Downtown Vancouver's new Lord Roberts Annex Elementary grows to 510 students
A three-storey replacement school on Nelson Street will have 18 classrooms and serve all grades from Kindergarten to 7, tripling capacity of the existing facility.
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Vancouver School Board has submitted a development permit for the new Lord Roberts Annex Elementary School in the West End, which will triple enrolment capacity from the existing facility.
The three-storey building will occupy a 69,000-square-foot parcel at the southeast corner of Bute Street and Nelson Street, largely on the footprint of the existing school's playground. It will accommodate 510 students across Kindergarten to Grade 7, with 18 classrooms and three Kindergarten classrooms, plus a library, multi-purpose rooms, a gymnasium, and supporting spaces.
The project is coordinated with BC Hydro's plan to build an underground electrical substation beneath the city block. The old one-storey school building will be demolished, and the roof of the substation underground structure will become an outdoor play space for students.
In the 2024/2025 school year, the existing school served 147 students with an extensive waitlist. Despite the new school's much larger capacity, it already had a waitlist as of earlier this year — indicating it is effectively over capacity before opening.
Ground-floor spaces are designed to foster community use, with academic spaces on upper storeys. A covered area wraps much of the building to provide an accessible interface on all four sides. The school will share vehicle access with BC Hydro via a ramp from Bute Street, leading to a small underground parking facility with three accessible stalls, four service parking lots, and a secured bike parking room.
Both the substation and school will operate from this shared infrastructure, with the school designed to provide major net gains in capacity for current and long-term enrolment needs in downtown Vancouver.
