TWO NEW OWNERSHIP UPDATES
What lies ahead for 1045 Haro and 1485 Davie?

by Jake McGrail
(click images to enlarge)

**The current apartment building at 1045 haro.** *(BC Condos & Homes)*

The past few years have not been kind to some real estate developers who purchased expensive land in Vancouver, with multiple properties either foreclosed on or placed under receivership and sold to new owners. The properties at 1045 Haro Street and 1485 Davie Street are two such cases that I’ve covered in this column previously (see Related Links below), and so it’s worth taking a look now at what the latest updates are for each of them.

1045 Haro is part of a package with 830-850 Thurlow, which all told includes a seven-storey apartment building as well as a three-storey commercial building. After previous owners Harlow Holdings Ltd. spent years failing to get a project off the ground, the lot was placed under receivership in early 2024 and quickly sold for an eye-watering $85 million to Chard Development.

**A RENDERING OF THE PROPOSED TOWERS AT 1045 HARO AND 830-850 THURLOW.** *(Chard Development)*

Chard quickly began to draft plans for their own redevelopment of the site, and in September of last year officially submitted to the city a proposal to tear down both existing buildings and replace them with two much taller ones. The new buildings would be 26 and 25-storeys tall, respectively, combining to hold 542 rental homes, which is more than three times as many as the amount in the current apartment building.

That proposal was just approved by city council in mid-July, meaning that Chard will have the go-ahead to move on to the next stage of their project. How imminent might that be? Well, there’s probably still a ways to go. The existing building at 1045 Haro is still actively advertising to potential tenants and offering 12-month leases for its units, indicating that they’re not preparing for some sort of immediate shutdown.

In their proposal, Chard stated that tenants renovicted from the building (whenever it does eventually get torn down) will have the opportunity to return to the site once the new towers are built and rent a home there for twenty percent under the ownership’s official asking price. Is that a bit of a hollow gesture given the amount of time that would pass between being forced to find a new home and the chance to return to the site of the old one? Given how quickly developments are moving in the city, it certainly seems that way.

**1485 Davie as it stands.** *(Ewan Streit PHOTO)*

Just a month after 1045 Haro was placed under receivership in January of 2024, a court-ordered sale was put in place for 1485 Davie. One of four different lots under the now seemingly shuttered Align Properties that were foreclosed on in rapid succession, 1485 Davie struggled to close a deal to find a new owner. The property sat on the market for a year and a half before it was finally purchased last July by OpenForm Properties for $38.5 million.

1485 Davie is currently home to a three-storey apartment building with 51 units. OpenForm stated in its press release on the purchase that under half of those homes were occupied. Since then there has been precious little news on what future plans there might be for the site.

City council had originally approved a plan from the previous ownership group to turn the existing building into a 22-storey tower all the way back in 2018, but that obviously never went anywhere. It’s unclear whether OpenForm will try and propose something similar, or if they have a dramatically different idea of what the property could turn into.

Given that nothing has been officially proposed to the city, any changes to the existing building are likely to be years away, continuing the sense of limbo that’s been there for many years already.