A new civic building to serve the estimated 50,000 Coquitlam residents who will call Burke Mountain home is now under construction.
But the future Burke Mountain Discovery Centre and café — at the corner of David and Princeton avenues — won’t just be a meeting point for the community: It will also be the base for the municipality to sell its area land.
Curtis Scott, Coquitlam’s manager of land development for city lands, told the Tri-City News that the $3.75-million Discovery Centre will primarily act as a gateway for residents getting to the mountain’s main commercial hub, at Princeton and Mitchell Street.
That hub, called Burke Mountain Village (formerly the Partington Creek Neighbourhood Centre), will be the densest site on Burke Mountain when complete, with more than 120,000 sq. ft. of retail space plus 2,000 multi-family homes, a grocery store, restaurants, schools, parks and a public plaza.
The Discovery Centre, when open later this year, will be the village’s welcoming facility and will showcase the mountain lifestyle, Scott said; however, the centre will also be a selling site for the city, the biggest landholder in the Partington Creek neighbourhood.
The municipality owns about 100 vacant acres in Partington, most of it on steep grades. Scott said those lands will be parcelled off into 3.5- to 5-acre chunks and will be fully serviced to the lot lines.
Despite the global pandemic, “the real estate market is really hot so we hope to capitalize on that this year,” Scott said. “The demand is there and the interest rates are low.”
Although no properties are currently available, the city has set up a website (burkevillage.ca) to generate interest among developers.
Adopted in 2013, the Partington Creek Neighbourhood Plan is part of the city’s overall Northeast Coquitlam Area Plan — or NECAP — that council passed about two decades ago as a master plan for Burke Mountain.
Much of Coquitlam’s future growth is planned for the northeast region and along the Evergreen Line corridor, in Burquitlam and City Centre.
Currently, about 20,000 residents call Burke Mountain home.
