(The Vancouver Sun published the following story by Frances Bula on its website on September 5.)
VANCOUVER, B.C. — In a move that has caught the City of Vancouver off guard, Canadian Pacific Railway filed applications Thursday to build 24 units of housing on the Arbutus rail corridor.
The applications appear to be part of a strategy to force the city to negotiate to buy the land from CP in a long-running tussle between the parties over what should happen with the century-old rail line.
That tussle includes a two-year-old lawsuit that is about to proceed to the B.C. Court of Appeal Dec. 15.
CP representative Paul Clark said the move is all about sending a signal to the city that CP wants to negotiate seriously so that it can free its land and use the profits to put into other parts of the system.
“It is an opportunity for more people to take advantage of that land.” Clark declined to estimate a price for the land, which the city originally donated to the CPR, but other estimates have put the 18-hectare strip that runs through prime west-side neighbourhoods at $60 million to $100 million.
Senior city planner Ann McAfee expressed shock at CP’s move.
“The city is surprised that Canadian Pacific is taking a step that would destroy the Arbutus corridor, a rail line that has existed for more than 100 years. This is especially surprising given that this matter is before the Court of Appeal.”
McAfee said the city is talking to its lawyers about what action to take regarding the line, which has been designated for the past 10 years in various city and regional plans as a future greenway and transportation corridor.
The most recent transportation plan, done within the last couple years, refined it further to envision a street-level rail line. However, no money is allocated to it in the current capital plan.
In debates over a Richmond-Airport-Vancouver transit line, many people argued the existing Arbutus corridor should be used for the route instead of Cambie Street, which is in the current proposal.
The city rezoned the Arbutus corridor four years ago to designate it as a transportation corridor, when it became clear CP would cease using it as a rail line for the last customer it had — Molson Brewery at the foot of Burrard — and attempt to sell the land.
(The city had already gone through one battle with CP on another section of the line around Granville Island, when the railway sold a piece of land in the early 1990s that a Starbucks coffee shop was built on. In 1995, the city paid $9 million to preserve 1.5 km of track to the east of that, track that is now used as a heritage-streetcar route between Granville Island and Science World.)
CP launched legal action after the city’s 1999 rezoning of its 16 km of Arbutus corridor track, claiming the city doesn’t have the right to rezone land so a private owner can’t do anything with it. In June 2002, a B.C. Supreme Court judge agreed and set aside the city’s official development plan for the Arbutus corridor.
The city has appealed that decision to the B.C. Court of Appeal.
Clark avoided saying CP is trying to force the city’s hand, repeating several times it is simply trying to move to the next step with the line, by selling it.
He said CP will follow the mandated procedure for discontinuing use of a line. It will advertise that it will formally discontinue use of the line, which gives any government or corporation 60 days to make an offer to run the line for rail service.
If there are no offers to do that, the next step is for the rail line to offer the property to both the city and the province for any use. If neither level of government responds within 30 days, Clark said, the company can sell it to any interested party.
“The development permits are a signal to the city that, if they were not interested in purchasing, it’s our intent to sell it to a third party,” said Clark.
The development permit application specifies that the 24 housing units would be built on parcels of land between West Fourth and West 16th that are already zoned for residential use. The housing units would be in the form of some single and some multiple dwellings.
Clark said the company waited until now to act because it wanted to give the new council a chance to settle in, as well as to see what the outcome of the Richmond rapid-transit line negotiations were.
Clark said he hoped the city would see this as an opportunity “to think through what they want to do with it.”
He also said people should see the land could be turned into something that provides many new uses, as has been done with the former railway land in Coal Harbour.