Vancouver’s transit authority is taking on a new role beyond moving people: building and owning real estate. TransLink, which runs the SkyTrain, SeaBus and other transportation services across Metro Vancouver, has launched what it calls its Real Estate Development Program, an effort to turn land it owns into a source of revenue separate from transit fares and taxation.
The initiative, first outlined as part of TransLink’s 2022 investment plan, is intended to help fund transit expansion while also adding housing supply in a region facing high demand for both. TransLink says the program grew out of ideas that began taking shape in 2019, though developing housing itself marks a new line of business for an organization that has historically bought and sold land mainly for its own transit operations and managed retail space inside some SkyTrain stations.
First Project Breaks Ground in Kitsilano
TransLink’s first development under the program broke ground in late July in partnership with Vancouver-based developer PCI Developments. The project is a 31-storey tower at the southwest corner of West Broadway and Arbutus Street in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood, structured as a 50/50 partnership between the two organizations. Once built, it will include 256 rental units at market rates, 47 below-market rental units, retail space and a public plaza.
TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn and PCI Developments president Tim Grant said the partnership came together because the two companies held neighbouring parcels of land that made more sense developed as a single site. PCI has previously worked on transit-integrated developments such as Marine Gateway in Vancouver and the King George Hub in Surrey.
The Kitsilano site sits across from Arbutus Station, the planned terminus of an extension to the SkyTrain’s Millennium Line that will add six new stations connecting Burnaby, Port Moody and Coquitlam to Vancouver’s Broadway corridor. A ground-floor retail unit in the new tower is being designed so it could later be converted into a secondary entrance for the station. Quinn described the goal as creating a “complete community,” with a public plaza intended to link the future station to the existing Arbutus Greenway, a nine-kilometre walking and cycling corridor.
More Sites Planned Across the Region
TransLink says it has identified roughly eight sites with redevelopment potential, several of which are already moving through its pipeline. In Surrey, TransLink is partnering with the Surrey City Development Corporation on a project that would combine 35 acres of city-owned land with five acres owned by TransLink to create 2,200 new homes, 150,000 square feet of retail space and a new community centre, supported by a planned rapid-transit bus route and station, under the Newton Master Development Plan.
Other planned projects include a two-acre site near Moodyville Park in North Vancouver, envisioned with mixed-use towers of 14 and 12 storeys, and a nine-acre site beside Coquitlam Central Station that could eventually hold as many as nine towers. Quinn said TransLink has already received feedback from councils in both North Vancouver and Coquitlam and is refining designs, aiming to bring updated proposals back to the municipalities in 2027. He said TransLink may bring in private developers for some of these projects, noting the organization’s core expertise lies in transportation rather than development.
Diversifying Revenue Beyond Fares and Taxes
Quinn said the push into real estate is meant to reduce TransLink’s reliance on its existing funding sources. He described transit fares, fuel taxes collected from gasoline sales, and property taxes as the organization’s three major revenue streams, and said the development program is intended to supplement them.
According to Quinn, the Real Estate Development Program is estimated to generate about $22-million over 10 years. That revenue would be treated as ancillary, alongside other secondary income sources such as development charges collected on new real estate projects in the region.
Asked whether TransLink intends to focus solely on rental housing rather than condominiums, Quinn said decisions will be made project by project, taking into account how each development aligns with the goals of the local municipality.
TransLink’s move mirrors a broader trend of non-real-estate organizations in Canada turning to property development, including recent redevelopment applications filed by telecom company Telus and bakery chain Breka Bakery. TransLink itself has pointed to transportation operators elsewhere, including Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, as examples of transit agencies that have built real estate arms.
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