saunders at the end of September.
“We wanted to keep it in house; we weren’t interested in parties outside the company having an ownership position,” McIntyre said. “They identify with the ongoing operation and policies of the company when they’re shareholders.”
This may be even more critical in a challenging market like the present one, where Ulinder said deals are not just harder to come by, but also harder to process, oftentimes more protracted, and require more effort than when deal velocity is greater.
Vancouver-based Goodman Commercial, which focuses primarily on multi-family assets, is one of the few teams in the region still steadily completing deals and they have had a similar experience.
Principal Mark Goodman told Western Investor his team completed 39 deals in the booming 2021 market, 27 or 28 of which were unconditional, and that things were moving so fast they were preparing offer templates in advance. This year, they’ve completed 20 deals, only three of which were unconditional, and have had four times as many listings, many of which have been court-ordered.
“A few years ago we saw the writing on the wall and we started marketing ourselves and speaking to anybody involved in the insolvency, trustee, restructuring, court-ordered, receivership space,” said Goodman. “We traditionally never had to work that market, because frankly it was a very niche expertise. You have to understand what the courts want, what the judges want, the process, the reporting.”
Like Lennard, Goodman has also been fielding calls from other brokers thinking about changing shops.
“I’m getting calls multiple times a week from brokers wondering if we have a place for them to do commercial, could they join our team, they’re not happy where they are,” said Goodman. “It’s such a strange time. I’m closing on my 24th year of selling real estate. This has been hands down the most difficult and challenging real estate environment I’ve ever had to operate in.”
With files from Peter Mitham
03-12-2025 -
Located in Shaughnessy, Greencroft was designed by architect Thomas Hooper and built in 1912.
It’s not every day an opportunity comes along to live in the former home of the highest-ranking officer of the province and a representative of royalty. But the four-storey Tudor and Gothic-revival estate of lieutenant-governor Eric Hamber, who purchased the Shaughnessy property in 1913 and named it Greencroft, is now on the market at a reduced price, due to a court-ordered sale.
Hamber, who served as lieutenant-governor from 1936 to 1941, started his career as a banker. According to Vancouver West End History and newspaper clippings at the time, shortly after marrying Aldyen Hendry in 1912, he joined her industrialist father’s mill and trading company, who left it to the couple upon his death in 1916. Hamber’s businesses eventually encompassed successes in timber, banking, railways and coal. He later acquired the Minnekhada farm property in Coquitlam, which became Minnekhada Regional Park.
The couple’s elite social circle expanded to include politicians and royalty. Outside the mansion, a plaque reads: “Renowned for their entertaining, the Hambers hosted guests such as former Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.”
Hamber died in 1960, and Aldyen was reported to still be living at Greencroft when she died in 1988 at the age of 103. The home was sold and the bulk of the couple’s estate was bequeathed to the various charities they supported.
20-11-2025 -
Businesses along East Broadway near Main Street are staring down another 10 months of disruption from SkyTrain construction
Some local businesses operating near the busy intersection of East Broadway and Main Street in Vancouver say they might not last long enough to benefit from the eventual completion of the Mount Pleasant SkyTrain Station.
The station is one stop along the 5.7-kilometre, east-west Broadway subway extension that was originally scheduled to be complete by the end of 2025 but now won’t be done until fall 2027.
And recently announced traffic detours in the area, planned for early next year, have left some store owners and restaurants staring down several more months of disruptions.
“We’ve been here about 10 years and half of it has been brutal,” said Ron MacGillivray, owner of Fable Diner, located in the historic Lee Building at the corner of Main and East Broadway. “A lot of restaurants recovered from COVID. We haven’t, because it’s … right into construction.
“It’s like we’ve been living in a COVID hangover.”
Dust and noise during the initial construction of the subway drove customers away, something MacGillivray worries will happen again when work begins in January to rebuild the street above the future station right in front of his restaurant’s windows.
30-10-2025
