Vancouver has reached a deal with CP Rail to settle the contentious fight over an abandoned rail line in the west side, with the city agreeing to purchase the land for $55-million and turn it into a public greenway.
The dispute began when CP announced plans to reactivate its tracks along the Arbutus corridor, where it hasn’t run trains since 2001. The city offered to buy the land in 2014 for $20-million, sources said at the time, with plans to turn it into a green space. CP asked for $100-million.
As legal battles that included a case at the Supreme Court of Canada dragged on, CP workers cleared community gardens and sheds that had been tended to by residents for years.
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.”
The city and CP have been fighting over rail corridors for almost two decades. CP sold a chunk of a line at the entrance to Granville Island in 1995 to Starbucks, cutting off the connection between the Arbutus line and the track that ran east to Main Street.
The city then paid $9-million in 1996 for a 1.5-kilometre section between Granville Island and Science World that was later used for a streetcar during the 2010 Olympics.
In 1999, CP started talking about ending train runs along the Arbutus line and developing the land. City planners rezoned it as a transportation corridor.
CP fought that to the Supreme Court of Canada and lost in 2006.
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What does this really mean: “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.” Any?
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That’s a big deal for CP. There’s really no high-density zoning along the corridor, so if that changes, they could make out very well, depending on what is means to “compensate for any increased value.” That also takes away some of the incentive to rezone.
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Indeed, will the City ensure that there is no constraint on future councils to develop a transit corridor sometime in the future? If not, that’s a very nice piece of additonal green space for some of the highest valued real estate in Canada – as well as a good addition to the City’s greenway network.
“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.”
I guess the significance of this clause depends on the meaning of “develop the property”. Presumably this doesn’t mean lots “adjacent to” the property.
Any land that can be used for housing will be quite valuable. Look at Kits Point, that Greer Ave strip CPR developed in the 1970s. Low density, only 34 units on ten parcels.
Those 1.25 acres currently assessed (land only, excluding buildings) at $25 million.
And, that strip was narrow right-of-way, only 15 metres wide. South of 16th, it is 20m.
It doesn’t seem unfair to me to give CPR some upside to the extent the parcel is in fact upzoned for real estate in the future. $55M is a pretty bargain price for a 9km strip on the west side if you’re going to turn it into residential real estate and the basis of that low price is clearly that the city will in fact use it as a right-of-way and not hive off portions for development. You can imagine CPR insisting on some protection on that issue. Instead of tying the hands of future councils and saying that we’ll never, ever develop any of it (or legislating in the contract which portions may be developed) it seems reasonable to give CPR a pre-negotiated cut of the upzoned value if and when it’s developed. So that concept seems reasonable to me. I can’t really speak to the $55M valuation, but this stalemate has gone on long enough and there is and will be value into turning it into a nice piece of public infrastructure. It will be great for cycling as the grade is much flatter than the surrounding neighborhoods, at least between W 16th and W 37th.
Agreed.
It’ll prevent the “bait and switch”. A Council cannot legally “fetter its discretion” so it cannot legally agree not to develop the land in the future. This solution provides CPR with a monetary remedy if the City renegs on its “promise”.
i.e. The City bought the Kettle of Fish building for road purposes to build a ramp from Burrard Bridge to Hornby Street – chances are it’ll be sold off for development since that won’t happen.
Likewise, the City bought land for a connector to continue Kingsway to Quebec Street. That land is being sold off.
What are you talking about? They’re starting to work on the project right now where the Kettle of Fish was.
http://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/burrard-bridge-and-pacific-street-intersection-upgrades.aspx
They’re increasing motor vehicle capacity on Pacific by widening it into where the restaurant is.
Older plans called for a roadway viaduct from Burrard Bridge to Hornby Street.
The current optimization plan will leave a lot of developable property.
Seems like a great deal to me, although $55M is obviously a big increase from $20M. I’m glad the stalemate is over anyway, and look forward to using the new park.
That will be an awesome enhancement to the city, will increase abutting property values and will connect many bike paths. It will be well used by joggers, walkers and bikers.
A true win for Vancouver.
This may raise more questions than it answers. But we become confused at a much higher level about much more important things.
From VanCityBuzz:
Under the agreement between the two parties, CP could receive 75 per cent of the first $50 million of the proceeds from land used for development. This decreases to 50 per cent and 25 per cent for further increments of $50 million in proceeds, up to $150 million.
Alternatively, the railway corporation could exercise its option for the lands between West 1st and 5th Avenue, which would eliminate any revenue sharing possibility for any of the lands sold elsewhere along the Corridor. In this arrangement, the City will attain 50 per cent of CP’s excess proceeds beyond $75 million.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2016/03/city-of-vancouver-buys-arbutus-corridor-for-55-million/
Read about that 2nd option in the paper today.
That’s evidence that the City doesn’t care much for extending the Downtown Streetcar down the Arbutus corridor.
The segments of the corridor from 1st Ave. to 5th Ave. would have been the logical connection from Granville Island to the Arbutus corridor for a streetcar (despite the Starbucks, which can be built around).
Win/win all around: CP Rail, City, citizens, tourists
Why doesn’t an expenditure of this size require approval through a vote as the capital borrowing plan does? I for one would vote No on yet another park for the West Side. And honestly, for the Mayor to prattle on about a High Line of sorts only reveals his ignorance if how completely disimilar the two concepts and sites are.
I was wondering that myself about the comparison. This greenway will be entirely at grade level. The High Line is on an elevated platform.
Part of it is on a slope of a hill with an amazing view but that’s not quite the same thing.
The comparison to the High Line is just the marketing team in action.
Personally I am disappointed they reached a deal, the land really was a defacto greenway but was still considered a transportation corridor. Apart from squacking of residents along the line there was no downside to the status quo, now by the time Vancouver is ready to use this corridor for rapid transit it will be established in everyones mind as a greenway and the uproar when they try and put trains on it will be deafening.
Squatting, not squacking. Squatting. Adjacents took over nearby land that did not belong to them, and benefitted directly. We have a society that condones theft of property. It’s not that it was a vacant lot used as a ‘defacto’ park for kids, some people got territorial and started to move their fences to enclose CPR lands. Then felt their entitlement was insulted when the owner attempted to take it back.
It’s a fine deal; only miscreants pine for satus quo.
The land beside the tracks was derelict and unfenced for over a half century, so this property rights rhetoric is a bit much. The gardens may have been on private land and did encroach onto the tracks once train service was abandoned, but they were also a net community improvement. The issue could have been resolved by charging a nominal lease with defined spatial and expiry / renewal criteria.
Further, there is much controversy today about abandoned or vacant, derelict houses on the west side. What about the issue of the CPR allowing hundreds of thousands of m2 of land on the Arbutus line to sit derelict for decades?
Ownership comes with privileges. Some condo or home owners even leave their house and condo vacant.
And inevitably double tracked with a lot more than the CPR’s one train a day until Molson’s started using trucks to deliver grain to their Burrard St brewery. The tracks were left to rot for a decade and were in no shape to run trains. The garden smash-ups were just dramatic flourishes to their negotiations. Looks like it worked.
Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing a tram service on the corridor, eventually extended to downtown. But there has to be ridership and cost-benefit justification. The inevitable airy outrage of the west side Range Rover-driving crème is not the concern of the majority of Vancouver taxpayers.
Still, I think there is room for garden allotments on the verges. A pair of tracks needs only about 8m of land, except for turns and sidings. They can be fenced off with occasional signalized pedestrian crossings.