Why building higher is not always better Joanne Lee-Young Vancouver Sun January 23, 2025

I always enjoy chatting with Joanne Lee-Young who regularly writes about real estate for the Vancouver Sun. She has the ability to make complex matters compehensible for the average reader. So when she called me to find out what I thought about the city's decision to relax view cones to permit taller buildings, I thought I should offer a perspective that others might not appreciate. Building taller is not always better.

Fortunately, architect James Cheng also agreed to talk to her as well. As the architect of many of Vancouver's tallest buildings, he knows the pros and cons of building towers better than most. Here's Ms. Lee-Young's story.

The City of Vancouver’s decision to relax view-protection policies prompted a flurry of developers to say they’ll seek to build taller, but some in the industry question how much of this

Getting approval to add floors means more units can be sold on the same site and there is more money to be made from it. But there might be a tipping point, some say, where it isn’t necessarily more lucrative or even that easy for the density that is being approved to actually get built, even though the value of the land increases because of it.

The thing about doing bigger, taller buildings isn’t only that they are more expensive to build, but there is an all-or-nothing proposition to them,” said Michael Geller, a longtime developer, real estate consultant, urban planner and retired architect.

If you compare 600 units in one 60-storey building with 600 units spread across three buildings, it’s much harder in the single, tall building to sell the number of units needed to get financing, he explained. There isn’t the opportunity to phase in the process and start by selling and building 200 in one building first.

It’s also the case, he said, that taller buildings take much longer to complete, which increases carrying costs.

“If a six-storey wood frame building takes 12 months or maybe as long as 14 to 16 months to build, an 18-storey tower can take two years. A 60-storey one takes proportionately longer,” he said.

As Postmedia News reported earlier this month, changes to view protection policies last year by Vancouver city council have prompted some developers of condo projects to revise long-held building plans and shoot for much higher towers, including the owners of two major sites on northeast False Creek.

Taller towers have been approved elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, such as in Burnaby where Pinnacle International has the green light to proceed with two residential towers that will be among the tallest in Western Canada at 72 and 80 storeys.

But there has also been a trend in the market of some developers shifting plans they had for taller buildings in favour of shorter buildings.

According to Vancouver architect James Cheng, experienced developers know there are other factors that directly affect their profitability.

“Maximum density is not the only answer to increasing profits,” he said.

Increasing allowances for density doesn’t solve some deep truisms, he said.

“Our current Vancouver-area markets are being hit with this triple whammy: building too big, no market to absorb it and it is inefficient to build. That is why so many projects are cancelled and so many are in court-ordered sales,” said Cheng.