100 Park Royal - Lobby Renovation

West Vancouver, BC — A main circulation lobby at Park Royal Shopping Centre rebuilt from finishes to lighting on a fixed six-week programme, with the centre open and trading every day of the work.

Project specification

Scope

Wall finishes replaced

The dated wood veneer wall finishes that defined the original lobby were stripped back to substrate, the substrate made good and re-levelled, and the walls refinished in a marble-look porcelain tile. Porcelain was chosen for a common area that takes constant contact and constant cleaning: it holds a consistent face across large runs, it does not mark or fade the way the veneer had, and it can be maintained with the centre's normal cleaning regime without special treatment.

Millwork ceiling feature

A new millwork ceiling feature was fabricated and installed across the lobby, giving the space a defined overhead line where previously there was a flat, unremarkable plane. The feature was set out to coordinate with the new lighting layout, the existing mechanical services above and the sightlines from each of the lobby's approaches.

New lighting throughout

The lobby was relit end to end. The scheme includes indirect uplighting that washes the new ceiling feature, so the millwork reads as a lit surface rather than a shadowed one, along with general and accent lighting tuned to the finishes below. Levels were set for a retail common area that has to feel bright and legible at mall opening and after dark alike.

Elevator surround panels

New millwork panels were installed at the elevator surrounds, tying the vertical circulation into the same material language as the rest of the lobby and covering the tired original detailing at one of the most closely viewed points in the space.

Illuminated signage directory

A new illuminated signage directory was installed so shoppers arriving through the lobby can orient themselves immediately. The unit was coordinated with the wall finishes and the lighting scheme so it sits as part of the design rather than as an applied fixture.

New floor tile

The floor was retiled throughout the lobby. Sequencing the floor in a live circulation route drove much of the phasing plan, since every square foot of it had to be laid, cured and protected without ever closing the route to the public.

The constraint

This lobby is a main circulation point of a heavily trafficked shopping centre, and the centre stayed open and trading for the entire six weeks.

Nothing about the programme allowed the space to be handed over as an empty site. Shoppers walked through it every trading hour, tenants either side of it depended on that footfall, and the route through the lobby could not be closed. The renovation therefore had to be built around the public rather than the other way round.

Work areas were hoarded off in phases. Each phase took a defined portion of the lobby behind hoarding, kept a clear and compliant public route open past it, and was released back before the next portion was taken. The hoarding lines were planned against the circulation pattern so that the walking route never narrowed to the point of causing congestion, and so that the tenants adjacent to each phase kept their frontage and their sightlines.

The noisy and disruptive work was carried out at night. Demolition of the veneer, cutting, coring, floor preparation and anything else generating noise, dust or visual disruption was moved outside trading hours because of tenant sensitivity to exactly those three things. Night shifts had their own discipline: set up, work, clean down and remove all evidence of the site before the centre opened, every night, without exception.

There was no on-site storage available. Materials could not be dropped and left, so tile, millwork, lighting and signage were staged off site and delivered to a tight schedule that matched the night the crew needed them. A late delivery in that arrangement is not an inconvenience, it is a lost shift, so the delivery schedule was managed as tightly as the construction schedule.

The six-week programme was fixed. A retail landlord planning around trading periods cannot absorb an overrun in a main circulation space, so the end date was set before the work started and every phase, night shift and delivery was sequenced backwards from it. It was met exactly.

Outcome

The renovation was delivered on the fixed six-week programme, with no interruption to trading and no tenant complaints.

The lobby reopened in full with new porcelain wall finishes, a new millwork ceiling feature lit by indirect uplighting, new millwork at the elevator surrounds, a new illuminated directory and a new tiled floor — and it did so without the shopping centre losing a single trading day to the work.

Gallery

Before and after

Before: the original 100 Park Royal lobby looking down the length of the space, with dated orange-brown wood veneer wall panelling, a printed tenant directory board, beige and brown patterned floor tile, a coffered white ceiling and red and orange glass pendant lights.
Before — Before — lobby, overall view
Renovated 100 Park Royal lobby looking down the full length of the space, with marble-look porcelain wall tile, a white marble-pattern tiled floor banded in black, overlapping square LED ceiling pendants and a glazed bicycle storage room to the right.
After — Lobby — overall view
Before: the original lobby seen from the glazed entrance doors, with orange-brown veneer panelling running the full wall past the elevator entrances, surface-mounted fire and control panels, beige patterned floor tile and track lighting on a coffered ceiling.
Before — Before — lobby looking to the glazed entrance
View across the finished lobby to the glass entrance doors, with a black polished tile entrance surround, marble-look porcelain wall panels carrying a recessed lit reveal, black tile base and the elevator bank receding to the right.
After — Lobby looking to the glazed entrance

After — finished work

Renovated 100 Park Royal lobby looking down the full length of the space, with marble-look porcelain wall tile, a white marble-pattern tiled floor banded in black, overlapping square LED ceiling pendants and a glazed bicycle storage room to the right.
After — Lobby — overall view
View across the finished lobby to the glass entrance doors, with a black polished tile entrance surround, marble-look porcelain wall panels carrying a recessed lit reveal, black tile base and the elevator bank receding to the right.
After — Lobby looking to the glazed entrance
Wide view of the finished lobby with three black-clad elevator entrances on the right, stainless doors and diamond inlays, timber-effect ceiling with square LED pendants, and the glazed street doors beyond.
After — Elevator bank and entrance
Side angle along the elevator bank showing large-format marble-look porcelain wall panels, the recessed fire safety and control panels set flush into the wall, black polished tile base with a floor grille, and square LED pendants overhead.
After — Elevator bank, side angle
Straight-on view of three elevator entrances numbered one to three, each framed in polished black tile with white diamond inlays and digital floor indicators, separated by marble-look porcelain panels above brushed stainless doors.
After — Elevator surround panels
Upward view of the new millwork ceiling feature in timber-effect panels, with recessed downlights and two suspended interlocking square LED fittings running along the lobby toward the elevator bank.
After — Ceiling feature and lighting
Twin digital directory screens recessed into a black polished tile alcove within the marble-look porcelain wall, lit by a linear LED reveal above and flanked by a flush service door.
After — Illuminated directory
Close perspective of the book-matched marble-look porcelain wall running above a black tile base, with the new white marble-pattern floor tile and its black inset banding sweeping past the glazed bicycle storage room.
After — Porcelain wall and floor tile

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