A major international visual effects firm has chosen a key piece of recently vacated commercial office space for its new Vancouver branch operations in what amounts to one of the largest office deals in Mount Pleasant.

Double Negative (Dneg) is one of the world’s major producers of visual effects for the film industry, with branches in London and Singapore. Vancouver marks its third office and first anchor in North America.

The Academy Award-winning VFX company announced in the summer that it would be setting up shop in Vancouver, but only recently inked a deal with Hungerford Properties to move into Radia Block at 149 West 4th Ave. The 47,000-square-foot space housed Mountain Equipment Co-op’s headquarters since the 1990s, but MEC vacated the office Oct. 24th to move into a new building on Great Northern Way.

Reached on the phone from London, England, Dneg’s CEO Matt Holben told The Sun that they plan to be fully operational by this April after revamping the building to their high-tech needs. He said Dneg already has a small staff at a temporary space in Coal Harbour.

He said their first project would be Disney’s Through the Looking Glass, for which they plan to employ between 100 and 150 staff. Holben said they plan to fill up their team with local talent.

“Part of the reason that we chose Vancouver is because there is a talent pool here already,” he said. “We’re expecting some organic growth over a period of time, always job dependant, but I think we’re certainly building out for capacity for about 450-plus (employees).”

Dneg won a visual effects Academy Award for its work on Inception and has recent credits on movies such as Man of Steel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and the just-released Interstellar, to name a few.

Holben said they plan to create a state-of-the-art facility producing “cutting edge visual effects both as a stand-alone VFX house and in tandem with London and Singapore.”

Other cities courted Dneg, but Vancouver appeared to offer the most “sustainable” option, he said.

“There are locations with better tax breaks. There are more aggressive places,” he said. “But Vancouver is a great destination for our clients to come. It’s a very healthy marketplace already, and there is a great talent pool and a very understanding and committed government that wants to encourage and flourish the business.”

He said they recently moved all of their office and production space underneath one roof in London after working out of several separate locations. They wanted a similar situation here.

“Being in control of our own building is something that worked incredibly well in London, and when I saw the [Radia Block], it was a stand-alone building that gives us major flexibility,” he said.

The transaction is one of the largest office deals ever in Mt Pleasant, said co-listing agent Matthew MacLean, vice-president of commercial leasing and sales at Cushman and Wakefield.

“It legitimizes the potential of this area as the next hub of creativity, vibrancy and knowledge-based industries,” he said.

“Vancouver has needed an alternative to downtown, Yaletown and Gastown, and those industries have found it in Mount Pleasant,” he said, adding that the neighbourhood has cheaper rents while still being close to transit and amenities.

“We expect other similar tech and production tenants to follow suit,” he said, noting that the tech sector now accounts for 18 per cent of office space occupancy in Metro Vancouver as of Oct. 1.

Michael Hungerford of Hungerford Properties said the timeline for building out the space is up to Dneg, which will have the freedom to convert the office into the environment they need.

“It’s going to have cutting-edge technology systems and world-leading computer IT infrastructure,” he said in an interview. “It will have, in terms of technology layouts, a mixture of open planning and cellular office environments, and they’re going to be enhancing and building out some amenities on site as well.”

He said the combination of Vancouver’s top tech schools, talent pool and a willingness by “all levels of government” to help to court visual effects companies have made the city a major draw for international firms like Dneg.

“It’s exactly the kind of company that Vancouverites want and our governments and institutions are trying to attract,” he said.

evan@evanduggan.com

Twitter:@evanbduggan