Vancouver's federal port authority quietly went on a buying spree for industrial land in the region last year to preserve it from being used for condos, spending $115-million to acquire around 340 acres.
And it's planning to continue buying another 800 in the coming years because municipalities can't be counted on to preserve the land needed for economic growth, said its new CEO.
"For four million people to live here in the future, there needs to be an economy. And for an economy, there needs to be industrial land," said Robin Silvester, who became the head of Port Metro Vancouver early last year. "There is still this conflict with municipal planning policy. We're looking to buy parcels of land to prevent them from being moved out of industrial use."
Mr. Silvester said the port authority was spurred into action after a series of losses of industrial land along the Fraser River. That included a site in Queensborough that was converted to a shopping centre and casino, the Canadian White Pines mill site in southeast Vancouver that is being transformed into a massive new residential neighbourhood, and, in late 2008, the Fraser Mills site in Coquitlam, also scheduled for residential development.
"Those are lost for good. They will never be industrial land again."
In the past year, Port Metro Vancouver bought 106 acres on two sites in New Westminster, 13 acres in Vancouver - a Canfor site - and 220 acres in Richmond. That's all to make sure that industries that use or serve the port can continue to have access to land nearby. The port is hoping to eventually own about 1,200 acres.
Besides buying more land, Port Metro is also considering ways to make new land for port activities the way Hong Kong, London and Singapore have done.
"Right now, we dredge a million cubic feet of sand out of the Fraser River every year and we dispose of that around Point Grey. We could use some of that dredged material to create new land and to create new environmental habitat," said Mr. Silvester, who has also worked in London and Australia. "That potentially gives us the opportunity to redraw the map."
The port's decision to buy the 220-acre Gilmore Farm in Richmond, as part of its plan, provoked a major uproar last spring. Richmond councillor Harold Steeves worried that it was the beginning of the takeover of much more agricultural land as part of the port's desire to expand.
Mr. Silvester said in a recent interview that the port has agreed it will not purchase any more agricultural land until there is a policy in place.
But, he said, there needs to be some way of negotiating a swap of farmland near ports for potential farmland elsewhere.
"We need to look at ways of moving land out of the Agricultural Land Reserve and moving other pieces of land in. Either that or increasing the utility of the existing land."
That is something that Metro Vancouver planners would like to see the port authority do.
Metro planner Christina DeMarco said that, although there's a critical need to save the region's industrial land and the port is helping with that, it could do more by using its land more efficiently.
Ms. DeMarco said the region is continuing to see losses of industrial land.
"The Canada Line in Richmond has displaced some industrial and will displace more."
As well, the region is facing pressure from several municipalities who want to rezone land around their rapid-transit stations. If all municipalities decided to do that, said Ms. DeMarco, the region would lose 3,200 acres or about 15 per cent of the total supply of industrial land in the region.
The last industrial-land inventory done in the region showed there were 26,000 acres total available in 2005.
