Living Shangri-La

A 62-storey glass tower with a Shangri-La hotel on its lower 15 floors and homes above; the tallest building in the City of Vancouver.

The lower 15 floors held a five-star Shangri-La hotel with 119 rooms, and the floors above are homes. The building also has a spa, a grocery store, a public sculpture garden and a restored 1919 church next to it. There is no 4th or 13th floor in the hotel, and 307 homes fill the floors above it.

Hotel on the bottom, homes on top

The hotel took the ground floor to the 15th floor. Above it are 307 homes, from the 16th floor up to two penthouses on floors 61 and 62. There is a private roof garden on floor 61.

Wikipedia reports that the hotel stopped using the Shangri-La name on 1 July 2025 and became a Hyatt hotel.

Building the tower

The excavation was 26 metres deep, a Vancouver record at the time. Builders poured about 51,000 cubic metres of concrete and put up about one floor a week at the busiest time.

It officially became Vancouver's tallest building on 2 October 2007. The old Coastal Church on the site was restored as part of the deal.

Big numbers and a movie role

The project needed 3.1 million man-hours, 15,000 truckloads of earth dug out, about 51,000 cubic metres of concrete and 7,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel. At the busiest time about 1,000 workers were on site building one floor a week. On 15 January 2008 a windstorm blew loose construction materials into the street and damaged parked cars, but nobody was hurt. The tower is in the 2010 film Tron: Legacy, where it stands in for the headquarters of the made-up company ENCOM International. The old Coastal Church from 1919 was restored for 4.4 million dollars as part of the deal.

On the globe

The model shows the slim glass tower in Vancouver. Look at the tall, thin shape rising above the lower hotel part.