A Vancouver-based property management firm is quietly helping turn a pocket of the city into a world-class bio-technology hub.
Low Tide Properties, co-founded by local celebrity entrepreneur Chip Wilson, has been doggedly advancing Great North Way in Vancouver as a biotech hub through securing key tenants, including StemCell Technologies and Augurex Life Sciences Corp.
So far, Low Tide’s tenant portfolio consists of more than a dozen firms across the city, according to president Andrew Chang.
Chang informed BC Business that Low Tide’s tenants occupy half a million square feet combined in Vancouver.
Now the firm wants to launch its own space with a specific vision of the future in mind.
Lab 29, described as a “cutting-edge laboratory and office building,” will aim to further drive Low Tide’s mission when it becomes operational toward the end of 2026.
The real estate company targets currently tenants within the creative space, where life sciences and biotech are prevalent but regionally underserved.
“There haven’t been a lot of life science or biotech specific buildings in Vancouver,” Chang told BCB.
Low Tide imagines a hub where tenants grow and stay rather than exit the BC ecosystem after reaching a certain stage.
“Companies, when they grow to a certain size, inevitably run out of space and have to move outside Vancouver—or they get bought out by another company south of the border and end up moving,” suggested Chasing to BCB. “That doesn’t really foster a healthy healthcare hub in the city of Vancouver and the province of BC.”
Near the fledgling hub is Emily Carr University and a future hospital which will feature 800,000 square feet of medical office and research space.
The St. Paul’s campus development will have a “transformative impact on the area,” Chang believes.
Lab 29’s strategic proximity to this development will help it foster the next generation of life sciences innovation within an emerging biotech hub, according to Chang.
Low Tide Properties was founded in Vancouver in 2011.
Leave a Reply