If you dub your development The Amazing Brentwood, you gotta be able to back it up. Shape Properties EVP Darren Kwiatowski assures us his firm’s transformation of Burnaby's old Brentwood Mall—a “mixed-use project on steroids”—justifies its new handle.

The mega-project entails the total redevelopment of Brentwood Mall into a 28-acre transit-oriented, mixed-use city centre, with 1.3M SF of retail, 4M SF of residential via 11 towers, and two office buildings. All of it will be serviced by Brentwood Town Centre SkyTrain station. The mall dates back to 1961 and was acquired by Vancouver-based Shape in 2010.

The Amazing Brentwood is being rolled out in several phases, with the bulk of the new commercial space—500k SF added to the existing 550k SF mall—coming in the initial phase. The first wave also includes twin 63-storey residential towers designed by architect James K.M. Cheng, of Living Shangri-La and Fairmont Pacific Rim fame. Half of the first residential tower is dedicated to rental. Shape will own and manage the rental units and the commercial space below. “That's been a big selling point,” Darren says. “With a typical residential project the developer is gone once they sell off the units.”

With Burnaby having focused growth in Brentwood over the years, Darren says the area now has the population density and infrastructure in place—including the SkyTrain—to support Shape’s redevelopment of the mall into a pedestrian-friendly city centre where people can work, play and live. “We’ll be creating a truly complete community," says Darren. "This is not your typical convenience store at the base of a residential tower."