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Local developers will build 25,000 new homes in Metro Vancouver
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July 15, 2022 • 15 hours ago • 13 minutes read • 29 comments Wilson Williams elected Squamish First Nation councilor pictured at the site of the Sen̓áḵw planned development. Photo by Frances Georgian /PNG
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Standing between a pair of gleaming apartment buildings, an apartment building, a park, a future grocery store and huge holes in the ground that will soon provide a kindergarten, a community center and hundreds of additional homes, Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow said, “This is the future.”
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After many years and heavy legal bills, the Musqueam First Nation reached a landmark agreement with the British Columbia government in 2008 to return some of its traditional territory. The Musqueam are now using some of this land near the University of British Columbia to provide much-needed housing for the wider community and generate economic prosperity for their nation.
Sparrow welcomes a group of elders to visit Leləm̓, the village their nation has built in partnership with Polygon. The apartments include market and sub-market rents and lease strata on 99-year leases.
That lease structure is critical, Sparrow emphasized. It could have been more profitable in the short term, he said, to develop the land and sell flats outright. But that was never a consideration.
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“We will never sell the land,” Sparrow said. “It took us 100-some years to get it back. We won’t sell it after we go to court to fight to get it back.
Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow with Polygon Homes CEO Neil Crystal. Photo by Frances Georgian /PNG
The Leləm̓ community is just one of several major real estate projects in the pipeline by Vancouver-area First Nations who have emerged as powerful developers in a region desperate for solutions to its housing shortage.
Postmedia analyzed eight major projects involving the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, both individually and together under their joint venture MST Development Corporation. Their plans cover nearly 1.1 square kilometers of properties in Vancouver, Burnaby and the North Shore, promising more than 25,500 homes.
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This is more than the total number of homes that exist today in the city of Port Coquitlam.
These mega-projects, which include social housing, market rents, apartments and townhouses, plus schools, shops, cultural amenities and retail space, are at various stages. Residents started moving into Leləm̓ last year. Sen̓áḵw in Vancouver is scheduled to be done in five years. Others are a decade or more away from completion.
Like Leləm̓, these large projects all include rental housing and leased strata, meaning First Nations retain ownership of the land beneath them. The importance of this fact is emphasized repeatedly in conversations with local indigenous leaders: nations will always own the land.
This is not new. For decades, the Musqueam Nation has generated revenue by leasing and renting out housing on its reserve in the south end of Vancouver. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation has built and sold more than 1,000 rental apartments and townhouses on reserve.
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But MST Nations’ real estate activity today is on a completely different scale than in the past, and observers say it goes beyond what other local developers are doing elsewhere in Canada. Today, the joint venture’s portfolio of prime urban developable real estate and the number of units under development make it one of the largest developers in British Columbia.
MST Development CEO David Negrin recently put it into perspective while speaking to business and Indigenous leaders from across Canada at a meeting in Vancouver. Negrin, a three-decade industry veteran who previously served as president of Aquilini Development, said in May that MST’s land holdings were valued at about $5 billion, which would be closer to $7.5 billion after their planned acquisition another 0.75 square kilometers. By the time these properties are developed, according to Negrin, the value of the portfolio will be closer to $30 billion.
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“I would say this: The most powerful developer in North America right now is MST, the three nations coming together,” Negrin told the panel.
This “coming together” is a pivotal moment for many in and outside the three First Nations.
Country of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Dennis Thomas. Photo by Frances Georgian /PNG
Historically, the three nations have shared land, resources and family ties going back several generations, coexisting harmoniously, said Tsleil-Waututh Nation Coun. Dennis Thomas. “But as soon as colonization and the Indian Act came, we started fighting because it’s like divide and conquer. … So for more than 100 years we wanted to get back to that harmonious and holistic mass.”
Thomas and others believe the 2010 Vancouver Olympics brought nations together. In the years following the Olympics, the nations’ leaders worked together to reach a protocol agreement that was signed in 2014, creating the MST Development Corporation.
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Thomas recalled a former Tsleil-Waututh leader telling him, “You can have 33 percent of something or 100 percent of nothing.”
Nations are now collaborating on what could become the first Indigenous-led bid in Olympic history, with an eye toward the 2030 Winter Games. The official Games concept, released last month by Nations and the Canadian Olympic Committee, envisages using MST developments – expected to be the Heather or Jericho Lands properties – for a sports village for athletes and team officials during the 2030 Olympics and then providing housing, including a non-market component, after the games.
Other First Nations in Canada could learn from MST’s story, said Ginger Gosnell-Myers, a fellow at SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Center for Dialogue, which focuses on Indigenous decolonization and urban planning.
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“In other towns, (other First Nations) have overlapping land claims and until they come together and agree to work in partnership as a family, they will continue to compete with each other and continue to miss opportunities,” she said.
“They will only succeed if they come together and the MST has demonstrated the success of this.” Other communities haven’t caught up, but we’ll see how much things change over the next few years.”
Gosnell-Myers is happy that MST nations are starting to get “the visibility and respect they deserve and an opportunity to really make their mark on their own soil.”
But, she added, “these early designs, as impressive as they are, we’re still seeing some flaws that I think future designs will hopefully be able to address.”
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The downsides, Gosnell-Myers said, include concerns she hears from some MST members that there isn’t more affordable housing in these megaprojects designed for member nations.
“One concern I hear from MST members on the ground is, ‘Who is this for?’ People are getting rich, and that’s not us,” Gosnell-Myers said.
Ginger Gosnell-Myers, with SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Center for Dialogue. Photo by Frances Georgian /PNG
The MST Development Corporation is governed by a board of elected advisors from the three nations. But the lack of MST members in the corporation’s top management roles is something current non-native executives want to change, said Brennan Cook, MST Development’s vice president of development and acquisitions.
The goal is for the CEO and other top positions to one day be filled by MST members, Cook said.
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“I’d like to see that day sooner rather than later,” Cook said. “I really enjoy working with the nations, but if me and David (Negrin, CEO) do a really good job, we’ll be out of a job. And I would sleep well knowing that MSTDC was in good hands.
For many of these mega projects, MST Nations has partnered with some of BC’s biggest developers: Polygon, Westbank, Aquilini.
A relatively small townhouse project planned in West Vancouver will be the first project MST Development tackles on its own, and that’s the ultimate goal for all projects, Cook said. “Development partners will not be needed in the future.”
Leaders from the nations, including Sparrow and Thomas, say another part of the vision involves more group members working on projects.
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Thomas, who is completing his MBA at Simon Fraser University, said there is already a groundswell of interest among young Nation members in careers stemming from these…
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