North Vancouver ordered to pay millions more for highway expansion land
A BC Supreme Court judge ordered the District of North Vancouver to pay millions more for land it expropriated for a highway expansion project.
The District of North Vancouver took over the land in the Lynnmour neighbourhood from development company Spera (Lynn Creek) Holdings back in 2019, paying $6.6 million at the time.
Spera had purchased a larger collection of lots in 2016 for $15 million, and the District expropriated about 40% of the land. Taking away close to half the land meant Spera couldn’t proceed with its plans to build townhomes there as it had originally conceived.
The court looked at multiple land value assessments and other properties that were expropriated as part of the highway expansion process.
In the end, the court pegged the true value of the expropriated land at $8.2 million.
The amount the District paid was only about three-quarters of that, and the court ordered it to pay the remainder, as well as Spera’s legal costs.