Dockside Green is a model livable community, pursuing the highest goals in energy efficiency and sustainable design. The project started as a developer design competition by the City of Victoria and evolved into an opportunity to create a LEED® Platinum Neighbourhood Project—one of the first in North America.

This new community is a major achievement in community planning, pedestrian-oriented design, waste and rainwater management, environmental regeneration, and energy efficiency. Our team helped achieve outstanding environmental targets while developing a truly unique and richly-layered setting for residents. Many innovative approaches to sustainability and green infrastructure came to life in this project, some of which had never been seen before in a dense, urban North American environment. We helped create a blackwater treatment system, a biomass clean energy system, rainwater collection, and environmental biodiversity. All the systems had to work together and be integrated into the development seamlessly. A perfect example of this integration is the black water system, which added to the stormwater collection and created a pond system for aquatic and terrestrial life while creating a beautiful landscape for residents and visitors.

We also developed a greenway, as an essential and unifying component of this pedestrian-oriented community. Infused with local materials, wood debris for habitat and native plantings, this greenway is a thriving ecosystem. 

In 2017 Victoria Council approved an updated version of the Dockside Green Master Plan.  The new plan, which will be built with Dockside’s LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) Platinum community program in mind, will now include commercial and residential buildings, more park area than the first version, a kids’ play area, dog park, a park to replace a previously planned traffic circle and a retail centre with grocery store.

The updated 2017 plan was developed through a robust public engagement process that involved existing Dockside Green residents and tenants, First Nations, and residents of the surrounding neighbourhood of Vic West. Our team facilitated a series of design charettes to explore opportunities for social sustainability that would enrich the ecologically focussed attributes of the original 2005 scheme.