The only instrument that runs a century

Over ten years the Vancouver School Board completed one long-term instrument on a school site: a 99-year pre-paid ground lease on the south portion of the Sir Sandford Fleming site, for about $8.5 million. This piece sets out the dated chain, the figures the City’s own file adds, and the arithmetic of a term that outlasts every forecast written about the ground beneath it.

I went through the Vancouver record looking for completed instruments rather than for decisions. Decisions are common. An instrument is a document somebody signed, with a term and a consideration and a party on the other side.

Across the ten years from 2016 to 2026 the district completed one long-term lease on a school site and no outright sale of a whole school site¹. That single completed instrument runs for 99 years.

The rest of this piece is the dates, because the dates are the argument.

The chain, with dates.

The site is the south portion of the Sir Sandford Fleming site, 1401 to 1455 East 49th Avenue in Vancouver. The board declared it surplus on 25 May 2021. An offer was accepted on 27 November 2023. The disposal by-law received first and second readings on 23 September 2024 and third reading on 25 September 2024. The instrument is a 99-year pre-paid ground lease for about $8.5 million², with Vittori Developments Ltd. and Vittori Lanark Holdings Ltd.¹

From the surplus declaration to third reading is 1,219 days³, three years and four months. From the accepted offer to third reading is 303 days⁴. The step that took the longest is the one between a declaration and a counterparty.

What the instrument does.

A pre-paid² ground lease takes the consideration at the front and leaves the land in the lessor’s name. The City of Vancouver referral report on the parcel, dated 2 September 2025, names the landowner as the Board of Education of School District No. 39 (Vancouver)⁵. So more than four years after the surplus declaration, and a year after the by-law, the owner on the City’s file is still the board.

That matters for how this file should be described. The land did not leave public ownership. The use of it left for 99 years, which is a different thing and a longer one than most disposals in the record.

Ministerial Order M193/08 states that a board must not dispose of land by sale and transfer in fee simple, or by a lease of ten years or more, unless the disposal goes to another board or an independent school for educational purposes, or the Minister approves it⁶. A 99-year lease to a development company sits outside that exemption, which places the instrument on the ministerial route, and Policy 20 carries it through a disposal by-law confirming the land is no longer required for future educational purposes⁷.

Three readings across two days, on 23 and 25 September 2024, is the point at which that confirmation entered the public record.

What the City’s file adds.

The board record describes a parcel and a term. The City’s referral report describes what goes on it. From the report dated 2 September 2025: an estimated total of 87 units would be delivered through the application, in six storeys, with 20 per cent of the residential floor area secured below market, on a site area of 2,396.6 square metres, or 25,797 square feet⁵.

One point of precision before any arithmetic: the 20 per cent is secured against residential floor area, so a count of below-market homes does not follow from 87 by arithmetic. Floor area and unit counts are different measures, and the record gives the share against one of them.

The two figures the record does support dividing are these. The consideration against the site area is $329.49 per square foot⁸. The consideration against the estimated unit count is $97,701 per unit⁹. Both carry heavy qualifications, set out in the derivations: the consideration is stated as approximate, it was settled in 2024 while the unit estimate comes from a 2025 application by a different body, and a pre-paid² ground lease is a different instrument from a sale.

Ninety-nine years against every other clock.

Counted from the year the by-law passed, a 99-year term ends in 2123¹⁰. The record read for this piece does not carry the commencement date of the executed lease, so that end year is stated to the by-law year and gated below¹¹.

Set it beside the instruments that describe the same ground.

Wednesday’s piece set out those horizons from the records that publish them¹²¹³. Read against this instrument, the arithmetic is stark and simple. The term outlasts the published long-range plan by 92 years and the projection set behind a closure decision by 84¹⁰.

Every forecast written about this ground expires inside the first sixth of the term of the one instrument that governs it.

Ninety-nine years against a five-year forecast.

Nothing in that sentence is an allegation. Each step in the chain has a record, a date and a vote, and the ministerial route was the route the order requires. What the chain does not have, at any point, is a page where the term of the instrument and the horizon of the evidence appear together.

The cost of that absence lands in three places. It lands on the board of 2044, which inherits a covenant written against a 2021 reading of a neighbourhood. It lands on the City file, which described 87 units in 2025 against a land position settled in 2024 under a different body’s process. And it lands on anyone who wants to know, in 2060, what the public got and what it gave up, because the answer is spread across a board resolution, a by-law, an executed lease and a development application, none of which cite each other.

There is a second cost, quieter: an instrument this long is the strongest commitment a district makes about land, and it is the one for which the record carries the least forward description. A five-year capital plan is refreshed annually. A 99-year lease is signed once.

It does not say the term is too long or too short, because the record contains no standard against which either judgment could be made. It reads this one instrument and the public documents around it. The commencement date of the lease is open, and the end year above moves with it.

Two years on the face of the instrument.

Any disposal by-law with a term longer than the longest published forecast carries the year the term ends and the year the supporting evidence ends, printed beside each other in the recital.

For this file that recital would read 2123 and 2031. Nobody has to draw a conclusion from those two numbers for them to be worth printing. A board reading them decides exactly what it was going to decide, with one difference: the distance between the commitment and the evidence is visible at the moment of the vote rather than reconstructible afterwards.

