Hurley Development’s new office condominium building has topped out near the Interstate 5 Bridge, providing another tall new landmark on downtown Vancouver’s changing skyline.
The Hurley Building has a new exterior coating creeping up to cover its embarrassingly naked steel frame.
Hurley Development, the creator of the six-story office building at 201 S. Third St., is expecting the entire building shell to be finished by November, or perhaps even ahead of schedule in October. And the entire building, except for one final 7,000-square-foot floor, has already been pre-sold.
“You’re going to start to see a major transformation over the next two months,” said Ryan Hurley, owner of Hurley Development. “Our main focus has been to sell an entire floor at a time, and now we have all but one floor pre-sold.”
In an unusual arrangement for Vancouver, the building is a condominium, where businesses will own their office suites, just as homeowners own their apartments in a residential condominium.
Hurley decided to focus on office condos slightly off of the waterfront because he didn’t want to directly compete with The Waterfront Vancouver’s multiple office space options. The Hurley Building still offers waterfront views, but won’t be as expensive, Hurley said.
“I decided I didn’t want to compete with all the office product being built on the waterfront,” Hurley said. “I saw an opportunity for small business that can’t buy a city block or a building downtown. In the Hurley Building, each floor has just over 7,600 square feet, and a balcony on the river side. Each floor is divided into two office condo units.”
The bottom floor of the building is a parking garage, with five stories of office space above.
One local business has already purchased three floors of the building.
Hurley Development is buying a floor for itself and will move into the building when complete, he said.
“I’m a pretty tough negotiator, but I think I got a good deal,” Hurley joked.
The final floor will be listed for sale with Nicholas Diamond’s Real Estate Investment Group in the next few weeks, he said.
The cost to build the building shell will total about $12 million, Hurley said, and overall his company is working on about $150 million worth of projects in Clark County, including two hotels, a few commercial centers and some remodels.
“We’ve had our hand in numerous projects throughout Clark County in the last 10 years,” Hurley said. “We’ve played a pretty big role in the redevelopment of the city of Vancouver.”
Tariff impacts
Russ Klennert, who with Hurley co-owns Talents Construction, the main contractor, said the Trump administration’s trade war with China has caused some material costs in those projects to rise. But in the case of the Hurley Building, the company was able to secure at least most of the steel in advance of the price spikes.
“When it comes to anything steel or aluminum, where we got a lot of product from China, those raw goods went up across the board,” he said of the new 25 percent tariffs. “I was aware of what the tariffs were affecting so we made sure we secured all those purchase orders in advance.”
The most major impact to the Hurley Building has been increased costs of lighting, as lighting fixtures are very commonly made in China. Lighting costs for the Hurley Building went up by about 10 percent because of the trade war, which added about $9,000 to a $81,000 package.
“We paid a little bit more for some things, and some products we couldn’t wait on like lighting, but that was minimal because we have a busy practice and we were aware of it,” Klennert said. “We don’t have a ton of appliances, fortunately, as those went up pretty dramatically. I bet they’ve gone up an easy 50 percent in price.”
He expects future construction projects from many local companies will likely substitute wood or concrete for steel frames to save costs as the trade war continues.
“Maybe a building you might have built out of steel before, if it’s small you might substitute with wood, if it’s big you might substitute with concrete now,” Klennert said.
The Hurley Building is close to Interstate 5, but Hurley said even if a new bridge is eventually built, it shouldn’t affect the project.
“This particular site is located outside of the last set of concept designs shown for the bridge,” Hurley said. “We don’t expect the building to impact any future plans of a bridge.”
Hurley said he wants the completed building to be a prominent gateway into Vancouver, the city where he grew up.
“The location is a gateway project,” Hurley said. “We help identify very immediately if you’ve never come to Vancouver, what Vancouver is. The building sets the course of people’s concept of Vancouver. We took that opportunity to really make a statement that Vancouver is really cutting edge, it’s strong, and that we have a focus on design, creativity and are a fun place to open your business.”
