Mike Starchuk files for a judicial review of Surrey arena land-swap<\/p>\n
Published 9:30 pm Thursday, July 23, 2026<\/p>\n
Mike Starchuk wants a judicial review over the recent Surrey arena land-swap deal by the city.<\/p>\n
Starchuk, a current mayoral candidate with the civic slate Imagine Surrey, filed for a judicial review in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on July 16.<\/p>\n
The former MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale wrote on Facebook July 20 there are \u201ctoo many unanswered questions\u201d surrounding the recent land deals the city undertook in relation to announcing its 10,000-seat arena plan.<\/p>\n
With an agreement in principle in place, Starchuk asked, \u201cWhat choices are there to get disclosure, before the City enters into the biggest financial decision in the City\u2019s history?\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote that when the Vancouver Giants entered into talks in 2018 about relocating to Surrey\u2014with the city to foot the bill for a new rink\u2014the then city council and staffers recognized the risks and kiboshed the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proposal in 2018 did not proceed because the experienced leadership at the City of Surrey, recognized that the Giants had just moved to the Langley Event Centre in 2016, with no financial risk and they could do it again, leaving Surrey on the financial hook.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the post, Starchuk claimed the city is \u201cselling off future assets to assume a much greater financial risk than what was identified and turned down eight years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added Surrey taxpayers deserve to see a business plan for the proposed rink, to hear from elected officials about the cost to taxpayers, and to have their concerns heard in a public forum.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long will we wait for them to provide disclosure, so all Surrey taxpayers can determine for themselves what our current mayor and council are about to burden us with, and for how many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Brenda Locke has stood her ground on the deal.<\/p>\n
She told Black Press Media 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 of developers in the 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 104th Avenue and King George Boulevard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe double-checked, triple-checked, we had Ernst & Young (accounting firm) do all kinds of breakdowns,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are very confident in the numbers. All of those negotiations are done by SCDC \u2013 our Surrey City Development Corporation \u2013 we\u2019re very confident in the deal that was made; it was made to be fair for both the owner of that property and for the City and especially for our taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014with files from Tom Zytaruk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Starchuk files for a judicial review of Surrey arena land-swap Published 9:30 pm Thursday, July 23, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,163792,87674],"class_list":["post-827243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lower-mainland","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827243","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=827243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}