The Greenest Hotel in Burnaby

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Bosa Properties last week marked the grand opening of Element Vancouver Metrotown, a 169-room hotel in Burnaby’s tallest tower that its GM notes was "built green from the ground up.”

Element Vancouver Metrotown is the first Element-brand hotel in Western Canada; it joins Element Vaughan Southwest in Toronto as the inaugural locations in Canada. The Burnaby hotel takes up the first 18 floors of Bosa's Sovereign, a 46-storey mixed-use building with 202 condos that sold out in a single day in 2011. Element is the only major hotel brand to mandate that all its properties pursue LEED certification. Element Vancouver Metrotown, which is LEED Silver-certified, offers guests bikes to borrow and has electric vehicle charging stations.

Snapped at last week's grand opening: BlueSky Properties president Dale Bosa; Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ Scott Duff; Robert Bosa Group of Cos owner Robert Bosa; Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan; Bosa Properties CEO Colin Bosa; and Element Vancouver Metrotown GM Paul Gallop. The hotel aspires to be zero-waste, sales and marketing director Ken Boyd tells Bisnow. “Any material that can be recycled gets recycled.” Hotel furniture fabric is made from soy; and it has LED lighting, low-VOC paints, dual-flush toilets, and wall-mounted bath products, so "all those tiny bottles" don't get pitched into a landfill.

Element Vancouver Metrotown has a fitness centre, indoor saline pool and 6k SF of meeting space. The hotel’s entire fifth floor is a "garden oasis in the middle of the city," says Ken. Several eateries are on site, including Glowbal Group’s 7k SF Trattoria restaurant. Bosa's Sovereign, at Kingsway and Willingdon Avenue, is steps from Metropolis at Metrotown, the area hub. Across from Sovereign is Station Square, with four residential towers. Ken notes the Metrotown area is B.C.’s fastest-growing at the moment. “Everywhere you look there are cranes.”