This is what the new Burnaby community centre will look like in Brentwood

Nestled in between highrise towers, the new Brentwood Community Centre is planned to be the heart of the rapidly growing Burnaby town centre.

New renderings released by the City of Burnaby show what that new community centre will look like.

The $140-million project was approved by council in 2021 as part of a six-tower residential development in the 4600 block of Lougheed Highway, right across from Brentwood mall.

The south-facing, 100,000-square-foot community centre will be next to a public plaza and the development's courtyards, according to a staff report going to a council committee on Monday.

The design includes:

• double gymnasium
• community fitness centre/weight room
• multi-purpose spaces

The community centre will be operated by the city once complete.

While the highrise developer Grosvenor expects to begin construction before the end of 2024, the developer told the city the timeline could change due to "a number of challenging macroeconomic forces," including rising interest rates, construction costs and inflation, which affect its ability to get financing.

That said, Grosvenor said the budget has remained the same "thanks to the collective foresight" which included planning for cost escalations.

"It remains Grosvenor's full intention to proceed as planned with the community centre, and the thousands of new, primarily rental housing units envisioned by our approved plan," the developer wrote to the city in a statement included in the staff report.

Construction on the community centre is expected to be complete in the last quarter of 2028, according to the report.

The community centre is a part of the Grosvenor Brentwood master planned development, which includes six towers of about 2,000 market rental homes, 450 below-market rental homes and 900 strata condos, as well as 200,000 square feet of commercial space, according to a 2022 city press release.