Driving around town this afternoon, I was struck by how much potential Surrey’s City Center (aka Whalley) has. The City has been trying to redevelop this area since Skytrain was extended through to Fraser Highway, back in the early 1990’s. A lot of the old crack houses homes in the area have been demolished, and development signs are sprouting up on several empty properties in the area.

It’s coming along, but slowly. Right now we have bookends. That is, we have new, and nearly new developments at either end of  City Center.

The Central City Mall and new the SFU campus tower are at the south end (no, it’s not tilted, I was ;-):

 The Infinity condo project is also underway across from Central City. It’s supposed to hold a couple of thousand people when it’s done, and the first phase sold out in a day:

 And we have Scotia Tower and Gateway settlement at the north end:

There are residential complexes close to Gateway as well. But if you look closely at part of the middle of the area near Central City (as seen via the City’s Cosmos utility), you’ll notice a lot of parking open space.

 Actually, the middle of City Center is much like an open canvas right now, and we can make it into whatever we want to. That’s kind of exciting actually, and hopefully the City will take advantage of that potential to attract some community minded business folks. With about 70,000 people in the area now, and several thousand more moving into new condos over the next couple of years, there’s got to be a customer base for enterprising folks.

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