Telus Garden: More Than A Pretty Name
TELUS Garden is the city's most successful new office project, with 94% of the building pre-leased. Project manager Rhiannon Mabberley tells us why TELUS' $750M HQ, opening later this year, is on the vanguard of sustainability and greener than any Vancouver tower out there. (It's so green, some of the trees are jealous.)
A 1M SF project, TELUS Garden—comprising a 500k SF, 22-storey office tower and a 424-unit, 54-storey condo tower—lives up to its name, with 10k SF of green roofs and two elevated roof forests. Plus 22% of the site has been re-landscaped with native species. Rhiannon, with developer Westbank, notes the complex, designed by Henriquez Partners Architects, will be the first LEED Platinum office tower to open in North America (based on 2009 standards).
Hitting that "very aggressive" target has involved ticking off an 86-point LEED score card, she says. TELUS Garden will run on a district energy system that uses waste heat from a neighbouring Telus data switch building to heat and cool the office tower and condo building. The system will reduce the energy demand on TELUS Garden by 86% compared with a typical office building, according to Rhiannon. The office tower will have triple-pane glazing, a rainwater capturing system, and a raised-floor ventilation system that funnels in fresh air from outside, with individual office climate controls.
TELUS Garden's 94% lease rate "far exceeds" the performance of any of the project's competition among the new office buildings going up downtown, Rhiannon points out. State-of-the-art sustainability features are a big part of what's made TELUS Garden attractive to tenants, she says. The building's anchor tenant will take 10 floors and 200k SF. Other occupants include Amazon, law firm Bull Houser, and Capstone Mining. Typical tower floor plates are 23k SF (a lower-rise office bar running along West Georgia Street has 30k SF floors).
The TELUS Garden complex, featuring LED lighting and solar paneling, will include a residential tower atop a podium that will house a 20k SF YYoga centre with practice studios, fitness centre, outdoor pool and hot tub, as well as an outdoor amenity space with kitchen. At the base of the residential tower will be retail lining Robson Street. The residential building will target LEED Gold.
