Surrey plans to build 1,800 rental homes on city-owned lands

Surrey council members are used to making decisions about mega-projects submitted by developers.

Now it will be looking at a mega-project from the city itself.

Surrey restarted its Surrey City Development Corporation subsidiary, a for-profit real estate company, to develop multiple projects. It is now going ahead with plans to develop a 5.7-acre it owns at the north end of Surrey City Centre.

Planned are more than 1,800 rental homes – up from the original concept of 1,600 homes – spread across four towers with a park in the middle of everything, plus retail space. One of the towers could include a new elementary school and child-care facilities.

Also planned by the SCDC is the Centre Block project, a two-million-square-foot commercial and institutional project in Surrey City Centre. SCDC led the development of a master plan for this strategically important site in partnership with Simon Fraser University and the city. The master plan can be executed in up to four phases, depending on the market and other factors.

This development would effectively double the total office and academic space in the City Centre.

“While the region’s population growth pattern has evolved as anticipated by the regional planners, with more people now living proximate to Surrey City Centre than downtown Vancouver, the region’s distribution of office space and attendant jobs has been much slower to evolve,” reads a report on the project. “Specifically, Surrey City Centre has less than 2 million square feet of office space compared to the downtown Vancouver peninsula’s office inventory of over 28 million square feet. The negative social, environmental and economic implications of this imbalance are profound, and the Centre Block project is specifically targeted to address this imbalance and to advance the Surrey City Centre as a major business, education and jobs centre.”

The city restarted the Surrey City Development Corporation with the appointment of Michael Heeney to the position of interim president and CEO Chief Executive Officer.

“I look forward to restarting the Surrey City Development Corporation,” said Mayor Brenda Locke at the time. “SCDC’s model is unique and has had success in kickstarting investment in the City Centre area. In its second iteration, I hope to see SCDC continue to innovate, continue to spur and attract investment and focus on creating new and diverse housing options in Surrey. I welcome Michael back as Interim President and welcome the new Board. I look forward to the meaningful work SCDC will undertake this term.”

SCDC was formed with its own management team and board of directors in 2007 to optimize the value of surplus city-owned lands. SCDC is a for-profit entity whose mandate is to develop city-owned surplus lands.

The City Centre plan area is in North Surrey where three major transit corridors come together: King George Boulevard, Fraser Highway and 104 Avenue. It encompasses approximately 570 hectares, making it comparable in size to Vancouver’s downtown peninsula (excluding Stanley Park). The boundaries extend from approximately 93A Avenue in the south to 112 Avenue in the north, and from 132nd Street to 140th Street, west to east.