By Curt Cherewayko
The multicultural hub of Surrey is expected to only become more diverse as a slew of public and private infrastructure projects downtown are completed in the coming years, creating thousands of new jobs and potentially luring thousands of new residents to its core.
A hoped-for influx of new residents has caused developers like Concord Pacific Developments Inc. to break ground on their first projects in Whalley, which, after years of neglect, is being transformed into the new heart of Surrey.
And while Whalley remains a formal jurisdiction, government and other stakeholders are referring to the once-disreputable area as Surrey city centre or downtown Surrey – a rebranding that is expediting its reinvention.
Among the 47 major projects in the city’s inventory as of January 1 are Concord Pacific’s Park Place towers in the downtown core.
Park Place consists of two 36-storey concrete buildings containing 690 condo units and roughly 150,000 square feet of commercial space. Another two-storey commercial building is attached.
With brisk sales to date (Park Place 1 is 90% sold), Concord has plans for four additional towers in the area.
“The demand is coming from all around,” said Peter Udzenija, manager of project marketing for Concord Pacific. “With the amount of people coming here, we thought it’s just a no-brainer to start to develop the area.”
And the jobs that are expected to come to the area are in anything but fickle sectors.
The new $1 billion headquarters for the RCMP’s “E” Division is expected to house 3,000 employees.
Hundreds of new jobs will be created when the Surrey Memorial Hospital completes a $500 million expansion and when Phase 1 of the new 180,000-square-foot city hall is built in 2013.
As well, Surrey’s new $30 million, 75,000-square-foot public library is slated to open in fall 2011.
“You have government, education and health care all moving in,” said Udzenija. “These aren’t jobs that are just going to disappear.”
In the Park Place towers, 577-square-foot one-bedroom condos start at $209,800 and 770-square-foot two-bedroom condos start at $269,800.
“The pricing that is there right now is what it was like in Richmond three or four years ago,” said Udzenija, regarding real estate in downtown Surrey.
This January, law firm McQuarrie Hunter LLP consolidated its two Surrey offices and New Westminster office into a 17,000-square-foot space in Central City, which is a 640,000-square-foot shopping mall combined with a 300,000-square-foot Simon Fraser University (SFU) campus and 550,000-square-foot office tower.
McQuarrie was originally founded in New Westminster, with one of the partners maintaining a part-time office in Surrey.
Today, the company has 30 lawyers and 60 support staff.
“The Surrey offices kept growing and growing and eventual got bigger than our New Westminster office,” said Tako van Popta, managing partner of McQuarrie.
Central City is fully leased, with new tenants moving in throughout 2011.
Fraser Health is consolidating 11 offices into two floors of the office tower in May – putting it in convenient proximity to the SFU campus.
Van Popta said lease rates in Surrey are reasonable compared with downtown Vancouver, although McQuarrie is paying more rent in the Class A location than it was in its previous three Class B locations.
“We see more and more business moving out here,” said van Popta. “Municipalities like Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford are really encouraging businesses to move out here. They’re opening up business parks like Campbell Heights in South Surrey and Gloucester Estates in Langley.”
The City of Surrey is going into considerable debt for the first time in 25 years in order to finance its ambitious capital projects, and some citizens have expressed concern about the city’s ability to pay off that debt.
As well, transportation issues aren’t fully ironed out yet, particularly when it comes to commuters who arrive in Surrey daily from points east.
But the city believes that to create a new vibrant community, risks are necessary and challenges inevitable.
City centre (excluding the rest of Whalley) has grown moderately from 21,320 in 2001 to 28,000 today, with a labour force of 17,500.
The city predicts the city centre will be home to 65,000 people by 2031.
Mr. Mom’s World, a small bakery and catering service owned by Russell Pohl, moved to the outskirts of downtown Surrey a year and a half ago from North Vancouver.
“The rent’s reasonable here,” said Pohl. “[But] there’s no question that it’s going to go up as the area changes.”
Mr. Mom’s World has never had a strong retail presence at any of its former locations, but Pohl hopes that downtown Surrey’s growth brings a pedestrian culture to the area that would facilitate walk-in business.
“With all the new development, we are starting to see families come out here. They’re very yuppie families: they believe in taking the SkyTrain; if they own a vehicle, they only own one.”
Pohl is enthusiastic about Whalley’s reinvention.
“If people took a trip around Whalley, they would still see the old stuff, but they would see how much it’s changing, too.”