Many Cloverdalians have heard the sound of pile drivers lately.
First up at the Fairgrounds for the new arena and now behind the Heritage Rail centre, south of Highway 10. There is also work being done on the new hospital site.
“It’s exciting to see how much construction is now going on,” said Paul Orazietti. “Compared to how it was during COVID, it’s unbelievable.”
Orazietti, the executive director of the Cloverdale BIA, said the “really loud” pile-driving noise is ringing out from behind the Clover Square Village shopping centre. The piles going in there are part of a new building and rail line that is being constructed on the other side of the current tracks.
The building’s location is 17670 James Hill Drive.
“There is a new rail spur going in behind Clover Square and a massive warehouse is being built there,” Orazietti said. “It will be a reload station. They will load and offload train cars there.”
He said 70-foot piles are being driven in because the weight requirements for the train cars are so high.
“The rail cars will be taken in and then offloaded and then reloaded and then sent back out from the spur before going to their next destination.”
According to a City of Surrey planning and development report dated May 1, 2023, and with the application No. 7921‐0227‐00, the warehouse will be significantly large.
The specs for the project put the warehouse at 40,200-square metres (432,709-square feet) and at 1.5 storeys in height. That includes 38,957-square metres (419,330-square feet) of industrial space and and 1,300-square metres (13,993-square feet) of office space.
“The proposed building achieves an attractive architectural building form, which utilizes high‐quality materials and contemporary lines,” noted the city planning and development report. “The tilt‐up concrete building will include extensive glazing along the James Hill Drive frontage with a well‐landscaped street interface to achieve a positive urban experience between the proposed building and the public realm.”
The report also noted a single tenant has been proposed for the building to “provide unitized handling of wood pulp for Canadian Forest Product companies.”
According to the building plan, set out in the report, the rail spur will be enclosed inside the structure on the south side and there will be 25 bays for big rigs on the warehouse’s north side.
There is also a development variance permit associated with the building. The required off-street parking stalls have been reduced from the required 422 to 294.
“The proposed 294 parking stalls to be provided on‐site are anticipated to be sufficient for the approximately 16 employees, on‐site visitor needs, and the tenant’s projected growth over the span of the 20‐year lease term,” the report revealed. “Based on other comparable sites with similar uses, the proposed parking rate on the subject site well exceeds those provided on the comparable sites.”
The report noted the project complied with the “Industrial / Business Park designation of the subject site under the Cloverdale Town Centre Plan.”
The warehouse is being built by Langley’s Berezan Management Ltd.
