Richmond Review – Steveston Secondary on the block, again.

As many as 20 developers are in the mix as potential suitors for the former 13-acre home of Steveston secondary school on No. 2 Road, which is once again on the sales block.

For the past five years or so, the Ministry of Education has placed a moratorium on the sale of school lands to parties other than independent school operators. And with the local school board opting not to sell to an independent school, the Steveston site has remained unsold.

But the prospects for a sale changed earlier this month, when B.C. Education Minister Don McRae wrote to the district that it would extend the completion period for the sale and transfer of title for the Steveston Secondary School site until March 31, 2015.

For the past month, the Richmond school district has sought expressions of interest for the site from developers as well as 75 other parties who previously expressed an interested in the land, Sargent said.

Read more: http://www.richmondreview.com/news/203484941.html

Bastion Development Corp. has purchased the Shell Gas Station site on the Northwest corner of the Arbutus and West Broadway intersection.  Shell is currently operating on the property under a land lease.  The site is nearly 29,000 square feet and has 200 feet of frontage on West Broadway.

Developers are increasingly using social media and online surveys to ask area residents what businesses they want in their neighbourhood, turning away from traditional market research that determines what types of stores might draw customers.

When real-estate developer Robert Fung started to look at how best to fill 8,000 square feet of retail space in New Westminster, B.C., he decided to approach it like a retailer and ask potential customers what they thought might be a good fit. He turned to Facebook, Twitter and community blogs to solicit feedback from people who live in the area.

Mr. Fung says the response to the two-week campaign was “overwhelming, immediate and highly informative,” and it led the developer to refine his target retail mix and modify the storefront configurations to dovetail with what respondents envisioned.

“I didn’t have anyone say, ‘Put a London Drugs in it or a Shoppers Drug Mart’ – not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s not the character we hope to provide,” says Mr. Fung, president of Salient Group, which is behind the Trapp + Holbrook project in downtown New Westminster.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/starting-out/heres-a-twist-developers-ask-residents-what-stores-they-want/article11165548/

City closes Onni deal with $1M land sale.

The long and, at times, rough public process for the Onni Safeway site development has come to a definitive end. The Onni towers got their fourth and final reading from council before just a handful of council watchers in the City of North Vancouver gallery Monday night, a stark contrast to the overflow crowds that came out to the two public hearings held in March and November last year.

Onni has been on track for approval since a second pubic hearing was held in March for the 344 units of housing in 24-storey and 18 storey towers, along with an eight-storey office tower and 40,000 square feet of commercial space. Council narrowly voted in favour of the development at the end of the hearing.

In keeping with the contentious public process that dogged the project, the final approval came with one last political provocation at the council table.