A new three-story, 20-studio apartment complex is going to rise in downtown Vancouver, aiming to help fill the need for more housing at a relatively lower cost.
The new apartment building — called The Daniels apartments, at 904 Daniel St. — is a project from local developer Josh Oliva, who also is one of the owners of RiverWest at The Waterfront Vancouver and The Jefferson Apartments, which opened early this year.
The apartments include 17 parking spaces. Construction is set to start at the beginning of 2023 and be finished by the end of that year, Oliva said.
Oliva’s most recent apartment complex — The Jefferson, at 807 Jefferson St. — is fully occupied. The smaller, less expensive studio apartments were the first to be rented, he said. They began at about $1,100 a month.
Oliva, through a company called 904 Daniels LLC, bought the property in 2020 for $775,000. (In 1993, the property sold for $115,000.) The land currently holds a credit union building, which will be torn down to make room for the apartments.
“We tried to figure out some way to repurpose the credit union, but we thought this would make the most sense to invest in more housing,” he said.
Oliva said it was too early to say how much apartments at The Daniels will cost, but the choice to have them as studio apartments will make them less expensive than one-, two- or three-bedroom apartments.
“We saw a lot of demand at The Jefferson leasing small units as priced lower,” Oliva said.
The Daniels apartments will participate in the city’s Multifamily Tax Exemption program, similar to The Jefferson, where 14 units representing 20 percent of the homes have discounted rent to applicants who meet the program’s income requirements.
“These below-market rates are reserved for 7 households at or below 80 percent area median income (AMI) and 7 households at or below 100 percent AMI,” according to The Jefferson’s website.
