By REW Editor, REW.ca
Today saw the official groundbreaking for Vancouver’s first cohousing complex, being built on East 33rd near Argyle Street in Kensington Cedar-Cottage.
Construction is expected to take 14 months. The complex will be made up of four separate residential buildings and a communal “clubhouse” with a community kitchen and dining room, activity rooms for children and teenagers, office areas, guest rooms, a yoga studio and a rooftop garden. There will be also ground-level gardens, workshops, courtyard and a play area to encourage year-round social contact, according to Vancouver Cohousing.
The 31 homes will range from studios to one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom units – all with their own kitchens.
Three units remain unsold: a 450- square-foot studio at $286,080, a 1,055-square-foot three-bedroom unit at $622,485, and a 1,146-square-foot three-bedroom unit at $682,393. Negotiations are ongoing for two covenanted rental suites.
Brian Jackson, the city’s manager of planning and development, attended the groundbreaking to acknowledge the hard work that went into the seeing the project realized.
Jackson said that he had worked with planners to find creative ways to ensure community concerns were addressed, with the applicants to make sure that the city was responding to the unique circumstances of this type of development, and that city staff had toured a cohousing complex in Burnaby to learn more about how successful cohousing works.
REW.ca’s sister newspaper Vancouver Courier has taken a closer look at the project and its future residentshere.
