Multiple former telephone exchanges in Vancouver, Canada, are set to be demolished and replaced with mixed-use residential and retail developments.

First reported by ConstructConnect, Ledcor Property Investments (via LPI Management Ltd.) has filed with the city of Vancouver to develop a six-storey, mixed-use building at 2608 Tolmie Street in the Point Grey Village area of the British Columbia city.

The 42,300 sq ft (3,929 sqm) building will feature one floor of retail units and the rest residential, as well as underground parking.

Built in the 1960s, the existing building was a Telus Communications telephone exchange (aka Central Office) and part of the telco’s copper network. The site was decommissioned last year, and demolition work on the exchange has reportedly already begun.

“The telecommunications infrastructure on the site has been fully decommissioned in preparation for the redevelopment,” Manasweeta Bhatia, director of Telus real estate developments, told ConstructConnect.

Given its proximity to the Point Grey campus of the University of British Columbia, the target renters for the new building will be students and young working professionals.

“(Because we anticipate) a predominantly student demographic, the proposal offers study hall style amenity space at grade, programmed with both individual and group working spaces,” Bhatia told the publication. “We expect to have shovels in the ground by November this year, subject to the release of any final documentation and approvals needed from the city.”

Telus looks to cash in on legacy exchanges

Bhatia said the building is part of the Telus Living project, a mixed-use, purpose-built rental residential portfolio of properties that is being created by repurposing the company’s underutilized properties.

The Tolmie Street facility is just one of multiple exchanges Telus is looking to redevelop into residential properties.

Another decommissioned and repurposed Vancouver phone exchange building is located in the Kitsilano neighbourhood. Again, in partnership with Ledcor, Telus aims to develop a 25-storey mixed-use rental building at 2202-2212 W 10th Avenue. The companies filed an application for the Kitsilano development last year.

That redevelopment, however, will include a new, “much smaller” telecommunications facility on the ground floor. The new Central Office will use its waste heat to warm the new residential block.

Another exchange in Vancouver, at 354-380 E 10th Avenue in the Mount Pleasant area of the city, is set to be turned into a 25-storey mixed-use rental building. Again, a smaller telephone exchange is set to be developed in its place.

At 6486 Chester Street, Telus aims to turn a former exchange site into a six-story multi-family residential building, along with a single-story exchange.

More exchanges are being earmarked for redevelopment in and around the Canadian city of Victoria in British Columbia.

In Oak Bay, Citified reports the telco is looking to turn a former two-story exchange at 1908 Foul Bay Road into a six-story residential building. The telco filed to redevelop another exchange, at 1805-1811 Feltham Road in the Gordon Head area of Victoria, into a five-story rental project back in 2022.

Telus was formed by the Alberta government as the Alberta Government Telephones in 1906. The company, since privatised and rebranded to Telus, acquired the British Columbia Telephone Company (BC Tel) in 1999. BC Tel could trace its roots back to 1904.

As with many incumbent telecoms firms, Telus is in the midst of shutting down its copper network to focus on fiber. In the UK, BT and Openreach are looking to exit some 4,600 exchanges into the 2030s. Many former exchanges across the UK have been turned into residential developments.

In Belgium, Proximus reportedly aims to sell some 500 buildings as part of its copper shutdown.

In the US, AT&T has signed sale-leaseback deals for dozens of its Central Offices ahead of its own network shutdown. Ziply, spun out of Frontier in 2020, is converting around 200 of its old central offices into colocation data centers off the back of its own fiber network rollout.

In Spain, Telefónica shut down some 8,500 exchanges as part of its copper network shutdown.

Founded in 1947, Ledcor is a construction, property development, and investment firm.

DCD visited the BT Tower in London and spoke to Openreach about its exchange exit program in the latest issue of DCD>Magazine. Read it online for free.