Grandpa's Bridgeview home caught in Gateway crunch
Fifty years of living and working on property amounts to pittance
Joey Thompson, The Province
Published: Monday, March 12, 2007
The government legalese that sets policy for the seizure of grandpa
Jake Thiessen's 1940s north Surrey bungalow and three adjoining lots is
clear.
"The owner should be in the same economic position as before the
expropriation," the document reads.
But 68-year-old Thiessen -- who must relinquish his home, family
business and industrial-zoned properties to the authorities to clear the
way for the $3-billion Gateway Project -- says there's no way.
No question, the homes and properties in the Bridgeview area south of
the Fraser River are key to the B.C. government's ambitious plan to twin
the Port Mann Bridge and build perimeter roads on the river's silty
flood plain.
Thiessen, his wife, kids and grandkids who piled into the compact,
old-fashioned kitchen armed with stacks of documents and reports
understand and agree the project is essential.
But they want the expropriation squad to know it isn't easy to walk away
from the land, an on-site roofing operation and the 11/2-storey
wood-frame house that have been in the family since 1956.
Especially with only $280,000 in their wallets to replace and relocate.
Sure, the offer is market value, according to a thorough appraisal
prepared for the Gateway program people and confirmed by other
estimators.
But given soaring land prices, the sum is a far cry from what the family
will have to shell out to set up shop anywhere else in the Lower
Mainland.
"If he had his way he would never move because living in this house
enables him and his business to be somewhat financially secure in his
last years," daughter Marcy Risberg said.
"Shouldn't they have to pay him the amount it will cost to relocate?"
Not according to B.C.'s own Expropriation Act, which allows the
powers-that-be to seize property for a purpose deemed to be in the
public interest, even if the owner isn't willing to sell.
The government's obligation is to compensate equal to the property's
market value, Peter McLeod, one of Gateway's property agents, reiterated
several times in an interview last week.
And there's the hitch.
The market value for the roughly 600 homeowners in the community is puny
by today's standards, thanks to an obstructive zoning bylaw drawn up by
then-Surrey council to attract clean industries in the 1970s. A
subsequent council reviewed the bylaw in 1986 but left it unaltered.
It confines permitted uses in the area -- with the exception of existing
residences, which were grandfathered --to special industries, namely
scientific research labs and the manufacture of business machines,
electrical appliances, tools and equipment and scientific, photographic
and optical instruments.
Needless to say, the hoped-for flood of entrepreneurs interested in
investing in the area never showed. In fact, there has been little
developer action in the neighbourhood until government agents came
knocking recently "to lowball him," Thiessen said.
Now there's little the family can do but pack their bags: the law says
they can request a public inquiry, but it also says the government can
refuse them.
"From the zoning to the expropriation, everything is stacked in their
favour," the long-time mover and shaker behind Jake's Roofing sighed.
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