An inclined downtown Victoria rental tower has reached occupancy as the first building of its kind in Greater Victoria.

 

 

Standing 15 storeys tall at 1400 Vancouver Street and Johnson Street in Harris Green, The Wedge has a unique lean, described architecturally as an incline, on its eastern facade towards Vancouver Street. The tower quite literally looms over the John Di Castri-designed former McCall Bros. funeral chapel retained as part of the project to serve as future retail space.

 

Designed by San Diego-based AVRP Studios, The Wedge stands as the only example of an inclined building among downtown’s towers, and is a noteworthy addition to city core's architecture.

 

Development firm Cox Developments has been working on The Wedge since 2020. The project follows on the footsteps of Cox’s 989 condominium towers completed in 2019 across the street from The Wedge on the south side of Johnson Street at Vancouver Street, and V1488, a rental tower built in 2018 on Cook Street at Pandora Avenue. Cox is currently building The Skinny, a 10-storey rental mid-rise adjacent to V1488 with frontage onto the 1000-block of Johnson Street.

 

The Wedge’s 93 rental homes are comprised of one, two and three-bedroom layouts, and are now renting.

 

Victoria’s downtown core is expected to have one of the busiest two year periods for rental housing completions between this year and 2025. Six projects, in addition to The Wedge, are expected to deliver approximately 1,300 purpose-built rental units, mostly as market suites, according to Citified’s construction tracking. The majority of completions will occur in 2025.

 

The buildings range from lowrise complexes to 10, 11 and 15-storey towers.

 

 

There are currently no condominiums under construction in downtown-proper. However, a project called Nest, standing as a 12-storey condominium from Chard Development on Yates Street at Cook Street, is on the Fernwood side of the downtown-Fernwood border, and will reach occupancy this year. Its six-storey counterpart Haven completed earlier this year along the 1100-block of Johnson Street. Over 200 units are split between the two phases.

 

The pipeline for condominiums in downtown Victoria shows no inventory coming online until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. Future rentals post-2025 will come in the form of approximately 450 units just recently having started construction by Chard Development on Cook Street at Johnson Street through to Yates Street, and multiple approved projects, including a BC Housing affordable tower in the 900-block of Pandora, are not yet underway. C

 

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