A piece of historic industrial land in New Westminster is back on the market after sitting vacant for more than 40 years.
On Oct.12, NAI Commercial Real Estate listed five lots on Front Street at the foot of McBride Boulevard that were once home to the Royal City Canners.
The property includes a 330-foot strip of land along Front Street and one acre of water-lease area. It is zoned M-2 for heavy industrial, according to real estate agent Gary Haukeland.
The property owners are asking $950,000 for the five lots.
Because most of the land is under the Fraser River and land access is almost nil, Haukeland said potential buyers will likely be river-based industry or transportation.
"The owners have been approached a few times over the years to use it as barge storage - put in a couple of pilings that they can lash some barges onto," Haukeland said.
"Basically, any type of users along the river - anything of maritime use. It is zoned industrial and when it comes to rezoning, I think there are a multitude of uses you could use it for but it would have to be piled.'
Haukland said the owners would also be eager to sell to or swap lands with either the City of New Westminster or Metro Vancouver, both of which own adjacent greenway lands and may want the land to increase trail connectivity along the Fraser.
As for the almost-$1 million price tag, Haukeland said the market will determine what the land is worth.
"That's what we're going to find out. We had to start with a price. The owners feel there is value there. The assessed value is about half of that but assessed values tend to be on the lower side, and it depends what the use will be as to what the value will be," he said.
Haukeland said many people in New Westminster will remember the building, which was demolished in the early 1970s, and others still will have closer connections with the cannery.
"I think the history is pretty cool," he said. "Interestingly enough, my mom, when she came over from Norway as an immigrant, she worked at the Royal City Canners. A lot of people have stories about that going way back when because it was a pretty big cannery."
Faye West, a great-granddaughter of the cannery's founder who is researching for a history book on her family's Western Canada canneries, said the cannery was a workplace for many women like Haukeland's mother during its boom times.
"It was started about 1912 by John Broder and was soon taken over by his son Robert. They canned various fruits and vegetables there until about 1930 when the Depression forced the company into bankruptcy and Robert moved his operations to the prairies," West said. "A lot of women worked in the cannery because there was a lot of handwork involved with vegetables - peas in particular. They run down a conveyor belt and the bad ones and the little pebbles and stuff got picked out by hand."
To see more about the cannery's history and historic photos of cannery in its prime, see West's website at www.fayewest.ca.
