{"id":784876,"date":"2026-07-06T23:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T23:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/784876\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T23:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T23:35:14","slug":"starchuk-seeking-judicial-review-of-surrey-arena-land-swap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/784876\/","title":{"rendered":"Starchuk seeking judicial review of Surrey arena land-swap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starchuk seeking judicial review of Surrey arena land-swap<\/p>\n

Published 4:20 pm Monday, July 6, 2026<\/p>\n

Imagine Surrey mayoral candidate Mike Starchuk says he\u2019s filing a petition in B.C. Supreme Court seeking a full judicial review of Mayor Brenda Locke\u2019s \u201ccostly, unprecedented land-swap purchase to enable a downtown arena.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re paying way too much in publicly-held assets for the former Safeway property,\u201d Starchuk charges. \u201cThe total cost estimates for the project are unrealistic and will likely land as a $600 million albatross around the necks of Surrey residents and families.<\/p>\n

\u201cNews releases alone and calls for investigations won\u2019t suffice in this case,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Meantime, mayoral candidate Doug McCallum accused Locke of \u201cbailing out\u201d a land developer<\/a> in a land swap where land owned by the City of Surrey was traded for what\u2019s to be the site of a 10,000-seat arena in Whalley, to be built where a Safeway grocery store was on 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard.<\/p>\n

McCallum, the former mayor leading the Safe Surrey Coalition into the October 17 civic election, says city hall paid $116.6 million worth of public assets for a site that according to BC Assessment is worth $86.8 million, \u201ccrashing\u201d from the $108.5 million the developer paid for the site in November 2022 to build four towers there (40, 42, 49 and 50 storeys).<\/p>\n

\u201cLand in City Centre currently trades at $8 to $10 million an acre,\u201d McCallum noted. \u201cBrenda Locke paid $23.3 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Locke is standing her ground on the deal.<\/p>\n

She said the only \u201cnegatives\u201d she\u2019s heard are from people seeking public office. \u201cSo I think those negative comments are primarily politically driven.\u201d<\/p>\n

She denies any \u201cbailout.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starchuk seeking judicial review of Surrey arena land-swap Published 4:20 pm Monday, July 6, 2026 Imagine Surrey mayoral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-784876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}