CN RAILWAY – THORNTON YARD

SURREY, B.C.

CLIENT:  CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAY PROPERTIES INC.

As part of an ongoing process, Canadian National Railways identified several portions of their large Thornton Yard, as surplus to their operational needs.  Our firm was retained to act as the lead consultant to manage the subdivision and rezoning of these parcels to create marketable industrial sites for potential rail users.

Three separate parcels were identified, each with their own unique situation, ranging from existing buildings encroaching over the proposed property line, encroachment of major drainage canals, to a site housing radioactive contaminated soils.  Resolution of these issues involved extensive negotiations with the City of Surrey, Ministry of Environment, Lands, Parks and Housing, Department of Fisheries and Oceans as well as several federal agencies having overlapping responsibilities for radioactive contaminated wastes.

All three sites also front onto the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road that was being jointly studied by the City of Surrey and the Ministry of Transportation and Highways.  The overlapping jurisdictions and often conflicting goals of the two agencies created complicated negotiations and required consensus building between the two agencies, the client and the MoTH consultant.  Ultimately, both short term and long term access, dedication and alignment issues were resolved to the satisfaction of the public agencies and industrial users.

The three parcels were part of a single legal lot that was several miles long and this presented a unique problem when subdividing the parcels from the parent property.  In addition, we assisted Surrey in creating innovative solutions to assist them in terms of amending or waiving their normal subdivision development requirements in order to allow these parcels to be created as fee simple lots.