Commercial Real Estate: Huge mining site for sale outside Abbotsford
Credit to Author: Evan Duggan| Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 18:00:39 +0000
One of B.C.’s oldest companies is winding down its businesses and selling one of its last major assets, a historic mining site in Abbotsford that could eventually be redeveloped.
Abbotsford-based Clayburn Industries has listed for sale its 361-acre Sumas Mountain property. The site is currently home to the largest operating sandstone and shale quarry in the Pacific Northwest, which would be viable and productive until at least 2045, the sellers told Postmedia.
Clayburn has been divesting its various holdings since 2010 to wind down its operations, said David Lane, the president of Clayburn Industries and a director for the broader Clayburn Group.
The current owners bought the Clayburn Group in the late 1980s. Ownership includes members of three families that originated from the initial Clayburn family decades ago. Lane said none of the family members are interested in carrying the various businesses forward.
“There is no other particular reason to sell the property other than it’s … the last big (asset) on the list to get sold to satisfy the owners’ request and desire to extract themselves from all of the different facets of the company,” Lane said.
The property is on the southeast quadrant of Sumas Mountain. “It has been mined, originally underground, for fireclay, and since the 1940s for shale stone and sandstone,” said Michael Farrell, a principal with Avison Young, the listing agency for the property.
Launched well over a century ago, Clayburn originally used the site to supply fireclay for bricks made at a plant located nearby. That led to the creation of B.C.’s first company town of the same name, which is now a heritage site clustered at the northeast corner of today’s expanding City of Abbotsford.
The bricks were used to build the Sun Tower, St. Paul’s Hospital, the Marine Building and the Empress Hotel, and many other high-profile buildings around the Pacific Northwest. Clayburn shut the brick plant down in 2011 and sold the property, which has been proposed for a massive apartment and townhome complex.
The mine has provided sandstone and shale over the decades to cement producers for development projects in the Lower Mainland and the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
The property includes nine separate parcels, but Clayburn intends to sell it as a single concern. The “guidance price” is $45 million, Farrell said.
The property is not part of the Agricultural Land Reserve and could be redeveloped with almost 90 acres possible for residential development.
Any potential buyer would likely continue to mine the site for its valuable cement materials, Farrell and Lane said.
“The materials are taken out and then shipped by barge to cement manufacturers throughout the Pacific Northwest,” Farrell said. “(This) is the only place in the Pacific Northwest that is supplying this material to cement manufacturers at the moment. There is no … readily available competitive pit to get this.”
He said nearly every concrete high-rise, highway overpass and other infrastructure in the region uses materials from the open-pit mine at the site.
Major residential and commercial property development on the site would likely not happen until the mine completes operations and residential zoning and housing demand arrives at the site toward the middle of this century, Farrell said.
He said a couple of residential developments have started to spread toward the site, but those nearby developments are far from capacity and there isn’t near-term demand for housing at the property.
“Once the mine plant runs its course, it will be perfectly placed within the next (official community plan) to allow for expanded residential development and commercial development in Abbotsford,” he said.
Postmedia reached out to Abbotsford’s mayor and council members for comments on the listing and the Clayburn company, but did not hear back from any representatives by deadline.
Lane said Lafarge Canada also owns a property within the Clayburn parcels. Together, the land is currently leased to Sumas Shale Ltd., which manages the mine and delivers the raw materials to cement plants.
He said only the Clayburn-owned parcels are being sold.
Clayburn Group of companies was created in Abbotsford in 1905, making it one of the oldest operating companies in B.C.
At its peak, Clayburn had 125 staff in B.C., as well as divisions in China, the U.S. and a venture relationship in India, Lane said.
“We’re now into our 114th year of owning (the company) and doing business, and the place where that business started was on this mountain,” he said. “Arguably, for the most part, the place where this business is going to stop is on this mountain.”