City of Vancouver and CP Rail announced today that CoV has purchased the 42-acre 9 km Arbutus Corridor for $55 M and will create a greenway to serve people on foot and on bikes. Part of the agreement is a revenue split on lands if developed because they are not needed for the greenway.
CoV’s announcement is HERE.
Greenway from False Creek to Marpole
“The City’s historic purchase of the Arbutus railway is great news for Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Thanks to this landmark agreement, the City will be able to transform the area into an outstanding greenway and connect neighbourhoods from False Creek to Marpole. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, not unlike New York’s High Line and other international examples. City Council is looking forward to the next steps in this process and to working with the community to enhance the greenway for all users.”
According to the Globe and Mail:
The deal, announced at a news conference on Monday, will see the city pay CP Rail $55-million for the 11-kilometre piece of land. The city has also agreed to compensate the company for any increased value in the land if a future city council decides to develop the property.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson says the resulting green space will connect the city’s False Creek to the Fraser River for cyclists and foot traffic.
“This is a historic agreement and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our city,” Mr. Robertson told a news conference alongside officials from CP Rail
“This is Vancouver’s chance to have a New York-style High Line.”
Further reporting HERE from Ted Field at Global news.
Great deal. Good to see the intent is to have some kind of train system in the future.
It seems like the City is really emphasizing the parks aspect of this transportation corridor with words like “Greenway” and “High Line.” Is the vision of an Arbutus LRT line being pushed to the side, the first step of eventually killing it off?
Once you remove track from railway right of ways, it is almost impossible to put it back in. Is this not a crème de la crème walking path, bike path and future residential/commercial land sales benefit to the city and the CPR? Why is the city government so against any type of affordable rail transit-ie the False Creek line and now the Arbutus line…Those socialist states to the south rail bank their track having learned the hard way that once removed, it costs too much to rebuild. Sigh…
Wow a nice shiny $55 million park (before improvements) for the poor park-deficient West Side. Maybe the city should introduce a new luxury surtax on properties west of Granville, rather than stick the whole city with the bill for this.
This is great to have it finally settled.
Railway routes are nice as cycling paths because they go uphills in a very gradual way which also is good for cycling uphill.
Why is the picture of the greenway not straight? I can’t imagine the original rail tracks of being so indirect. Or is that picture just of the Angus drive bike route?
Follows the contours, trains don’t like steep hills over short distances.
I’m happy to see any new park space… but, boy, with Vancouver property prices, it’s insane. $55M!!! There’s probably less than 100 gardeners there. We’re subsidizing $550,000 per gardener so they can grow tomatoes. Don’t get me wrong, I love community gardens, but the price of land in this city is insane.
In a normal, non-real-estate-frenzy city, that land would probably be worth less than $1M. For all those Vancouverites who say that our sky high real estate prices doesn’t affect them, well, it does.
The city didn’t buy it for the gardeners but for transportation and green space.
That’s even more expensive! $55M for tear down lot value only. Adding LRT will be billions more. And, how many regular users will it have? It’s not like there aren’t any sidewalks or bike routes over there already.
The same size park space probably cost $1M in some other city. We don’t pay 55x the property tax here. So, where is all this money coming from? It’s like we all chipped in $100 each so that a select few, who are already living along a really, really nice part of the city, can have even more extra goodies. Where’s the money for a new park along Nanaimo Street? Can any councillor tell me the last time they visited Champlain Heights?
Vancouver land has skyrocketed and is too expensive for me to buy, so I live in a condo. Vancouver land has skyrocketed and is too expensive for the city to buy, but they freakin’ buy it anyway.
This is the same city that won’t increase the $200,000 funding for the DTES street market. This is the same mayor that once said that every dollar in the budget is allocated. There’s no extra money.
I’m not against green space nor against good transportation. But, it’s not like we really need this. It’s a lot of money for a “nice to have” item. At what point is something just too expensive? Everyone wants everything and just keeps borrowing money to live beyond their means.
priceless… a gift for the future
A gift for the creme de la creme for the future. Fixed that for you.
I sure hope everyone remembers it is supposed to be a transportation corridor
When and how did CP purchase the land and are there First Nations claims on the land .