Mission Mayor Paul Horn said the lot makes up one-third of the three kilometres of waterfront identified by the city as in need of development
A large waterfront lot being sold on the Fraser River in Mission is critical to unlocking that city’s waterfront plans, says realtor Mark Goodman, founder of Goodman Commercial Inc.
The 35-hectare site, about the size of 35 average city blocks, occupies the south end of Mission, on either side of the Mission Bridge, in an area once known as Mission Flats.
Goodman said the lot — between Mission Raceway Park and the Mission Railway Bridge — was needed for the City of Mission to accomplish its waterfront revitalization plan.
“Our site unlocks (the plan). They need our site to realize it,” he said.
Mission Mayor Paul Horn said the lot makes up one-third of the three kilometres of waterfront identified by the city as in need of development. It’s the middle portion between the Mission raceway to the west and the old townsite to the east.
He said the lot was “absolutely integral” to the waterfront development plan.
The land has been in the Braich family since 1949, when Herman Singh Braich bought it following the Fraser River flood.
According to the Mission Museum, Braich opened Herman Mills on the site in 1950 and built worker housing. The mill burned down in 1968 and was reopened in 1974, two years before Braich died. His wife Surjeet died in 2018 and the family’s five-hectare residential estate in Mission was sold in 2021 for $13 million. The couple had six children.
“Guaranteeing free accommodation, the recent immigrants could save money and become established enough in Canada to bring their families over from India or to buy land and start businesses themselves,” the museum states. “Many settled on vacant land in the Mission Flats, which soon became known as ‘Little India’.”
Goodman said he expects the property, zoned industrial, to sell for over $100 million.
The listing says it can be rezoned for hotel, casino, marina, breweries, stacked industrial, office and mixed-use residential/commercial up to six storeys. It has been partly filled with clean river sand.
Horn noted that in 2023 the city created the for-profit Mission Bridgehead Investment Corp. to work with waterfront developers.
The old townsite east of CP Rail’s Mission train bridge has multiple lots so it will take longer to develop, Horn said. This area would be more housing-focused, with the Braich lands being more of a job creation hub.
“The plan also looks at things like soil, remediation, traffic patterns and just about any factor you can imagine,” Horn said. “It has been ground through every lens, including land economics, and the plan has received both national and international recognition.”
Horn said the Mission raceway lands were owned by a non-profit, the B.C. Custom Car Association, that was more interested in developing the site itself, rather than selling. The plan marks the raceway lot as a potential entertainment site.
