298 Alexander Street is the smallest project in Vancouver to participate in a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) under the City’s CBA Policy (as per the City’s policy prior to December 10, 2025[1]), and the first project to negotiate a voluntary CBA as part of their permit application. This negotiated approach represents a strong precedent for voluntary CBAs in Vancouver as a tool to build communities alongside buildings, at any scale.

When completed, 298 Alexander will offer a renovated and repurposed community hub and contemporary dance theater.

Despite not meeting the 45,000 sqm threshold to mandate a CBA per the City’s CBA Policy, the 298 Alexander Street project presented a high opportunity for community benefits. Acknowledging the building’s location in the Downtown Eastside, its historical and cultural significance, and potential for building new community and business relationships, the City of Vancouver and project owner Omer Arbel negotiated the rezoning permit with the inclusion of a voluntary CBA.

The project completed its first year of construction in January 2026, and construction of Phase 1 is expected to complete in the Summer of 2026. The site is on track to be completed by the end of 2027.

Throughout the project, there has been a strong emphasis on ensuring that the 298 Alexander Street development project enriches and empowers the community where it takes place. Efforts include preserving century-old lattice trusses, salvaging old fir wood materials, and anchoring the redesign in the building’s original character. To further honour the history of the building, the project owner welcomed the Maikawa family, original builders of the historic structure, as guests of honour at a pre-opening test performance.

The inclusion of a Community Benefit Agreement requirement has further enhanced the project’s ability to integrate local and social suppliers, and equity-seeking individuals into existing activities as it complies with meeting the local and social procurement and hiring targets.

Procurement and Workforce Goals to Benefit the Community

Based on the City of Vancouver’s Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) Policy, the 298 Alexander Street project is working to achieve the following targets:

• Local procurement: Attain 10% of materials, goods, and services from Vancouver companies or companies located in Metro Vancouver or British Columbia. These may or may not also be equity-seeking third party certified businesses.
• Social procurement: Source a minimum of 10% of material goods and services from third party certified social impact or diverse or equity-seeking owned businesses, with a priority on Vancouver businesses.
• Local, inclusive employment: Make 10% of all jobs on the development come from equity-seeking groups and local residents, prioritizing new entry-level hires.

These targets are designed to channel economic opportunity into the community most connected to the project, generate jobs, strengthen local supply chains, and foster deeper engagement with social value suppliers.

To assist with meeting these targets, Buy Social Canada, as the Independent Third-Party Monitor on the 298 Alexander Street project, supports community benefits implementation through measurement, reporting, and stakeholder engagement.

Additionally, Buy Social Canada supports the facilitation of new relationship building and matches suppliers and purchasers for goods and services through various community events. For example, the 298 Alexander Street project team attended several Buy Social Canada hosted events such as the Downtown Eastside Social Enterprise Breakfast and Vancouver Social Procurement Roundtable, to bring awareness of the upcoming opportunities on the project to the local community, and to increase the project team’s own awareness of the local social enterprise network.

Community Benefits Reporting

The findings below illustrate that regardless of its size, a project participating in a CBA Policy, whether voluntary or mandated, can demonstrate positive impacts in its local community by building physical structures alongside strong and resilient communities.

The CBA data below includes data from the project owner Omer Arbel Workshop, and the general contractor PWS Contracting. The project is currently exceeding the local procurement target by nearly 60% and the local, inclusive hiring target by over 15%.

The project is not currently achieving the social procurement target but will continue to show best efforts to identify opportunities to increase the spend with social value suppliers during the remainder of this project.

298 Alexander exceeds local, inclusive employment target in first year

298 Alexander Street is currently achieving 26.7% local, inclusive employment. This exceeds the 10% target by 16.7%.

The local, inclusive employment target tracks the number of employees who voluntarily self-identify as equity-seeking individuals who also live locally to the project, as defined in the City of Vancouver’s Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) Policy.

This number demonstrates inclusive workforce on site; local and equity-seeking employees hired by Omer Arbel and PWS Contracting.

Nearly 70% of project procurement stays in Vancouver City Core

298 Alexander Street’s target for local procurement is 10% of goods and services from companies located in Vancouver’s City Core[2]. To date, the project has allocated 69% of all spend, just under $3 million, to businesses within the Vancouver City Core. This exceeds the target by nearly 60%.

Additionally, only 8% of the project’s overall spend is outside of Metro Vancouver, and just 0.1% of the total project budget is spent outside of British Columbia.

Emphasis on the project’s role in the local community is demonstrated in part by the selection of the general contractor. PWS Contracting, located within the City Core, was selected to manage the 298 Alexander project. Due to their local operations and their first-hand experience in the local community, they attribute high importance to local procurement and bring a rich network of existing relationships with local suppliers in addition to their construction expertise. As members of the community themselves, they have direct stake in the wellbeing of the local suppliers they work with.

