Big-box developer pulls out of Albion
Maple Ridge is nothing more than a distant image in the rear-view mirror of the Smart!Centres development vehicle.
The company has walked away from Albion flats land, at Lougheed Highway and 105th Avenue, where it wanted to put a big-box mall.
"We're talking big money here," said realtor Stan Pavlov, who tried to put some of the deals together.
A few years ago, Smart!Centres put conditional offers on 20 acres just west of Planet Ice and 105th Ave. and 41 acres owned by Steve and John Wynnyk, just south of that.
But it didn't want to proceed with the purchases until Maple Ridge council decided what it wanted to do with the farmland. That decision will have to wait until an area plan is done – which will follow the downtown plan currently under way.
Pavlov said Smart!Centres made the initial offers more than two years ago and extended the offers three times.
It requested another 18-month extension last fall, in hope that council would decide how it wants Albion flats to develop. But the company that owned the 20 acres was slow in deciding, while the Wynnyks took the property off the market.
As a result, Smart!Centres head office told its local office to forget about it. "Walk away from what you already spent and go somewhere else.
"They [Smart!Centres] dropped those and lost their deposits on them – walked away – but lost a lot of money.
"I've lived with this the last two and a half years, then at the end, they walked away."
Pavlov said the fact the land was in the Agricultural Land Reserve and Metro Vancouver's Green Zone weren't seen as serious obstacles by Smart!Centres.
Legislative changes now make it easier to remove land from the Green Zone, while the land commission has shown willingness to exclude the land.
Rather, the delay was from the district's indecision.
"They don't know what they want and they're squabbling among themselves," Pavlov said.
In the meantime, Smart!Centres, formerly First Pro Shopping Centres, focused on Pitt Meadows, on the north side of Lougheed Hwy., west of Meadow Gardens Golf Course.
"They weren't welcome in Maple Ridge so they went to Mission, they went to Pitt Meadows.
"In Pitt Meadows they tied up 90 acres," Pavlov said.
"They were, what's the word … snubbed in Maple Ridge."
Smart!Centres, which has Wal-Mart as one of its major tenants, still has about 45 acres in the Albion flats which it could sell or develop with another company in a joint venture.
And two parcels totalling about 15 acres on Lougheed Highway, east of Harvies Building Supplies, were recently sold to a Korean company for $300,000 an acre.
Meanwhile, Pavlov says the 20 acres he's currently trying to sell could be sold as a holding property, if combined with other properties and "if somebody with very deep pockets comes along and is prepared to wait."
He said Smart!Centres had budgeted $100 million to develop Albion flats, which would have involved assembling 120 acres.
In Pitt Meadows, Smart!Centres bought 11 acres of land at 19451/ 19477 Lougheed Hwy. from the Meadow Gardens Golf Course last March for $6.3 million.
In June, it paid a million dollars for 1.6 acres at 19499 Lougheed Hwy and $1.1 million for two acres at 19489 Lougheed Hwy.
http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/mapleridgenews/news/13902702.html
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glad there is some action going on at Patterson.....I would like to see some street front retail in that area would help to reduce the seedy factor.....it gets pretty odd late late at night I used to live in the area and the park has some interesting hobo inhabitants and plenty of late night "cruisers" also if you know what I mean.....shudders. 
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