Burnaby Updates

[WBC]

Metrotown used to be a relatively poor neighborhood. When I was moving in from West End 20+ years ago people warned me and I quote "that I should watch for gangs in Metrotown". This was a bit of exaggeration of course, but the neighborhood was almost all domain of the working poor on the south side. There were residential towers and a lot of them were full of retired people. One or two towers were added every couple of years. So you essentially had working poor renting walkups and retired people living in towers. The mall closed early and the neighborhood was dead after 6pm. There were truckers motels along Kingsway. The main school (Marlborough) that is now the largest primary school in Burnaby (1000 kids) was closed and used by some sort of college as annex.

That started to change in early 2000s and especially post 2010 when all of the sudden a lot of development started to take place and more and more families (especially Asian families) started to move in. The number of kids exploded. The main school was opened. The neighborhood started going upscale and condo prices went through the roof. Right now you are looking at paying 700K+ for a new two bedroom of about 800-900 sq. feet (which I am not sure how families afford with Lower Mainland jobs but that's a whole separate topic). The neighborhood gentrified (in fact Metrotown is a textbook example of gentrification). Old working poor and retirees are getting pushed out. There is a definitely more services, restaurants, entertainment being added to the neighborhood as a result. However, as with anywhere else that is introducing new problems - homeless, traffic, pressure on existing services (Bonsor community center for example). From my perspective changes have been good. The neighborhood is getting more walk-able, bike-able and exciting. However, if you are poor you are being screwed - big time...