Real Estate

A few Vancouver landowners have discovered a nifty trick to achieve a dramatic reduction in their property taxes: create a garden or a park. According to a May 25 memo by two senior city officials, five development sites—comprising 17 lots—were converted to community parks or gardens over the past two years.

Finance director Patrice Impey and the general manager of community services, David McLellan, wrote that this resulted in B.C. Assessment reclassifying these properties from Class 6 to Class 8. That has led to a property-tax reduction of approximately 80 percent for the group of properties.

The owner of three lots converted in 2008—1372 Seymour Street, 1376 Seymour Street, and 555 Pacific Avenue—would have paid $128,126 had these addresses remained in Class 6, which is how most development sites are classified. By transferring to Class 8, the owner paid $22,756 in property taxes. Based on the reclassification of six more lots this year, the city’s tax revenues will fall $650,090 from this type of reclassification, according to Impey and McLellan.

Under the Assessment Act, Class 8 includes the availability of one or more of the following: trees, grass, growing beds, and benches. The sites must also be open to the public, according to the memo.

“Based on recent discussions with B.C. Assessment, staff has been informed that the determination of when a vacant land has attained a community park or garden status is subjective but is currently under review,” Impey and McLellan wrote.

They also noted that under the current zoning, either park use or community gardens are permitted on four of the five sites: 278 West 1st Avenue (two lots), 1304 Howe Street, 1157 Burrard Street, and 1372 Seymour Street (12 lots).

Two Metro Vancouver committees have passed a motion urging the board to express its “strong objection” to the port authority’s recent purchase of farmland in Richmond. The regional planning committee and the agriculture committee both also voted on June 4 to recommend that the Metro Vancouver board authorize its chair, Lois Jackson, to convey the board’s concerns to the federal and provincial transportation ministers and the provincial agriculture minister.

The Metro Vancouver board is expected to vote on the committees’ recommendation on June 26. Port Metro Vancouver—which is a separate entity from Metro Vancouver—recently bought the 80-hectare Gilmore Farm, which is in the Agricultural Land Reserve. The port’s chief strategic-development officer, Thomas Winkler, told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that his organization has “clearly heard the concerns of the Lower Mainland port cities”.

He added that the recent $20-million acquisition of the Gilmore Farm made strategic sense in helping to meet the port’s long-term requirement for industrial land. “Frankly, we didn’t anticipate the depth of the concern it would generate,” Winkler said. “It was always our intention to work with the municipalities and the Agricultural Land Commission in providing proper mitigation.”

The land is adjacent to Fraser Port on the south arm of the Fraser River. Winkler said the port authority also owns a Richmond eight-hectare egg farm, which it inherited from the North Fraser Port Authority.

In a report that went to the two committees, Metro Vancouver senior policy analyst Ann Rowan wrote that the farm is designated as part of the green zone. To remove this land from the green zone requires the support of two-thirds of the Metro Vancouver board.

“In the case of the Gilmore Farm it will continue to be used for farming purposes in the near term and the port authority would engage in consultations before it would consider conversion of the area to industrial use,” Rowan wrote.

Port Metro Vancouver stated in an April submission to the Metro Vancouver policy and planning department that it supports a “coordinated regional approach” to preserve industrial land. It also recommended that Metro Vancouver’s regional growth strategy focus on identifying an adequate amount of future industrial lands.

The port’s submission did not propose rezoning agricultural land. According to Rowan’s report, a Metro Vancouver study has concluded that the supply of industrial land “could theoretically accommodate regional development demand for the next 10 to 15 years”.