Pacific Landing – Building a lifestyle
Pacific Landing is a multi-use resort village that offers luxury homes, premium community amenities, and a happy and healthy lifestyle – all on an unparalleled waterfront location.
“Pacific Landing is about enjoying life and finding your happiness,” says Emily Royer, Director of Sales, Marketing & Operations. “Everything here was built and designed to deliver a lifestyle focused on community and engagement.”
Situated on the shores of Esquimalt Lagoon, just a short drive from downtown Victoria, the village boasts 650 feet of shoreline, with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean, Olympic Mountains, and Mount Baker. Pacific Landing’s 12-acre estate also features a bubbling creek, a community garden, and direct access to over 500 acres of hiking trail.
The development also offers a wide expanse of amenities and services, including a yoga studio, cooking theatre, makers workshop, and much more to come. The village was purpose-built to create a vibrant community and facilitate an active and engaged lifestyle, and is actively managed and maintained to make life easy for owners. The vision at every stage of the design and development was to create a space where “friends and family can come together to live, learn and play,” Emily says.
The origins of that vision date back to 2007, when Randy Foyer purchased the property in Colwood and had the idea for a village where people could live “a full and healthy lifestyle.” He was drawn in by the beautiful landscape, and also by the proximity to Royal Roads University, which is a progressive institution that is particularly focused on further education and continuing studies. He thought it was a perfect setting for his community vision, one that would particularly appeal to the coming generation of downsizers.
Prior to acquiring the land for Pacific Landing, Randy had spent over 50 years working in the hospitality industry with an emphasis on development, finance and management. Throughout his career, he had conceived, financed, constructed and managed over 30 hotels, including the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort and the Grand Okanagan Resort in Kelowna – which ultimately sold for a profit of $100 million.
Randy’s partners in Pacific Landing are Ray Parks and Dale Fish. Ray has an extensive history in government and consulting, and Dale in construction and development. Dale first started working with Randy back in the late 1980s, when they built the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort, and then numerous hotels across Canada, the US, and Mexico – including the Grand Okanagan. After almost 10 years apart, Randy reached out and pitched his vision.
“Randy and I sat down, and he told me about a dream he had to produce a really unique project here in Victoria,” Dale recalls. “He asked if I would be interested in looking after the construction.”
Dale agreed, and together, along with Ray Parks, they began turning Randy’s dream into a reality. The process officially commenced in 2014, when the site was basically “all raw land,” with just a federally-regulated stream running through the centre. The team at Pacific Landing designed a long-term plan with multiple phases, starting with Phase One.
Phase One consists of three oceanfront buildings housing 33 units, all built atop a parkade. Every unit is now sold out and the owners have moved in.
Currently, the company is conducting civil works for Phase Two, which will primarily include a distinguished five-storey building at the heart of the community, called The Douglas. The Douglas is designed by an award-winning local firm, and was inspired by turn of the century architectural elements. It consists of 20 luxury suites, each with two-bedrooms and two-bathrooms, and each offering spacious terraces, premium finishes, as well as stunning views of the ocean and unique surrounding wilderness.
Pacific Landing has also taken steps to ensure the health and livelihood of the natural area. There’s a migratory bird sanctuary on the property, for example, and near it they have built spawning beds for the fish that come up through the lagoon.
Furthermore, the company is in the design phase of a future phase, which will include two more buildings with 62 condo units between them. Those buildings will also be on a parkade, and will feature a pool in the suspended slab of the parkade itself.
Family atmosphere
According to both Emily and Dale, Pacific Landing enjoys uniquely positive relationships with its buyers. That is yet another reason – on top of the stunning location, the premium finishes of the units, and the community lifestyle offering – that people want to be part of their community.
“Our relationships are a result of the product we’re creating,” Emily says. “We’re not building a large density condo building, where the buyer is just another number. We have individual relationships with each of our 33 buyers from Phase One, and we expect to have equally unique relationships with the 20 buyers from Phase Two.”
Emily also credits the family atmosphere at the company, as the team at Pacific Landing consists of various family members with diverse and international backgrounds.
