Nine-tower City Centre project remains paused as council grants another one year extension

After three years of waiting, Coquitlam council is hoping the third delay is the charm.

Council unanimously granted a third one-year extension to a nine-tower project set to include approximately 4,000 residential units including an office space and a hotel on the site of the old Chrysler dealership in City Centre.

Much of council praised the master development plan in 2022.

“This is exactly what a transit-oriented development should be,” said Coun. Steve Kim at the time. “To me, this is revitalization at its finest.”

However, Marcon development company hasn’t yet satisfied certain requirements including legal documents, according to city staff.

The company was granted one-year extensions in 2023 and 2024.

“The requested time extension allows staff to continue to work with the applicant to resolve a number of servicing and transportation issues, including the pedestrian bridge and its connection to the TransLink site,” stated a city staff report.

Following the extension in September 2024, final adoption was tentatively slated for the first half of 2025. It is now anticipated that the project will come forward for final adoption in the first half of 2026, according to staff.

Located at Pheasant Street, Christmas Way and Lougheed Highway, the project is set to include six market strata towers totalling 3,000 units, and 1,000 rental units arrayed in two l towers – one of which will include a 220-space childcare facility.

The project also includes a hotel/office tower with a conference centre, and more than 500,000 square feet of commercial space.

Once finished, the site is set to include two parks, a plaza, and a pedestrian bridge connecting to TransLink’s site to the west.

Discussing the project in 2022 – prior to the passage of new provincial housing legislation –Mayor Richard Stewart suggested the transformative development would shield other neighbourhoods from increased density.

“This is where we will have to have enormous change so that other neighbourhoods won’t change as dramatically,” he said.

Full build-out is expected to take about 10 years.