exclusive: vancouver school board owns 223 properties worth $9.5 billion
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school trustee suzie mah at sir sandford fleming elementary school in vancouver. the vancouver school board has leased a portion of the school grounds to a developer for 99 years, upsetting some parents.
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while vancouver school board trustees are elected to oversee student education, they are also responsible for the district’s massive real estate portfolio — which is worth billions of dollars, postmedia research has found.
postmedia librarian carolyn soltau used land ownership databases and tallied 223 properties owned by various vancouver school district entities, including the “board of education,” “school district no. 39,” and “board of school trustees,” with a combined assessed value of more than $9.5 billion.
the list includes 116 schools, 107 of which are in use, that account for roughly four-fifths of the value of the properties.
the rest of the portfolio is made up of 16 non-education properties, such as the board office, works yard, maintenance department, and several lots adjacent to schools, as well as part or full ownership of 86 apartments, two community centres, one daycare, and kingsgate mall.
among the properties with the lowest assessed value are a $642,000 apartment, a $2.9-million parking lot, and the school on the cheapest land — crosstown elementary, worth $3.2 million.
the most valuable properties include vancouver technical secondary, assessed at nearly $250 million, the kingsgate mall at $179 million, and the west end community centre at $133 million.
no one from district management would agree to be interviewed for this story, citing two continuing legal actions over some of their land.
the district’s communications department, in an email to postmedia, said board staff “engages outside experts as needed to provide advice regarding the strategic management of facilities and land.”
on its website, the district says it has a land asset strategy to manage “potential surplus properties” that can generate revenue by selling or leasing this land, as well as to create economic development opportunities.
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how the district handles these surplus properties has sparked heated debates among some vancouver parents, upset by recent board decisions such as granting vittori developments a 99-year lease for a portion of the sir sandford fleming elementary school grounds in exchange for $8.5 million.
parents of fleming students say the land, which held the students’ basketball courts, can now never be used for portables at the overcapacity school. trustees who supported the deal said it brings needed revenue and that vittori will prioritize new rental apartments it plans to build on the land for school board staff.
another prominent developer has been locked in a 15-year battle with the district over the aging kingsgate mall and alleges the board doesn’t have the expertise to manage its billion-dollar portfolio of publicly owned land.
“it’s another example of the mismanagement of a public asset. and i think the taxpayers and the people in the community deserve to know the full story,” said ryan beedie, president of the 75-year-old beedie development company.
beedie president ryan beedie (left) and managing partner rob fiorvento.
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the city of vancouver has flagged the 51-year-old mall as a “large and unique site” to potentially hold 30-storey towers with rental housing and retail, along with public amenities, as part of the massive broadway plan.
while the school district owns kingsgate, beedie has a lease for the mall until 2071.
by declining to consider beedie’s varied development proposals for the site, the school district has sacrificed tens of millions of dollars due to lost revenue opportunities and recently slumping land values, argues rob fiorvento, managing partner of the company.
“the lack of accountability and mismanagement of their vast real estate portfolio needs to be addressed,” he said.
when asked if kingsgate has been mismanaged and whether it should be developed, the district said in its email that the board “will continue to uphold the terms of the lease” to beedie. it also maintains beedie isn’t paying enough rent for the mall, a dispute the developer recently won in court. but the board is appealing that decision.
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district staff make recommendations about how properties should be handled, but final decisions are made by the nine elected school board trustees.
trustee preeti faridkot, an it analyst who chairs the board’s facilities planning committee, said trustees generally rely on advice from school board management about land issues, as the trustees’ priority is education.
“we don’t have a real estate background. nobody does. but we collectively, as a board, we do know what’s best for the students,” said faridkot, an abc trustee.
“i think more important for the trustees is to help the parents and the community, and to make sure our schools and staff and students are safe, rather than dealing with the properties.”
land a ‘big focus’ for trustees
a trustee and retired teacher, suzie mah, said she ran for her position three years ago out of love for student learning, and never in her “wildest dreams” did she imagine she’d spend so much time discussing land holdings.
