We bring you two stories this week about the absolutely eye-popping values of our industrial waterfront properties. Seaspan’s Pemberton Avenue shipyard, head office and parking lot have been pegged by BC Assessment at a record-smashing $525 million. And a Toronto-based real estate investment firm has bought the 27-acre property at 1371 McKeen Ave. at a price rumoured to be more than $140 million.
Rather than being high numbers for us to ‘ooh and ahh’ at, we want to stress these valuations and transactions have reverberations both locally and nationally.
The assessment of Seaspan’s properties is liable to change as they have their appeal, but whatever number they land on, it has an impact on their tax bill and the taxes of every other heavy industrial business in the District of North Vancouver. Thanks to the province’s antiquated and arcane Port Property Tax Act, that tax burden is already highly inequitable.
We are also closely watching the speculative purchase of the McKeen property. It has tide and rail access, making it an extremely rare candidate for port expansion, but the property has never been used for export purposes. We’d welcome the announcement that the new owners plan to invest in a new terminal, but we worry that’s not in the cards.
For good or for ill, our economy and standard of living are inextricably tied to trade. If we cannot count on having sane and rational trading partners in the United States, then we need more partners across oceans.
We’d much prefer properties like this be used for parking freighters rather than parking investment dollars.
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