A large section of the Silverdale lands in southwest Mission have been sold.
The property, approximately 710 acres that was previously owned by the Genstar Development Company, now belongs to Polygon Homes in partnership with the Madison Development Corporation, which already owns 460 acres in the area.
The Silverdale lands were slated for urban development in 2004, and while work and planning has been ongoing, the area has remained undeveloped for more than a decade.
In March of 2015, it became public knowledge that Genstar had ended its development plans in Mission, putting all of its Silverdale property on the market.
Neil Chrystal, president and CEO of Polygon Homes – a B.C.-based company that has been building homes since 1980 – said they decided to partner with Madison to purchase the Genstar piece of the property.”
“We are hoping to work together to take a look at that community and see how we can come up with a plan for the future. But we haven’t really gotten anywhere on that yet,” said Chrystal, adding they are at the very beginning of the process.
He said there is no timetable on any development in the area.
“There has been a lot of work done on this site over the years with Genstar and we have to pour through everything that they’ve done and try to get our head around some of the issues,” he said.
Chrystal said it is so early in the process that Polygon has yet to hire or assign anyone to begin working on the project.
“That’s really what’s probably going to be the first step in moving forward and it’s something that we hope to do, to start working on, this year.
“We don’t want to just take what has been done. If we think we can improve on that then we want to come up with the best plan for the property.”
No details of the sale were made public.
Stacey Crawford, the District of Mission’s economic development officer, said the sale should be considered good news.
“Effectively it is renewed interest in an area that has, for some time, been designated for urban growth,” said Crawford.
While there was previous interest in the area, the project stalled for several years, “primarily due to market conditions,” said Crawford.
“They (Genstar) received their designations and approvals just prior to the market collapse. So, while they fully intended to move forward, timing became an issue.”
The district has had only basic, preliminary discussions with Polygon about the future of the site.
“They have purchased the land for a reason and obviously have an interest in developing it and the district is happy to explore options with them.
“It’s been long designated within the Official Community Plan as an area for future growth and what we would love to see is a comprehensive area plan that helps us understand what they would like to achieve, of course, but also to help us plan accordingly for the community,” said Crawford.
In total, the Silverdale lands is comprised of 3,400 acres that have been designated for urban growth
Polygon and Madison now own approximately 1,169 acres of that area.