When did Vancouver become a landowner in North Van and why is it selling what it owns there?
Question: Why does the City of Vancouver own properties in North Vancouver and why are they being sold now?
Answer: Someone once printed out a list for me of every land-titles document for property the city owns in Vancouver. It was about three feet high. I finally threw it out after 10 years because I figured it was out of date, what with everything the city is constantly buying and selling as it tries to get out in front of the crowd to reserve space for future parks or roads or whatever they think they’ll need.
But why North Van? Here’s my educated guess. It’s the former Millennium Developments properties, owned by Peter and Shahram Malek, which the city took over. If you look at this previous blog post, it gives the overview of what the city took over as it seized all the assets that the Maleks had pledged against their half-billion-dollar loan from Vancouver to build the Olympic Village.
The post also used to link to a city PowerPoint that gave details on what they took over. Thanks to the city’s laughably inept website makeover (not that I’m at all bitter), that link is broken. However, I’ve restored it using the secret trick all of us city-hall watchers are now employing, which is to type “former” in front of whatever url we are trying to get to that seems to be broken. So here is the PowerPoint. If you go through to where the properties are itemized, you’ll see three on Esplanade near the North Van waterfront. The Maleks had been assembling what looks like a row of properties, presumably for some large development. I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about.
As for why they are selling them now, the plan always was to sell as soon as possible, with the proviso that city staff would do whatever it took first to maximize their value, i.e. possibly taking them through any legal or rezoning hoops that might make them more attractive to buyers.
Even though the sales market sucks these days, if I may be permitted to use technical terms, developers still seem to be going like gangbusters. North Van City particularly seems to be a hot market. So it could be a very good time to sell. We’ll have to check records in a few months to see what the sales price was. Remind me if I forget, won’t you?
4 responses so far ↓
1 Joe Just Jow // Sep 24, 2012 at 1:14 pm
It will be interesting to read an update on the Olympic Village loan. My understanding is the city successful sold the Province building at Hastings/Cambie for much more then anyone expected. Curious to know how the other Millenium properties placed for sale have fetched.
2 Joe Just Joe // Sep 24, 2012 at 1:16 pm
It would be interesting to read an update on the Olympic Village loan. My understanding is the city successfully sold the Province building at Hastings/Cambie for much more then anyone expected. Curious to know how much the other Millenium properties placed for sale have fetched so far and what’s still available for sale.
3 False Creep // Oct 3, 2012 at 10:10 pm
I noticed a City of Vancouver for sale sign on a West Van property too. Marine Drive across from police station. I was confused, until now. thanks.
4 jaymac // Oct 31, 2012 at 10:45 am
Thanks for the “former” tip. Forgive the plagary, but the new Vancouver website “sucks”, for those of us who need to access it on a regular basis.
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