A string of old low-rise shops on Surrey’s 104th Avenue sits shuttered, waiting for the wrecking ball. Across the lane, work continues on a gleaming, yacht-like glass-and-concrete library complex.
Beyond, the glass-fronted Simon Fraser University glints in the sun. Nearby, youth loiter around the Surrey Central SkyTrain station.
Welcome to Whalley – Surrey’s least desirable neighbourhood – soon to be transformed into a new city centre.
It’s been joked about, ridiculed and even dubbed the bane of Surrey’s existence. Past attempts to clean up the neighbourhood through police programs have had marginal success.
But the revitalization is finally starting to take shape.
In the next decade or two, this much-maligned neighbourhood is expected to be transformed into the second downtown core for Metro Vancouver – a vibrant, walkable Yaletown south of the Fraser, with eclectic shops, funky eateries and entertainment amenities to serve the 65,000 residents and 39,000 people expected to be working in the city centre by 2031.
Highrises and office towers are already springing up around the three SkyTrain stations. Young people swarm the SFU campus. The $36-million library is the first of several civic offices – including a new city hall and school-board precinct – earmarked for the area, which will see high-density growth stretch from Surrey Memorial Hospital to an RCMP E-Division on Fraser Highway.
“You’ll see some huge changes in the next three to five years,” predicts Elizabeth Model, executive director of the Surrey Downtown Business Improvement Association. “What’s already changed is people’s perception of Surrey. We’ve gone from [being] a city that was the butt of everyone’s jokes to a city everyone wants to emulate now. It’s very positive news.”
Whalley has long been promised a makeover. But it’s only now shrugging off its tattered cloak as Surrey seeks to build a downtown worthy of a sophisticated metropolis.
In two years, Surrey will be home to half a million people.
By 2040, some 766,000 people – a population roughly the same size as Vancouver’s – are expected to live in Surrey and White Rock.
The City Centre is expected to become not only the “business capital” of the region, but also a place where people can live, work and play.
The area has already reaped $1 billion in private-sector investments, and $2 billion in public-sector projects, thanks to tax incentives in 2009.
And more want in. “You can see that transformation happening now; you’ll see lots of new buildings, lots of highrises,” Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said. “There’s a lot of redevelopment going on.”
But change has been slow in coming – partly because of the way the neighbourhood was built, said Jean Lamontagne, the city’s general manager for planning and development.
The community dates back to 1925, when Arthur and Hilda Whalley settled on a patch of land and operated a service station and grocery store in an area that came to be known as Whalley’s Corners, just a stone’s throw from the Gateway SkyTrain. The city officially adopted the name Whalley in 1948.
But as the community grew, it became fragmented into small lots, many of which still hold businesses operating today. Lamontagne said this has posed challenges to the city – which is trying to package the smaller lots together for investors – because some of the business owners don’t want to sell.
Some have already paid off their mortgages and don’t want to lose their revenue stream or face a huge capital-gains tax. Others want more cash.
“There are still some buildings holding out and asking astronomical prices, but at the end of the day they’re only going to get what the [property] is worth,” Watts said.
Lamontagne said the city is also competing with itself as many developers want to invest elsewhere in Surrey, which has a land base as large as Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby combined. Having City Hall in the City Centre will “speed up the change and densification,” he said.
“We need to get critical mass and then it’s going to come,” he said. “How long it is going to take? I’m not sure; I don’t have a crystal ball. But if you look five years from now it’s going to be different.”
Ray Spaxman, a veteran planner and consultant who helped Surrey design its plans for Whalley Town Centre in the early 1990s, is happy to see some movement. There were times, he said, when he thought the city would scrap the project altogether.
“I’m glad it’s all happening…. That’s so exciting; to be able to create a real town centre,” he said. “It’s a slow, slow process, but the more energy put into it, the more likely it’ll be improved.”
To Goldie Springenatic, who bought the bustling Round Up Cafe on King George Highway with her husband, Orest, 51 years ago, change is good.
Decades ago, her diner was flanked by jewelry stores, bicycle shops and law offices, and neon signs flashed on King George. Today it sits practically alone, beside an empty former gas-station lot, an office low-rise, and a shiny new Canada Trust tower.
“There’s a lot of stuff that’s come and gone. It’s just happened so gradually,” said Springenatic, 81. “[The redevelopment] is a great idea. It’s just going to bring in better business and it’s going to be much nicer with the municipal hall here and the library.”
Springenatic, who still does a lot of the prep work and baking in the café, said that while she has a lot of regular customers who come for her cabbage rolls and perogies, the foot traffic isn’t great.
A recent walk on a sunny day along King George Highway – a ribbon of road home to strip malls, pizza joints, cheque-cashing shops and auto dealerships – saw two women waiting for a pawnshop to open, but few others out for a stroll.
Even the corner of 104th Avenue and King George, an area designated to become as urbanized as Vancouver’s Robson and Granville, wasn’t abuzz with pedestrians, despite being five minutes from the SkyTrain, SFU and Surrey Place Mall.
The crowds are bigger closer to SkyTrain, which is surrounded by shops selling everything from Vietnamese noodles to haircuts, but they’re not necessarily made up of coveted customers.
“At this time the foot traffic isn’t the clientele we’re looking for,” said Jeff Steele, manager of the Hockey Store, which has operated in the area for 22 years. His shop had to relocate to make room for the new City Hall, but he said it has turned out to be a “blessing in disguise” because it’s bigger.
“I don’t think it’ll be a cakewalk but it’ll come with time,” he said. “It just kind of shows there’s a little bit of hope of it getting nicer and nicer.”
But others aren’t as sure that Whalley needs such a grand makeover.
Teresa Cosmidis, owner of Vlassis Souvlaki, was “absolutely devastated” to have to move her restaurant a few blocks away. Now she’s worried she might not be able to afford the bigger, higher-rent restaurant.
“Everyone’s jumping in now,” she said. “The way it’s growing here and in Surrey and the changes that are happening, it’s becoming unaffordable for a small business…. There’s a lot of other things they could have done than build big, fancy buildings.”
Watts acknowledged many of the old mom-and-pop businesses will probably be ripped out and replaced. “When you’re redeveloping an entire area, usually the buildings will come down,” she said. “Some will be retrofitted but not many.”
Rachel Torchlino, of City Centre Dental, questioned what would happen to the crack addicts. “[The redevelopment] would make it look nicer, but I don’t know about the people.”
Meanwhile, Springenatic isn’t sure what will become of her diner with the neon cowboy sign. There was a time, decades ago, when she wanted to sell up and get a bigger restaurant. But Orest, who founded Whalley Little League, wanted to stay in the community.
Springenatic said “it’s hard to say” whether she would sell up. “One day at a time,” she said. “A lot of the customers are the same every day. It grows on you. It’s like home.”
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