“Being a family company, we have a family environment, and that extends to the owners,” she says. “The process is more personal. It’s not just ‘Sign the dotted line and you’re getting a condo.’ We’re welcoming people into a community.”
“We’re also not just building and walking away,” Dale adds. “We’re here, we’re managing the property as each phase goes along, and once the property is completely built out we’ll still be the managers. We’re always going to be connected to Pacific Landing. So it’s in our interest to make sure everyone is happy and everyone is enjoying the property.”
The management arm of Pacific Landing is called BelleBrio, and owners benefit from the premium service they provide. That service includes protect the buyer’s investment by making sure the site is maintained to pristine standards. It also includes managing the amenities on site, and ensuring they are well programmed to meet the needs and wants of the community – which can mean organizing a cooking class by a world-class chef, or booking the cooking theatre for an owner’s dinner party.
BelleBrio also facilitates Pacific Landing’s lifestyle promise by organising various in-site activities, including: art workshops; continued learning courses; walking and hiking clubs; social events; and more. The company is also excited about facilitating off-site exploring and partnerships based on owner demand, such as day trips around the island or tours of nearby historical sites.
“We have a diverse community with owners whose interests and skills are wide-ranging,” Emily says. “We work with our owners to identify any on-site programming they would like to see.”
No matter what function they are performing, the team at BelleBrio will always take pride in delivering exceptional customer service – the kind of service befitting Randy Royer’s extensive background in the upscale hospitality market.
Exceptional quality
Pacific Landing also stands out in the market due to the features and finishes of their units. According to Dale, they go above and beyond to make sure the product they are offering is “a step above” everything else on the market.
The Douglas, for instance, has a long list of special features and elements in each unit. That list includes: 9 to 10 foot ceilings and oversized windows; gas fireplaces with tile surrounds; high quality, Canadian-made wood flooring; luxury wool carpet in the bedrooms; modern light fixtures with well-positioned dimmers, in-suite laundry and expansive storage space; generous closets; roller shades throughout; and much more.
The kitchens and bathrooms in The Douglas also set the development apart. The kitchens feature quartz countertops with striking backsplashes, gourmet kitchen appliance, high quality cabinetry, contemporary-designed faucets and hardware, and under-mount island sinks. The bathrooms, meanwhile, also include durable quarts countertops and contemporary faucets, as well as spacious showers with unique tile accents, his and her under-mount sinks, and even under tile heating for the floors.
The Douglas is also efficient – they feature high efficiency gas hot water on demand for each residence, high efficiency heat pumps for both heating and cooling, and solar panels to service common area energy needs. Each unit is also “solar ready,” Dale explains, so if the strata council wants to install more solar panels to offset energy costs, they have that option.
Both Dale and Emily credit the exceptional quality of the homes to the talent and dedication of the company’s team. That includes their in-house building supervisors and project managers, who conduct regular inspections over the course of a build to make sure everything is being done is accordance with specifications, and to make sure everything lives up to the company’s extremely high standard of quality.
Pacific Landing’s team also includes their roster of external partners, such as their architects, consultants, and suppliers. Design District Access, for example, is a Victoria-based interior company with the best and most current interior design products available in the marketplace, and Pacific Landing wouldn’t be the industry-leading offering it is today without their contribution.
A true community
Moving forward, the company’s goal is to duplicate their success with Pacific Landing at other locations around Victoria and Canada. They are actively seeking future opportunities, and believe if they can find the right properties they can continue to provide superior lifestyle offerings and continue to create satisfied buyers.
“We’re going to continue to seek special locations like this one,” Emily says. “We want to take the amazing opportunity we have here and recreate it for others.”
The most important thing, Emily concludes, is that they continue to build communities. They take that goal very seriously.
“A lot of developers say they’re building a village or a community just because they’re building homes close together, but we’re going beyond that,” she says. “I think we actually have a recipe for creating the kind of community feeling that people are looking for. We’re doing that through the amenities we’re creating, the service we’re offering, and through our very special location.”
“And we’re not building it and walking away,” Dale reiterates. “We’re going to be involved for as long as people are living here.”
To learn more about Pacific Landing and its amazing lifestyle offering, and to read more from the people behind it, visit http://pacificlanding.ca/
