from the richmond news
Aspac's holdings grow
Vancouver developer that bought land west of the Olympic Oval now buys 8 acres east of the site
Nelson Bennett
Richmond News
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Aspac Developments has added another piece of real estate to what, in a game of Monopoly, might be considered the Board Walk-Park Place neighbourhood of Richmond that it already owns on River Road.
Aspac is the Vancouver developer that paid the city $141 million for 18.6 acres of land west of the Olympic Oval.
It plans to use the land to build 12 to 14 mid-rise residential towers.
Recently, the company also bought an eight-acre parcel of industrially zoned land at the corner of Hollybridge Way and River Road from Leland Investment Corporation.
Lance Brown, Aspac's vice-president of marketing, said there are no immediate plans to redevelop the property.
There are leases in place with a number of tenants until 2012, he said, so nothing will happen before then.
"We're not going to be looking to physically take any buildings down and start rebuilding until those leases have expired," he said.
The recent acquisition gives Aspac land on both sides of the oval, which will be converted, after 2010, to a public sport and fitness centre.
"We do really want to try to link the east and west sides of the oval," Brown said.
"It's all one of a whole. The whole point is to create a complete community."
Eventually, Aspac hopes to see the Hollybridge corner redeveloped for high-end retail and residential uses.
The site is zoned I-3 (light industrial.) Rezoning it for residential and retail is not without controversy.
"I will not support rezoning it for industrial simply because we're losing our industrial land base," says Coun. Harold Steves, who chairs the city's planning committee.
The oval and adjacent residential development is expected to be the catalyst that results in a swath of River Road being converted from industrial to residential uses. The city centre area plan contemplates roughly 140 acres of industrial land being converted for a mix of residential and commercial uses.
Bob Laurie, who recently had a verbal sparring match with Steves at a public hearing on the Garden City lands, shares Steves' concerns about losing industrial land -- or "employment lands," as he calls them, to residential development.
"If we keep allowing the home building industry to use industrial land like it's their personal land bank, we're all going to end up becoming the retirement home of the world," said the Richmond real estate consultant.
However, he agrees that letting a strip of industrial land along River Road in the oval precinct to go residential is the best use of the land.
"I probably think it's a good idea," said Laurie, who sits on the city oval steering committee and the Vancouver Board of Trade.
But he would like to see any industrial land that is rezoned recreated elsewhere, either in Richmond or somewhere else in the region.
He supports changing marginal agricultural land -- like Surrey's Barnston Island -- to industrial. That's where he parts company with Steves, who does not want to see industrial land created at the expense of ALR land.
Unlike residential development -- which can actually add costs to a municipality, through increased demand for services -- industrial land provides the city with the biggest bang for the buck per acre.
Not only does industry pay a much higher tax rate, it also provides a net benefit in the form of value-added employment.
Richmond currently enjoys a job surplus: jobs here exceed the city's workforce.
But a frenzy of residential development has been eating up farmland and residential land, and Steves fears Richmond could lose that employment surplus.
"Now it's going the opposite direction because we're increasing our residential population and we're decreasing our industrial land base," Steves said.
According to the city's planning department, the city is looking into replacing the industrial land lost in the oval precinct lands through rezoning and densification in the area between Lansdowne Road and River Rock Casino Resort.
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