Adera Development and Sun Life Investment Management recently cut ribbon on Eastlake Campus, a California-inspired office/warehouse flex project in Burnaby’s burgeoning Lake City business district. Adera marketing/sales VP Eric Andreasen tells us how the development's luring tenants to this new high-tech hub.

That's Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan front and centre at Eastlake's grand opening earlier this month, flanked by Eric and Adera president Norm Couttie. The first two buildings are up in a development that’ll ultimately comprise 310k SF of office/warehouse flex space in six multi-tenant structures. The campus soon welcomes its first occupant, Novadaq, a publicly traded B.C.-based medical-imaging company. (It’s taking 36k SF of the 44k SF building, with an option to expand.) Novadaq is an example of the types of companies Burnaby wants to draw to Lake City, which has been positioned as a high-tech cluster.

Eastlake Campus buildings line a boulevard that winds its way up the side of Burnaby Mountain. Sun Life and Adera faced formidable challenges in figuring out how to build on the tricky hillside terrain. “If you’d seen it before, you’d know that unless you were a goat you wouldn’t have been able to get up too far,” Eric jokes, noting they solved the problem by terracing the development. The buildings are multi-coloured, starting with blue and green for the first two and red for the third phase. “Cheerful and perky."

Adera has done a number of other small-bay office-warehouse projects, in South Vancouver (Rivershore, below) and elsewhere in Burnaby (Riverway, above). Eastlake Campus, which is targeting LEED certification, will have high-speed Internet, landscaped grounds, walking trails and optional rooftop patios for the end-cap units. The Lake City district is serviced by two SkyTrain stations, and Eastlake will have bike-parking and shower facilities, “so you can get people in and out of here without the issue of parking,” Eric says. (Drivers don't despair: the campus has good highway access, too).

Burnaby wants Lake City to be a regional innovation hub, so zoning there permits a variety of light industrial and high-tech uses, including warehousing, wholesaling/distribution, assembly, laboratory and office. Eric says Adera has “multiple active offers” for future phases of Eastlake, including ones from a bike apparel distribution company and a scuba-diving computer manufacturer. Spaces, ranging from 1,900 to 150k SF, can be built to suit, and Eric advises prospective tenants to follow Novadaq's lead. “They came in early, they took a shell of a building and tailor-made it to fit their needs.”