Bonds Landing at RailYards

About Bond's Landing

Bond's Landing is a 96-home strata in Vic West, built in three phases between 2010 and 2016 within The Railyards — Le Fevre & Company's redevelopment of the former rail lands along Victoria's Upper Harbour. All three phases are registered under a single strata plan, VIS7017.

The strata occupies two civic addresses on Tyee Road. The first two phases sit at 787 Tyee Road, completing in 2010 and 2013 and accounting for 47 of the 96 strata lots. The third and final phase, at 785 Tyee Road, completed in early 2016 and added the remaining 49 homes.

The practical consequence of that structure is worth understanding before you buy. One strata corporation governs the whole of it: one set of bylaws, one contingency reserve fund, one manager, one annual general meeting. A home in the 2016 building and a home in the 2010 building sit under identical rules and share the same balance sheet, even though the two were finished six years apart.

Architecture & Design

Both buildings are four storeys of wood-frame construction over a poured-concrete foundation and a single level of underground parking. Cladding combines cement fibre panel with metal siding, and colour is used deliberately rather than sparingly — panels in red, yellow and blue against grey metal, an industrial vocabulary borrowed from the site's rail history.

de Hoog & Kierulf architects designed the second and third phases as a matched pair, and the two read as siblings from the street.

Wood-frame construction over four storeys has consequences a buyer should weigh directly. Floor-to-floor and party-wall sound transmission is higher than in a concrete building, and the difference is most noticeable underfoot. The buildings are set close together around a shared courtyard, so a portion of the homes look at each other rather than out.

Orientation varies. Upper-floor and corner homes take in the Upper Harbour and the Gorge Waterway, with sightlines running from the Selkirk Trestle toward the Johnson Street Bridge. The rest look over the interior courtyard, Tyee Road, or the mountains to the north.

Suite Features & Finishes

Homes range from roughly 425 square feet to a little over 1,000. The mix runs heavily to studios and one-bedrooms, with a small number of two-bedroom, two-bathroom homes concentrated on the upper floors and the corners.

Interiors are open-plan, with the kitchen, dining and living areas combined. Finishes include quartz counters, stainless steel appliances, contemporary flat-panel cabinetry and in-suite laundry, with some homes fitted with a stacked washer and dryer and others with a combination unit. The third phase added heated tile floors in the bathrooms. Several homes have a wall-mounted electric fireplace.

Every home has a balcony or a patio.

Heating is electric baseboard, billed to the individual home. There is no air conditioning anywhere in the strata, in any phase, and no central system to which cooling could be added. The earlier Tyee Road building carries a roof-mounted solar array that pre-heats domestic hot water.

Lofts and ground-floor homes

Two products in the building read differently from the standard flat and are worth identifying separately.

The top floor of the earlier phases contains lofts — open-volume homes with ceilings rising to fourteen and sixteen feet, a sleeping area on a mezzanine reached by stairs, and in some cases a private rooftop patio of two hundred square feet or more. They are the most distinctive homes in the strata. They are also the warmest in July, and the mezzanine layout puts a staircase between the bed and the bathroom.

At ground level, several homes have their own exterior entrance and a gated private patio opening onto Central Spur Road, bypassing the lobby entirely. At least one is a two-storey townhouse-style home, with living space on the entry level and bedrooms above.

Building Amenities

• Secure underground parking, with one stall assigned to most homes
• Separate storage locker
• Bike storage rooms
• Kayak and paddleboard storage
• Elevator service in each building
• Secured entry
• Common courtyard with raised garden beds available to owners
• Guest parking

On accessibility: both buildings have elevators, several homes have no-step or ground-level entrances, and a number of ground-floor homes are described as wheelchair-friendly. The lofts and the townhouse-style homes are not — both are internally stepped.

Pets, rentals and bylaws

The pet bylaw is written as a list of permitted categories, and the categories stack rather than compete. Residents may keep fish in an aquarium, birds, and small caged mammals. In addition, and separately from those, the bylaw permits one of the following: one dog under 25 pounds; or two dogs, each under 25 pounds; or two cats.

Rentals are permitted. The bylaws set a minimum tenancy of six months and prohibit short-term rental.

There is no age restriction. Barbecues are permitted on balconies and patios, propane only.

The strata fee covers building insurance, garbage and recycling removal, grounds maintenance and professional management. The strata is managed by Proline Property Management.

Bylaws are amended by three-quarter vote and can change between listings. Confirm the current registered bylaws and any rules in force with the strata before you write an offer.

Vic West and The Railyards

The Railyards occupies a strip of reclaimed industrial land between Tyee Road and the Upper Harbour, north of the Bay Street Bridge. It was built out over roughly fifteen years as a planned waterfront community, and Bond's Landing sits in the middle of it.

The Galloping Goose Regional Trail runs past the door. A public dock and kayak launch on the Gorge Waterway is about 150 metres away, and the shoreline path continues north past the Selkirk Trestle. Banfield Park, a short walk up the waterway, has swimming access, a boat launch and tennis courts.

Daily needs are close. Westside Village Shopping Centre, with a Save-On-Foods, is a few minutes on foot. Fol Epi and Fry's Bakery, Caffè Fantastico and the Fed Urban Diner are all within the immediate area, and the neighbourhood has picked up a cluster of small food producers and breweries over the past decade.

Vic West remains a neighbourhood in transition. The blocks immediately east and south of The Railyards are still light industrial, and the area does not have the finished residential feel of Fairfield or Oak Bay. Whether that reads as character or as unfinished business is a matter of taste.

Connectivity & Transportation

Downtown Victoria is a fifteen to twenty minute walk across the Johnson Street Bridge, or a short ride on the Galloping Goose. The harbour ferry stops at the Delta and Songhees docks nearby and runs into the Inner Harbour.

Bus service on Tyee and Esquimalt Roads connects to downtown exchanges and, with a single transfer, to the University of Victoria. Cycling is the strongest option here: the Goose runs uninterrupted from Vic West to Sooke in one direction and connects to the Lochside Trail toward Sidney and Swartz Bay in the other.

By car, Victoria International Airport and the Swartz Bay ferry terminal are each roughly thirty to forty minutes north on the Pat Bay Highway. The Black Ball and Clipper terminals to Port Angeles and Seattle are downtown, ten minutes away.

Who this building suits — and who it doesn't

Bond's Landing suits a buyer who wants to live without a car, or close to it. Studios and one-bedrooms at this size, with a parking stall, a storage locker, kayak storage and the Goose at the door, are a coherent proposition for a single professional, a first-time buyer, or someone downsizing out of a house and into an active waterfront neighbourhood. Dogs and cats are both permitted, and the rental rules are permissive enough that the homes function as long-term holds.

We would steer some buyers elsewhere. There is no air conditioning in this strata and no practical route to adding it, and a west-facing top-floor loft with sixteen-foot ceilings and a wall of glass is a genuinely hot room in August — if summer comfort is non-negotiable, this is the wrong building. Wood-frame construction means you will hear your neighbours more than you would in concrete. The pet bylaw caps dogs at 25 pounds, which rules out a great many of them — if you have a retriever, this building is closed to you. Not every strata lot comes with a parking stall, so verify what is attached to the specific home rather than assuming. And if you need three bedrooms, a den, or a home office that is a real room, the floor plans here do not go there.