Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
first Marathon, and then Oxford, both large and long-established Canadian
companies, provided access to a far larger topic of national assets and expan-
sion beyond the gateway cities of Vancouver and Toronto. Here we see the
maturation from an initial real estate landing in Vancouver to spatial and
sectoral diversification and growth into a large national company, albeit
with a majority of offshore shareholders. The next permutation in this
arrangement, however, was a formal merger of the companies in 1998, with
the delisting of Burcon shares in favour of Oxford's, whose larger property
base was securing greater returns (Gibbon 1997).
Adjacent to the Sun Hung Kai-Marathon project, and at the entrance
to Stanley Park, the Bayshore Gardens development continues the line of
luxury condominiums under construction along Coal Harbour (Figure 5.2).
Owned by Tokyo's Aoki Corporation, one of the world's top 30 construction
companies, Bayshore Gardens is a nine hectare 'resort environment'
planned to include almost a thousand residential units and renovation of
the prestigious Westin Bayshore Hotel (Chow 1997h).
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Across West
Georgia Street from Bayshore Gardens, also facing directly onto Stanley
Park is the whimsical and palatial residential property built by
Stanley Ho, Macau gambling tycoon. The eccentric Ho owned a number
of properties in Vancouver, and is said to have purchased the site adjacent
to the park because it had the same name as his own. Moving back east-
wards toward the financial district along the principal artery of West
Georgia Street we arrive at The Residences on Georgia, two 37 story
towers with linked townhouses and a restored heritage mansion amount-
ing to some 500 units, constructed by the Hong Kong- and Singapore-
based Kuok Group in a joint venture with a local developer, Westbank
Projects (Chow 1996b). The Kuok family holds a vast conglomerate
whose Asian property interests include the up-market Shangri-La Hotel
chain. The Residences in the 1200 block West Georgia fall between the
1000 block owned entirely by Runvee Georgia Properties of Hong Kong
and the 1400 block with large sites owned by the Hui family and their
company Park Georgia Realty (
Chinatown News
1988b). Sales of the
Residences began in 1996 just as an adjacent earlier project by the same
developer, The Palisades, was selling out (Figure 5.1). These twin oval
condominium towers enjoyed luxury hotel services from the Kuoks'
Pacific Palisades Hotel next door. The five-star Shangri-La Hotel followed
later on West Georgia, opening in 2009 in time for the 2010 Winter
Olympics (Figure 5.2). The group's first hotel in North America is a spec-
tacular 62-storey structure, with the first 15 floors reserved for hotel use
and the remainder for luxury condominium 'estates'.
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While high-end
condominium projects received the most attention, the Kuoks also had
residential and retail development underway in the suburbs through their
Canadian subsidiary, Abbey Woods Developments.
