Office Out, Hotel In: Why Stalled Vancouver Towers Are Being Reborn as Hotels
Charles Song
5 min read
Governmental Plan
Introduction
A downtown Vancouver office tower that received its development permit in 2022 — but never broke ground — is being redesigned as a predominantly hotel building with 295 guest rooms. It is not an isolated case. Across the downtown core, office approvals secured before the market shifted are being re-entitled for hospitality. We look at what is driving the pivot and what it signals for landowners.
Introduction
A downtown Vancouver office tower that received its development permit in 2022 — but never broke ground — is being redesigned as a predominantly hotel building with 295 guest rooms. It is not an isolated case. Across the downtown core, office approvals secured before the market shifted are being re-entitled for hospitality. We look at what is driving the pivot and what it signals for landowners.
A Six-Year-Old Office Approval Becomes a 295-Room Boutique Hotel at 619 West Hastings
A Six-Year-Old Office Approval Becomes a 295-Room Boutique Hotel at 619 West Hastings
1. The Project
The site at 619 West Hastings Street is a narrow mid-block lot in the Central Business District, beside the heritage Royal Bank Building. It was originally approved for a 28-storey office tower of roughly 158,000 square feet, with a development permit issued in 2022. Construction never started.
The revised proposal by Uptown Property Group, designed by MCM Partnership, increases the tower to 32 storeys. Levels two through 24 would become boutique hotel space of approximately 126,000 square feet, with 295 rooms on levels three to 24. The top seven floors would keep about 32,000 square feet of office space with a shared rooftop amenity deck. As in the original scheme, the new tower would connect to the heritage building next door to improve its seismic performance. Public consultation runs from October 19 to November 2, and City approval is still required.
2. A Pattern, Not an Exception
619 West Hastings joins a growing list. Reliance Properties has proposed a hotel and condominium tower in place of a stalled office project at 1166 West Pender, a shift attributed to the City’s Hotel Development Policy adopted in 2025. Westbank’s office scheme at 150 West Georgia has been reworked into hotel, residential and data centre uses. RBI Group acquired a partially built condominium project at 2511 Spruce Street out of creditor protection with plans for a 90-room hotel. And an existing office building at 1111 West Hastings is being fully converted into a boutique hotel.
The underlying economics explain why. Downtown office vacancy has climbed to 11.8%, its highest level since the early 2000s, and new office construction has fallen to a 15-year low. Hotel demand is moving in the opposite direction: peak-season occupancy regularly exceeds 90%, and room supply has not kept pace with tourism and convention growth.
3. What This Means for Landowners
An entitlement is only as valuable as the use it permits. Owners holding office approvals — or sites zoned for uses the market no longer rewards — should not assume the only options are to build at a loss or wait. A change of use can unlock value from the same site, often with a shorter path than a full rezoning when the existing zoning already allows hotel use.
The key questions are practical: whether the current zoning permits hospitality outright or requires an amendment, how a hotel floor plate fits the existing structural and core layout, which City policies offer support, and how the revised pro forma compares to the original. Structured early, a repositioning can preserve much of the original design investment while changing the project’s financial outcome entirely.
1. The Project
The site at 619 West Hastings Street is a narrow mid-block lot in the Central Business District, beside the heritage Royal Bank Building. It was originally approved for a 28-storey office tower of roughly 158,000 square feet, with a development permit issued in 2022. Construction never started.
The revised proposal by Uptown Property Group, designed by MCM Partnership, increases the tower to 32 storeys. Levels two through 24 would become boutique hotel space of approximately 126,000 square feet, with 295 rooms on levels three to 24. The top seven floors would keep about 32,000 square feet of office space with a shared rooftop amenity deck. As in the original scheme, the new tower would connect to the heritage building next door to improve its seismic performance. Public consultation runs from October 19 to November 2, and City approval is still required.
2. A Pattern, Not an Exception
619 West Hastings joins a growing list. Reliance Properties has proposed a hotel and condominium tower in place of a stalled office project at 1166 West Pender, a shift attributed to the City’s Hotel Development Policy adopted in 2025. Westbank’s office scheme at 150 West Georgia has been reworked into hotel, residential and data centre uses. RBI Group acquired a partially built condominium project at 2511 Spruce Street out of creditor protection with plans for a 90-room hotel. And an existing office building at 1111 West Hastings is being fully converted into a boutique hotel.
The underlying economics explain why. Downtown office vacancy has climbed to 11.8%, its highest level since the early 2000s, and new office construction has fallen to a 15-year low. Hotel demand is moving in the opposite direction: peak-season occupancy regularly exceeds 90%, and room supply has not kept pace with tourism and convention growth.
3. What This Means for Landowners
An entitlement is only as valuable as the use it permits. Owners holding office approvals — or sites zoned for uses the market no longer rewards — should not assume the only options are to build at a loss or wait. A change of use can unlock value from the same site, often with a shorter path than a full rezoning when the existing zoning already allows hotel use.
The key questions are practical: whether the current zoning permits hospitality outright or requires an amendment, how a hotel floor plate fits the existing structural and core layout, which City policies offer support, and how the revised pro forma compares to the original. Structured early, a repositioning can preserve much of the original design investment while changing the project’s financial outcome entirely.
Conclusion
The office-to-hotel shift shows that a stalled project is rarely a dead one — it is often a project with the wrong use or the wrong capital stack. Sites that were approved for one market can be re-entitled for the next. If you hold an office approval, a stalled development permit, or a site whose original plan no longer pencils, we can assess whether a hospitality or mixed-use repositioning offers a better path forward.