“the biggest focus in my work since 2022 is looking at the legal aspects, looking at land, looking at all the leases,” said mah, who stressed she was speaking as a cope trustee and not on behalf of the board.
“vancouver (district) has one of the largest holdings in the province of land, and there’s a huge responsibility and burden on the trustees to make decisions.”
trustee and retired teacher suzie mah said she ran for her position three years ago out of love for student learning, and never in her “wildest dreams” did she imagine she’d spend so much time discussing land holdings.
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the school district is the second largest property owner in vancouver, after city hall, she added.
while it is not unusual for education boards to own large tracts of land given the size of schools, the nearly $10-billion portfolio held by the district is significant compared to other urban districts with similar real estate prices.
the toronto school board’s land is worth twice as much at $20 billion, but that district is five times bigger, running 579 schools compared to vancouver’s 107.
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the toronto board created the toronto lands corporation to manage the lease, sale and future planning of its properties, which include schools, administrative buildings, and vacant land. two people with significant real estate experience sit on the corporation’s board, along with other community members, school trustees and school board staff.
jennifer reddy, a onecity school trustee since 2018, said she hasn’t agreed with some recent property decisions made by her fellow trustees to lease “surplus” land. she believes there hasn’t been a sufficient process for trustees to consult with experts, such as those in real estate or development, before casting their votes.
“this is exactly why we should stick to public education, unless we can collaborate with other values-aligned partners in the development and future-visioning of the sites,” said reddy, who spoke as an individual trustee and not on behalf of the board.
past mistakes made by the board, she contends, include the 99-year lease signed in 1972 for kingsgate, deemed at the time not to be needed for a school. but now the site is in the middle of the city’s massive broadway plan development, which could add 41,500 new homes over the next three decades.
“this is such a warning sign of why you don’t sign off school land when you’re not really sure what the development pressures will be 99 years from now,” reddy said.
she would support a proposal to develop kingsgate with public partners, such as first nations or other levels of government, if the project included benefits for children. in her opinion, the lease with beedie, a for-profit company, makes it less ideal to pursue such a project.
trustee jennifer reddy in 2024 outside ar lord elementary, which the french school board is fighting to take over.
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the beedie group insists it would be willing to incorporate a school into the kingsgate site if enrolment projections show one is now needed.
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“we can very much look at redeveloping this with the school in mind,” said managing partner fiorvento.
‘value lost over time’
his company has proposed several scenarios to the board, including developing the site together, splitting the site, or beedie buying the land. they’ve had little response from the board, fiorvento said.
“for the last 15 years, off and on, we’ve been trying to work with them on a resolution and a way to jointly develop (kingsgate). and by them not engaging in a fruitful way, i think there’s been a lot of value lost over time,” said ryan beedie.
mah, the cope trustee, defended the board taking time to determine what to do with its land, noting it takes an average of five years to get a new school approved, planned and built.
“when beedie’s talking about 15 years, he’s right. it takes a long time to see what the enrolment projections are like, what the best use of that land is,” mah said.
“this idea that we can just decide overnight to say we don’t need (land) or we should hand it over to somebody — i, along with cope, we’re totally opposed to that.”
the fraught relationship between beedie and the vancouver school board also involves a long-running, multi-million-dollar rent dispute. in 2022, an arbitration panel ruled kingsgate’s value should be based on its future building potential, and set the developer’s lease payments at $9.6 million a year, up from $760,000.
beedie appealed and won last year in b.c. supreme court, which ruled the arbitration panel’s decision was incorrect and the land should be valued based on its use as a mall.
the judge lowered the rent to $1.65 million annually, a ruling the board is appealing. if the appeal court upholds the original arbitration panel’s decision, then beedie will owe tens of millions in back rent, money the board says it desperately needs for education.
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faridkot, the abc trustee, said it isn’t fair that beedie won’t pay the higher rent, and insisted the board has “tried to work with him” regarding the kingsgate site.
