Scott Road Corridor plan expected to be before Surrey council early 2027

Scott Road Corridor plan expected to be before Surrey council early 2027

Published 11:30 am Wednesday, May 27, 2026

The Scott Road Corridor plan is targeted to be brought before Surrey council for consideration in early 2027, Surrey’s general manager of planning and development Ron Gill told council at its May 25 meeting.

Gill revealed this before council voted on a proposal to build a four-storey office building to contain a childcare centre for up to 77 children, where a gas station used to be, at the southeast corner of Scott Road and 96 Avenue.

The site is located inside the area covered by the corridor plan.

“I will not be endorsing this project until this whole plan comes to us,” Councillor Doug Elford told his council colleagues before they approved the application at third reading. “I really think that that part of Surrey is a critical gateway that has tremendous potential for development and I would like to see what the overall plan is before we start approving projects along this corridor.”

Council received 19 written submissions indicating support for the project as well as a petition containing 43 signatures in support.

During a public hearing earlier that night Deb Jack, of Surrey Environmental Partners, raised concern about the site being the former location of a gas station.

“There going to have the children’s play area on the roof,” she noted. “I don’t know if in assessing this particular site, because it’s a former gas station, if any of the soil or anything around there continues to issue any noxious gases. I appreciate that the soil is probably damaged but I don’t know if any emanations continue.”

According to a planning report, the site is a single vacant land parcel “which was once a gas station site and subject to the

Contaminated Site Regulation. There is an existing Certificate of Compliance (COC) for the site (December 6, 2017) from the Ministry of Environment (MOE), which stipulates that new development is limited to slab on grade due to the site contamination.”

The project is for 9572 120 Street, brought forward by applicant and owner 1171794 B.C. Ltd.

Surrey council endorsed an Imagine Scott Road Visioning Study in July 2024 that provides a framework guiding long-term planning for the Scott Road-72 Avenue corridor. This corridor is currently home to 41,120 residents but is expected to eventually boom by up to 289 per cent, to a population of 160,000.

The number of dwellings in the area, estimated at 12,111, is anticipated to grow to as many as 51,000 under the plan, which covers an unspecified number of decades. The number of dwellings is expected to grow by up to 321 per cent over time and the number of jobs within the study area is expected to increase by up to 433 per cent, from an estimated 4,506 today to as many as 24,000.

Initiated in 2022, the study embraces 844 hectares (2,085 acres) and is 11.3 kilometres long, extending from Scott Road SkyTrain Station south to 72 Avenue and then east along 72 Avenue to Newton Town Centre. It takes in the area between Scott Road east to 124 Avenue, and several blocks north and south of 72 Avenue up to 134 Street.

Scott Road opened in 1875 and is named after Colonel J.T. Scott, a New Westminster resident and proprietor of the Pioneer Saloon in the royal city. He was contracted to build a wagon road linking Brown’s Landing with Ladner Trunk Road, which was then known as Mud Bay Road. Someone else had to finish the job, but Scott got the glory. Today it’s the busiest bus corridor south of the Fraser River and sees on average 35,000 vehicles travel on it each day.

A corporate report that came before council in 2024 revealed that roughly 41 per cent of households within the study area are renters, and 43 per cent of households contain families with four or more people. Demographically of all residents in the study area, the 2021 census indicated 64 per cent are South Asian (compared to 33 per cent city wide), 20 per cent are Caucasian, four per cent are Filipino and three per cent are Black. Other ethnicities aren’t accounted for in the report.

Of existing housing, most of it is single-family residences (38 per cent) and secondary suites (roughly 21 per cent). According to the study, the intention is to protect existing “purpose-built” rental stock as per the City of Surrey’s Rental Housing Redevelopment Policy, to “encourage family-oriented housing in multi-family residential developments,” and the “provide incentives and support for non-market housing development.”