official: TRANSPORTATION I Residential development said to squeeze ports’ ability to expand
Fiona Anderson
Sun
Prime industrial waterfront is being snapped up for residential development, threatening the ability of local ports to expand to meet growing demand.
The Fraser River Port Authority has almost exhausted its land supply, and if it is going to grow, it needs to find more, the authority’s vice-president of property development, Tom Corsie, said in an interview.
But to do that, the port has to compete with developers for the increasingly scarce land.
And so far, the developers are winning.
Developers can offer municipalities higher tax revenues and amenities like waterfront parks, Corsie said. At the same time, the port is limited in how much it can pay for land by how much it can earn from it, which is a lot less than developers can earn.
Without more land, the port will be unable to expand, something it needs to do to remain competitive, Corsie said. For example, Fraser River is the second-largest auto-import port in North America, but it’s already operating at full capacity. If companies want to increase the number of cars being shipped, they may choose to go through the United States, where there is room for expansion.
Also, in a 2005 report, the Greater Vancouver Gateway Council identified 14 locations that could be used for short-sea container shipping, Corsie said.
“Two or three of them are already gone, and all of them are under threat by gentrification of waterfront development,” he said.
“When we see land surrounded by water like Queensborough in New Westminster — great tidewater, flat, traditional industrial land served by great railways — finding those attributes in the Lower Mainland where water-dependent industry can locate is a really difficult thing to do,” Corsie added.
“And when we see those traditional industrial lands being converted into residential, when in our view residential can go anywhere, we sometimes question the strategic decisions around that.”
The port is urging the provincial government to protect industrial lands, perhaps by creating a reserve the way it has with agricultural lands. It is also lobbying the federal government to change the rules that affect its ability to buy lands.
Christina DeMarco, division manager for regional development with the Greater Vancouver Regional District, has made an inventory of all industrial lands in the GVRD, not just waterfront lands. Since 1996, the amount of industrial land has actually decreased from 29,000 acres to 26,000 acres, at a time when the need for it has increased because of a growing population, DeMarco said.
Public policy consultant Tex Enemark has been studying port and rail transportation lands in the Lower Mainland for Transport Canada, and he submitted his report Friday.
Although the report has not yet been made public, Enemark said industrial land is “disappearing quickly.”
“Part of the problem is that municipalities have all fallen in love with the idea of turning all of the waterfront in the Lower Mainland into pedestrian walkways and parks,” Enemark said.
Yet municipalities don’t make money from residential developments once the costs of services, such as transit, schools and police, are figured into the picture, he said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