Two years in a recital decide nothing at all. Between them they settle how far past its own evidence a board can see at the moment it signs.

Here is what I take from it. A board that can commit ground for ninety-nine years while its longest published forecast reaches five is not doing anything improper, and it is doing something no reader can check. The asymmetry is the finding. Whether ninety-nine years was the right term is a judgement I cannot make from the record, and neither can anyone else, which is exactly the problem.

If you sit on a body about to authorise something long, ask for the end year of the instrument and the end year of the evidence, on the same page, before the vote.

Sources

1. Vancouver School Board, board decision record for the south portion of the Sir Sandford Fleming site, 1401 to 1455 East 49th Avenue: surplus declared 25 May 2021, offer accepted 27 November 2023, disposal by-law first and second readings 23 September 2024 and third reading 25 September 2024, assembled from the published agendas and minutes and retrievable through the district’s agendas and minutes search. The dated chain, the 99-year pre-paid ground lease at about $8.5 million, the counterparties Vittori Developments Ltd. and Vittori Lanark Holdings Ltd., and that this is the one completed long-term lease on a school site in the district’s 2016 to 2026 record, alongside no outright sale of a whole school site. ↩ ↩²

2. Vancouver School Board, Information Bulletin: VSB leases Southern Portion of Sir Sandford Fleming Elementary School Site, 6 December 2024. The executed terms in the district’s own words: a 99-year lease with Vittori Developments Ltd. for the southern portion of the Fleming site, following the Board Policy 20 disposition process, with “A 99-year pre-paid lease for approximately $8.5M, with no provision for overholding”, exclusive use for residential rental housing with optional ground-floor retail, priority access to vacant units for district staff, and the statement that “The Board, the Ministry approved the sub-division and disposal.” ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Days from the surplus declaration to third reading: 1,219. 25 May 2021 to 25 September 2024 = 1,219 days, or three years and four months Elapsed calendar days between two dated board decisions. It measures duration and carries no claim about what occurred inside the interval, which the public record does not describe step by step. ↩

4. Days from the accepted offer to third reading: 303. 27 November 2023 to 25 September 2024 = 303 days The interval between the board accepting an offer and the disposal by-law passing. It is the shorter of the two long intervals in the chain. ↩

5. City of Vancouver, referral report on 1401 to 1455 East 49th Avenue, report dated 2 September 2025. The estimated total of 87 units, the six storeys, the 20 per cent of residential floor area secured below market, the site area of 2,396.6 square metres or 25,797 square feet, and the landowner named as the Board of Education of School District No. 39 (Vancouver). ↩ ↩²

6. Province of British Columbia, Ministerial Order M193/08, Disposal of Land or Improvements Order, effective 3 September 2008. That a lease of ten years or more requires Minister approval unless the disposal is to another board or an independent school for educational purposes, and the separate permission for shorter leases to an agency or organisation for an alternative community use. ↩

7. Vancouver School Board, Policy 20, Disposal of Land or Improvements, adopted 24 September 2018, amended 27 September 2021. The disposal by-law confirming that land is no longer required for future educational purposes, the application for Minister approval with appraisals, and the six-step sequence the instrument passed through. ↩

8. Consideration against site area: $329.49 per square foot. 8,500,000 ÷ 25,797 = 329.49 The consideration is stated in the board record as about $8.5 million, so this figure inherits that approximation. The site area comes from the City referral report of 2 September 2025 and the consideration from the 2024 board record, which are different bodies and different dates. It prices a 99-year pre-paid ground lease rather than a sale of land. ↩

9. Consideration against the estimated unit count: $97,701 per unit. 8,500,000 ÷ 87 = 97,701 The 87 units are an estimate in a 2025 development application, not a built count and not a term of the lease. The consideration was settled a year earlier. The division shows the scale of one figure against the other and does not describe a price paid for a home. ↩

10. End of the term, and its distance from the published horizons. 2024 + 99 = 2123; 2123 − 2031 = 92; 2123 − 2039 = 84 Counted from the year the by-law passed. The record read does not carry the commencement date of the executed lease, so the end year moves with it by a year or two. The two subtractions compare the term against the stated end years of the published long-range plan and of the projection set behind a closure decision. ↩ ↩²

11. Vancouver School Board, the ninety-nine year pre-paid ground lease over the Fleming south portion, by-law readings of September 2024 and Ministry approval by December 2024 [no public URL located]. The counterparty and the published terms: Vittori Developments Ltd., consideration of about $8.5 million, residential rental with optional ground floor retail, no overholding, and priority for district staff. The commencement date is not published, so the term end is stated as ninety-nine years from execution rather than as a year. Closed on the Chief Executive research pass of 17 August 2026; the citation is recorded here and the judgment itself has not been read at origin by us. ↩

12. Vancouver School Board, 2020 Long-Range District Overview, 2021 Update, May 2022. The ten-year planning horizon to 2031 stated in the district’s current long-range facilities plan, and that no newer plan has been published. ↩

13. VTCo, Eight years past the published horizon, 2 September 2026. The assembled horizons of the district’s instruments, including the projection set running to 2039 behind a closure decision and the five projection sets presented in one 2025 report. ↩