Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbertram
CPR may own the land, but City controls the land zoning, which is what the City vs. CPR court case was all about. City wanted a transit-oriented redevelopment of the lands after CPR officially abandoned the tracks; CPR wanted edge-to-edge condos and retail, and wanted to force the City to make zoning changes to accommodate CPRs development plans. CPR has usually gotten its way since the first trains arrived here almost 125 years ago, so they were p*ssed when the City dared to say no to them. CPR even went so far as creating models and maps of their redevelopment plans and shopping them around the area to gain community support for the CPR and against the City.
The case went to Supreme Court, and City won - City gets to make land use zoning changes even if CPR doesn't agree with them.
City can now keep zoning as railway industrial, buy the land from CPR cheap ($100 million last I heard), rezone the way they want, slice & dice the land into pieces, develop some land as parks or transit, and make other parts available on 99-year leases, and add a transit improvement levy to the area to pay for a new streetcar from the Fraser River to False Creek.
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Common sense would say that the city wouldn't be able to do that, CPR lawyers would be quick to take that to court and they would win compensation. If the city doesnt allow CPR to rezone the land and then because of that buys it for cheap only to rezone it and profit, especially after they even presented their case in court, they are going to be setting themselves up for a lawsuit. And CPR would gladly take that on as they still have huge land holdings in Vancouver and at some point in the future they will want to redevelop those too, and they wont want to go through all these problems again.