“we decided that that’s not right, what he’s offering,” she said. “he basically wants to take over the kingsgate mall. and this property and the money that we generate from them belongs to the students,” she said. “not to beedie or personal developers who make money out of it.”
ryan beedie, though, argues the board could have made far more money co-developing the property with his company, compared to collecting the higher rent that the supreme court ruled was “unreasonable.”
this protracted dispute has been expensive, added beedie, who has paid $1.4 million in legal fees since 2021.
beedie managing partner rob fiorvento and company president ryan beedie outside kingsgate mall.
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a march 2025 board finance committee report did not detail how much the district has spent on lawyers over kingsgate. but it said the board had estimated legal fees of $9.35 million to fight an unrelated, continuing lawsuit over land brought by the conseil scolaire francophone.
in that case, the b.c. french public school board wants to take over three vancouver schools — queen elizabeth annex and laurier annex, both closed, and lord elementary, which is still in use — for its schools, which the b.c. supreme court had ruled should be expanded in vancouver. the vancouver district has so far agreed to lease only one site to the conseil scolaire, queen elizabeth annex, for 99 years.
mah, the cope trustee, said she is against the vancouver district losing these schools or others, such as sir guy carleton elementary and the east portion of the graham bruce school grounds, which the board had earlier declared surplus but have now paused that decision pending new enrolment projections.
when it comes to kingsgate, mah would be open to discussing development, but only if it included amenities such as a school or child-care centre. she added the city of vancouver and the provincial government should be more involved if they want the property to be included in the broadway plan.
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beedie believes the province needs to step into the debate since the kingsgate site could play a pivotal role in vancouver meeting the housing targets the province has issued to cities.
“it’s likely going to take the provincial government to get involved — it’s an important site for so many reasons — and to show some leadership, because it’s not coming from the school board,” beedie said.
“quite frankly, i’m pissed off. we’ve been trying, we’ve been working hard, but we just get this hand to our face.”
he added the mall is nearing the end of its structural life, and a decision about its future must be made soon for the sake of the retailers inside.
province needs to solve impasse
neither beedie nor the school board has formally requested the province get involved in the kingsgate impasse, said a statement from the infrastructure ministry. when asked if the ministry was aware of the battle over the key property, the statement said only that the ministry provides “support to empower school districts to meet their local needs through their own processes and decisions.”
for large broadway plan sites like kingsgate, the city will gather public feedback before rezoning happens, said matt shillito, vancouver’s director of special projects. he added the city “would be happy to discuss its future” once the district or beedie is ready with a development proposal.
preeti faridkot, abc vancouver school trustee
kyrani kanavaros
although the kingsgate site is not pegged for a school under the existing broadway plan, that type of proposal is “compatible with the plan’s overall directions,” shillito said in an email. the city anticipates needing a new school for 300 to 550 students along the expansion corridor.
reddy, the onecity trustee, said she is not against development on school district land, but is looking for creative ideas that benefit the community, such as the province agreeing mid-construction to expand student capacity at the new henry hudson school to accommodate families moving into nearby residential towers being built by the squamish nation.
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the school district struck an innovative deal that allows b.c. hydro to build an underground substation at the roberts annex site in exchange for funding to construct a desperately needed coal harbour school on city-owned land.
reddy notes, though, that the district once owned a large piece of land that could have been used for a new school in the west end, but “gave it away” five decades ago after it was deemed to be surplus. the former king george high, which a 1977 province newspaper story said was built in 1892 and sold for $6.4 million, is now the site of the sheraton vancouver wall centre.
“we don’t actually have to look too far into our own history to see … it’s a nonsensical model, and it isn’t a sound way to fund your operational or accounting shortcomings,” reddy said of selling district land.
when told of beedie’s criticism that the school board lacks real estate expertise when it comes to sites like kingsgate, mah said she’d like her fellow trustees to meet to discuss the issue.
“to say: what do we do and how best to go about doing this? because at the end of the day it’s about the students in the classrooms and their quality of education.”
with research by postmedia librarian carolyn soltau, and a file from john mackie, postmedia
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