The City of Vancouver has received a submission to conserve the historic Royal Bank building downtown.

The proposal is part of a rezoning application to build an adjacent 28-storey office tower. The new glass-and-metal structure will be located at the vacant site east of the Royal Bank building on West Hastings Street that was completed in 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression.

Project architect Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership prepared a design rationale stating that the old building will benefit from a “seismic upgrade”.

“The proposed construction of a new office tower at 625 West Hastings will create a unique opportunity to design a new lateral load resisting system within 625 West Hastings that can support both towers,” the document notes.

Donald Luxton and Associates Inc. put together a heritage study recalling that as the Royal Bank of Canada became the nation’s biggest bank in the 1920s, it moved to build a stone-clad home at the northeast corner of West Hastings and Granville streets.

“The new tower would symbolize the powerful bank and become a beacon of hope, even as the tower’s construction progressed at the onset of the Great Depression,” the study notes.

The proposed office structure will have five levels of underground parking for 67 cars.

According to the rezoning application, the new building will have at least 150,000 square feet of office space.