More than 740,000 British Columbians have a direct financial interest in the success or failure of Vancouver’s luxury Oakridge Park condominium and shopping development.
That’s because the massive Oakridge Park project — which opened its high-end mall in May on a site as large as 21 soccer fields — is ultimately co-owned by a B.C. Crown corporation responsible for the pensions of the province’s public-sector employees.
The fast-growing corporation has the forgettable name B.C. Investment Management Corp. In high-finance circles the now-enormous institution, which an NDP government created in 1999, is widely known as BCI.
BCI manages money on behalf of 470,000 members of the B.C. Municipal Pension Plan, 163,000 members of the B.C. Public Service Pension Plan, 105,000 people in the B.C. Teachers Pension Plan, 38,000 with the B.C. College Pension Plan, 7,500 members of the WorksafeBC Pension Plan, plus others.
How Did This Come to Be?
Oakridge Park, which is home to some of the most expensive retail outlets in the world and is slated to eventually house 6,000 people in pricey towers as high as 52 storeys, is a venture between developer Westbank Corp. and QuadReal Property Group.
What is not particularly well known to the public is that QuadReal is the real-estate arm of BCI, which is, as noted, responsible for almost all of this province’s public-sector pensions.
The fact an arm of the B.C. government is directing what QuadReal calls “the largest project under construction in North America” raises a number of thorny questions.
Risks and Ethical Concerns
They include whether the corporation is taking too big a financial risk through its involvement in Oakridge Park. Questions also arise about whether a government arm should be building housing largely for the wealthy.
Even BCI’s 2025 annual report acknowledges “challenges” for Quadreal’s “residential portfolio, which includes 10,000 multi-family units, with a robust pipeline of over 9,000 new units” — including the thousands that make up Oakridge Park, a $6.5-billion development.
“Like many major developments in these market conditions, valuations and cost pressures have been challenging for the (Oakridge Park) project,” says BCI’s report.
QuadReal, which is led by Dennis Lopez, bought the old Oakridge shopping centre in 2017, choosing Ian Gillespie’s Westbank Corp. to co-develop it into Oakridge Park.
It was an era when housing prices were peaking and foreign capital was flooding into gateway cities like Vancouver and Sydney. QuadReal marketed Oakridge Park’s luxurious presale condos around the globe, particularly Asia.
But now condo prices are sluggish. Vancouver realtor David Hutchinson said that, several years ago, some presale buyers paid $2,000 to $2,500 a square foot for Oakridge Park’s units.
