VANCOUVER — Langley Township has been ordered by the B.C. Supreme Court to pay a couple $10.5 million for land it expropriated, almost $3 million more than the township offered.
The township expropriated the property at 8020-216 St. in 2017 to make way for a park and offered owners Albert Chen and Ginger Hsu about $6.3 million, according to a court judgment. In 2022, the township topped it up by almost $1.4 million, for a total of $7.6 million, with the interest it owed.
The Chens sued, saying an appraisal that assumed the property would be removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve put the fair market value at $26.5 million, according to the reasons for judgment written by Justice Jasvinder Basran after a nine-day civil trial.
The Chens told the court that if it didn’t accept the $26.5 million appraisal amount, it should base the property’s value on the $20 million conditional contract of purchase and sale they signed with a local real estate development company just before the land was expropriated, according to the judgment.
But Basran ruled it was unlikely the property — the equivalent of about 13 average city blocks in size — would be removed from the ALR in 2017, as the Chens’ application to have it excluded in 2010 failed and nothing had changed since then.
And he wrote that he would “assign little weight” to the contract the owners signed because it was conditional and the buyer ended the contract based on the unlikelihood that the land would be removed from the ALR in 2017.
But based on the price a similar property sold for in 2017, Basran set the fair market value of the land at $10.5 million.
The Chens bought the property in 1993 with a partner and then bought him out in 2005, and as sole owners lived there until 2017, when it was expropriated. They and their tenants used it for equestrian and other agricultural uses, including horse riding, boarding and breeding, and they kept chickens and grew vegetables, according to the judgment.
The township identified the area as attractive for real estate speculation and “accelerating” land prices, and the township noted that nearby Trinity Western University had proposed a sale of lands, according to the judgment.
The township expected that to drive prices up in the area, and the township was planning economic development in the region, which they named the University District, according to the judgment.
In April 2017, the Chens listed the property for sale at $27 million and, a week later, township council directed staff to make the owners an offer of $6.275 million, and, if that failed, to expropriate the property, he wrote.
In July 2017, the township filed a notice to expropriate the property to make way for plans for a passive park and later a community park, with playing fields, a large parking lot and a field house, according to the judgment.
Basran also weighed the testimony from witnesses to determine the fair market value at $10.5 million.
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