An international destination shopping and entertainment district - on a scale never before seen in Richmond - is part of a $4 billion development wave sweeping over the city centre.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie revealed Tuesday at a "Shaping our City" chamber of commerce luncheon that the biggest ever single development application has dropped at city hall.
The plan involves a four million square feet site on 30 hectares of vacant land at Duck Island, just southwest of the River Rock Casino.
Proposed by Jinggong Development, understood to be a Chinese-based company, the project is called Vancouver International Plaza (VIP) and includes six high-end hotels, 1.1 million square feet of office space and a 450,000 square foot trade and convention centre.
The plans - if approved; a process which could take several years - are already being touted as a rival for international destinations such as the Staples Centre entertainment district in Los Angeles and similar operations in Sydney and around the globe.
Referring to a map highlighting where the $4 billion worth of new residential and commercial development is now under construction, being marketed or going through the planning approval process, Brodie said the Duck Island application is an indication of the intense level of interest Richmond is generating in terms of global investment.
"It's in the very early stages and will take a long time to go through the process," Brodie told the chamber members at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport Hotel.
"But it does illustrate the significant potential we're seeing in the city right now."
Gary Pooni - of Vancouver-based Brooke Pooni Associates, which is acting as VIP's project manager - said he couldn't yet place a ballpark figure on the scale of the development because it's at such an early stage.
"We're still looking at all the economic impact studies for this and the scope of the project," Pooni said.
"Following on from the Olympics and Canada Line, Richmond is the next big city that's to be put on the international stage.
"This will be an international entertainment complex. The competition would be truly international.
"We will be talking to the public in the very near future about the ideas we have."
The vast majority of the development and investment in question, Brodie pointed out, either surrounds or skirts the Canada Line or the Olympic oval district.
It's all under control, he assured; it's designed to densify around the city centre and is very much in line with Richmond's City Centre Area Plan (CCAP).
The CCAP was drafted several years ago to deal with the city's projected population spike from the current 200,000 to 280,000 in 2041.
To put the expected concentrated growth into perspective, the city centre's population density right now is 5,459 people per square kilometre. By 2041, that figure is forecast to almost double.
But it will still trail, Brodie indicated, way behind the likes of Vancouver's west end, which sits at 21,834 per square kilometre.
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