Toronto-based Starlight Investments has acquired a high-profile rental building in the West End of Vancouver, as the company continues to expand its portfolio in British Columbia.
Starlight announced the acquisition in June, but did not identify the vendor or disclose the acquisition price, and the transaction has gone unreported by media.
The property at hand is The Lauren, a 22-storey building with 186 units located at 1051 Broughton Street (formerly 1401 Comox Street) in the West End of Vancouver, which was developed by Westbank alongside its long-time partner Peterson Group, according to a City of Vancouver rezoning report from 2012.
However, since Starlight's June announcement, the transaction has been reported by various commercial real estate brokerages as a share sale — a sale of the legal entity that owns the property, rather than a sale of the property. The registered owner of The Lauren is PW Comox Holdings Ltd.
The transaction occurred in June and three brokers from three different brokerages STOREYS spoke to said that no other transaction data is available due to it being a share sale, which get recorded differently than traditional transactions and can sometimes go completely undetected.
In a report listing the transaction, CBRE attributed the sale to Peterson Group, which is now reflected on Peterson's corporate website, with the status of The Lauren noted as "divested."
In their own upcoming report, Goodman Commercial estimates that The Lauren transacted for around $125 million, while a fourth person, an industry source, STOREYS spoke to had the price at around $120 million. BC Assessment values The Lauren at $115,638,000.
It's unclear whether Westbank was involved in the transaction and whether it still has any ownership stake in the property, but Westbank no longer has control over The Lauren, which is now managed by MetCap Living, a property manager frequently employed by Starlight.
Westbank and Peterson have not responded to inquiries made by STOREYS on August 23, while Starlight declined to provide further comment on the transaction.
Five multi-family transactions in the West End of Vancouver, including 1051 Broughton Street.(CBRE)
The Lauren
Formerly 1401 Comox Street, the site was originally occupied by a St. John's United Church that was constructed in the early 1900s. In 2009, the property was reportedly acquired for $4.5 million by Westbank and Peterson, in a deal that was brokered by Mark Lester and Alan Johnson of Colliers.
The developers subsequently demolished the site in February 2011 via a fire that alarmed neighbours and was later called a planned Buddhist "blessing ceremony." The project was completed in 2014 and The Lauren — possibly named after Westbank Founder Ian Gillespie's daughter — became Westbank's first project under Westbank Living, the company's rental division. The Lauren also ended up being one of the first purpose-built rental towers constructed in the West End of Vancouver in decades, according to Peterson's website.
In 2015, residents of the West End cried foul after reportedly seeing two-bedroom units listed with asking rents of $3,500, after The Lauren was pitched as a positive for the neighbourhood's supply of affordable housing. (These days, rent for a two-bedroom unit in The Lauren is "starting from" $3,833 a month.)
Then, in 2016, The Lauren again received some negative attention after it was reported that Westbank had used fixed-term leases with move-out clauses for all of the building's tenancies, taking advantage of a loophole that allowed Westbank to increase rents by more than the annual maximum rent increase set by the Province.
Although it's unclear whether Westbank has sold its stake in The Lauren, Westbank has been involved in numerous sales in 2024.
In July, as first reported by STOREYS, Westbank sold The Pendrell, a 21-storey rental tower also in the West End, to CAPREIT for $137 million. In March, Allied Properties REIT also announced that it had acquired majority stakes in both the 24-storey Deloitte Summit office tower in Vancouver and the 57-storey 19 Duncan mixed-use tower in Toronto from Westbank, by converting a loan it had provided to Westbank into equity.
STOREYS has learned that in between those transactions, Westbank also sold two airspace parcels in May to a private buyer for a combined $12.5 million, according to transaction data. Those two airspace parcels are 8588 Cornish Street and 8475 Granville Street, both of which are located around Westbank's Granville at 70th project.
