Land Banks from Van Sun 2016 Of larger swaths of land, the most obvious chunk of long-held dirt is in West Vancouver, where British Pacific Properties has a plan to, over time, develop more than 2,000 acres in the hillside land it still holds around Cypress Mountain and further west.
Meanwhile, just off the West Coast Express track in Mission, there is a 1,169-acre plot known as the Silverdale Lands — the next biggest, single chunk of residential land in the Lower Mainland. Genstar Development’s assembling of the land here goes back to the 1970s, along with that of another company, Madison Development Corp. After various starts and stops, Genstar, which is headquartered in San Diego, gave up trying to develop it in 2015.
Municipalities insist they are hung up on a way to boost the supply of affordable housing, in part, because Metro Vancouver is so hemmed in by water, mountains and land designated for agricultural use.