“PWS has strived to maintain local procurement as one of our company’s core values, and this has become more difficult in the last decade due to local suppliers leaving the Vancouver area due to rising warehouse costs. Buy Social Canada have been very helpful at helping PWS easily source local suppliers to keep in line with our core values, and to help keep money within the Vancouver community.” – Gavin Haukeness, Project Manager, PWS Contracting

Although local procurement was already at the heart of PWS Contracting, realizing the extent of their local spend via monthly measurement has been a powerfully validating experience.

The hiring of a local general contractor has positive impacts beyond meeting targets. For example, being local, PWS Contracting is connected to a network of suppliers who themselves are also more likely to be local, making their local procurement ripple into the community through reinvestment of the initial spend.

Project not yet meeting social procurement target

Social procurement spend on the project currently measures at 0.8% of the total project spend, representing just under $36,000. To seek to meet the 10% social procurement target before the end of construction, the 298 Alexander Street project will be prioritizing procurement from social enterprises, social impact businesses, and equity-seeking owned businesses for future spend.

Challenges to achieving the social procurement target on this project have included low response rates to surveys seeking to identify social value suppliers, and a perceived risk by the project team in amending or damaging existing supplier relationships. Both these challenges reflect that the implementation of Community Benefit Agreements requires a culture shift, education and training, and a strong commitment to “doing things differently.” Over the last year Omer Arbel and PWS Contracting have learned more about the CBA Policy and the benefits it can offer, including diversifying supply chain options and greater socio-economic outcomes within their own community.

Since the start of the project, efforts have been made to develop a number of new relationships, including the contracting of social enterprises such as Mission Possible and EMBERS Staffing Solutions.

Ongoing contracts, as well as outreach to more new social value suppliers, will be required for the 298 Alexander Street project team to further contribute to the social procurement CBA target.

Emerging Relationships with Social Value Suppliers

Mission Possible

Mission Possible (MP), a Buy Social Canada Certified Social Enterprise located in the DTES, offers a variety of services including landscape maintenance, window washing, pressure washing, site and grounds cleanup, painting, and graffiti removal. Their purpose is to transform “lives through meaningful work [and] empower people typically excluded from the traditional workforce—like those facing homelessness and housing insecurity, poverty, and other barriers to employment—by paving a pathway to long-term jobs and lasting change.”

PWS Contracting contracted Mission Possible for ongoing work at the beginning stages of the project to provide bi-weekly cleaning services that include sidewalk pressure washing, litter pickup and bio-hazard removal.

Mission Possible’s consistent work on 298 Alexander Street has created opportunities for eight MP staff members so far. As they continue to work on the project throughout its upcoming phases, the social and economic impacts will also continue to grow. 

“This work is one of many sites in our community and helps to create meaningful and dignified work. Participating in keeping a worksite clean is important for a safe work site and for the public that use our city’s sidewalks.” – Chris Ward, Director of Opportunities, Mission Possible

EMBERS Staffing

EMBERS Staffing, another Buy Social Canada Certified Social Enterprise located in the DTES, has provided security services for the 298 Alexander Street project since August 2025. EMBERS was founded with the purpose to create “economic and employment opportunities for people by providing them jobs, training, and support.”

EMBERS and their workers know first-hand the impact that any project, regardless of its size and spending power, can have on the local community.

“What it means for our organization to work on [a] project this size, which is a smaller size project, is that it offers an opportunity for someone that may not have much or any experience working on a construction site and it won’t be overwhelming for that individual and will be a more positive experience which it has proven to be.” – Doug Aason, Director of Business Development, EMBERS Staffing

The project team’s spend with social enterprise suppliers is already rippling beyond this project. PWSC’s emerging relationship with EMBERS Staffing has brought forward opportunities for PWSC to deliver social value to other sites.

“We are extremely grateful for [the project] team for the way they have embraced the spirit of the community benefits agreement and have additionally contracted us to provide workers for their other sites and therefore providing more opportunities to impact the local community and EMBERS workers.” – Doug Aason, Director of Business Development, EMBERS Staffing

Negotiated CBAs for Community Benefits

The 298 Alexander Street project demonstrates the positive community benefits that the CBA Policy can bring to Vancouver neighbourhoods by leveraging a project of any size to deliver additional local and social value. As it continues to advance local and social procurement and employment in Vancouver, the 298 Alexander project team will continue to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the CBA and bring their experiences and new relationships onto future projects.

The 298 Alexander project provides a precedent for the “voluntary CBA” in Vancouver. The City of Vancouver leveraged the CBA as a negotiating tool to ensure that the project provided measurable community benefits which was of particular concern given its location in the DTES. There is an opportunity for the City of Vancouver, developers, and members of the community to advocate for and negotiate voluntary CBAs onto future projects in Vancouver, to ensure that as we build the infrastructure our city requires, we are also building thriving and resilient communities and supporting local and social businesses and people.

Learn more about community benefit agreements.

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[1] At the time that this project was negotiated to include a CBA, the City of Vancouver CBA Policy was in place as mandatory. On December 10, 2025, City Council approved removal of the mandatory requirement making the policy an optional policy for development projects going forward.

[2] Vancouver City Core neighbourhoods include West End, Downtown, Strathcona, Mount Pleasant, Fairview, and a section of Kitsilano.