Burnaby’s newest campus isn’t for students – it’s an evolution of the conventional business park.
Instead of wide spaces dotted with massive, uniform midrises, the new Eastlake Campus consists of six buildings joined by a road that curves past fountains and plazas.
It’s a great organizing system to use for a site,” said Norm Couttie, president of the Adera Development Corporation. Adera is developing the site in partnership with Sun Life Investment Management.
“I don’t think this has ever been done in this way before,” he said. “(Campus) is sort of a word that gets used but in this case, we’ve taken that word to heart and tried to make it like a university campus, where the different faculty buildings are all linked up around a pathway system.”
Eastlake Campus, with its 310,000 square feet of warehouse flex space, is in the final phases of development, with the first building opening this summer, according to Couttie.
“It’s the last undeveloped site in the Lake City business park,” he said. “It’s the final piece of the whole puzzle.”
The site was a challenging one to develop, he added.
“The reason that it took so long to get developed is, it’s got a creek on either side and quite a steep slope,” he explained.
The first tenant is Novadaq, a B.C. company that makes imaging technology for surgeries, he said.
“They do high tech medical imaging,” he said, adding the tech company uses fluorescent dye to illuminate organs and other body systems of the body, for use during surgery.
Novadaq, currently based in Richmond, will occupy 36,000 square feet of the first building as of June 1, according to Couttie.
“We’ve got that much again leased out in the other buildings,” he said, adding the contracts are being negotiated. “We’re over 50 per cent leased right now.”
The Lake City business district is popular with technology companies because of its central location and its proximity to the SkyTrain, according to Couttie.
“This is attracting a higher office component than you might normally see, which is why it’s sort of turning into a tech park,” he said, adding technology companies need flexible facilities, with lab space, production space and office space.
“You can’t often do all that in an office building – and it’s not a warehouse, either, it’s this in-between space,” he explained.
