Habendum Clause

The Metrotown neighbourhood of Burnaby has seen a tremendous amount of redevelopment over the years, and several projects are currently under construction, but one project has remained idle for over six years now.

The subject site is 6645, 6659, 6675, 6691 and 6707 Dow Avenue, just off of Beresford Street and Central Boulevard, across the street from the Metropolis at Metrotown shopping centre.

What do New York City’s Hudson Yards, Chicago’s Millennium Park, and Paris’s Rive Gauche have in common? They’re all built directly on top of active railway lines. And Toronto has fresh plans to do the same – this time, as a brand-new mixed-use community rather than a standalone park.

For years, what to do with the airspace above the Union Station rail corridor has been a hot topic. Former Toronto mayor John Tory famously proposed Rail Deck Park – a 21-acre green space with a $1.7 billion price tag – back in 2016. Now, following several years of planning and ownership consolidation, the LiUNA Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada and master developer Fengate Asset Management have unveiled reworked plans for an entire mixed-use community called Toronto Rail Yards.

After approving the Vancouver Plan in 2022, the City of Vancouver adopted the Vancouver Official Development Plan (ODP) on March 31, 2026, which replaces the 2022 plan as the guide for how Vancouver will grow over the next 30 years.

The Vancouver ODP categorizes areas of Vancouver into several neighbourhood designations based on “the type, scale, and intensity of change envisioned”: Metro Core/Broadway, Municipal Town Centre, Rapid Transit Area, Neighbourhood Centre, Multiplex Area, Rapid-Transit Overlap Areas, and Villages.