Fraser Valley – The University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) is looking to its land base for a source of revenue and a way of creating a more vibrant campus culture.
UFV’s future could include livable communities nestled beside its Abbotsford and Chilliwack campuses: developments that would enliven the campus environment and help the university by funding institutional priorities.
That’s the long-term goal of the UFV Properties Trust, also known as Campus Communities: to develop land on UFV campuses in order to generate revenue for its beneficiaries, including the university.
Property trusts have been implemented successfully in British Columbia at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Thompson Rivers University.
The UFV board of governors has been looking for creative ways of generating sustainable revenue sources for several years.
In 2023, the UFV Properties Trust was launched to develop underutilized land on UFV campuses. The land will always be owned by UFV, and the trust would arrange 99-year ground leases with development companies, which would then develop the land and lease it to customers.
UFV has had underutilized land since acquiring the property where the Chilliwack campus at Canada Education Park was developed (on a former Canadian Armed Forces base) in the early 2000s. It was part of the original vision to use some of the land to generate revenue for the university but there was a 10-year moratorium before development opportunities could be considered.
In more recent years, UFV has identified land on the Abbotsford campus that could be developed as a revenue source while also enhancing the surrounding community. It would involve building on existing parking lots, but before any construction starts, new parking will be developed on the south end of campus to avoid any loss of parking spaces.
Jackie Hogan, UFV Vice President Administration, has been keenly involved in the planning and development of UFV’s Properties Trust. She is retiring from her position in March 2026, but will continue to monitor the progress as a member of the Properties Trust board.
“We see this as a way of generating benefits that would be invested in strategic priorities such as academic capital infrastructure, research funding, and endowments for scholarships and bursaries, while at the same time bringing more of a sense of community to our campuses,” Hogan explains. “Developing market housing on our Abbotsford campus dovetails nicely with the U-District project and would help to make it more of a community, as opposed to a commuter campus in the middle of industrial land.”
The U-District is a collaboration with the City of Abbotsford that encourages the creation of a liveable community surrounding the Abbotsford campus. Over the past decade, there has been a transformation of land surrounding the campus into mixed residential/retail properties as a result of this planning initiative. Developing land on the north end of the Abbotsford campus, adjacent to King Road, would complement the U-District vision.
UFV’s goal, through the arm’s-length Properties Trust, is to shepherd university-owned land to the point where it is ready for development and then enter ground lease agreements with developers.
“The Properties Trust would be involved at the beginning in planning and risk mitigation, and that’s the stage we are at now,” Hogan notes. “That means the trust, under the leadership of CEO Gary Morrison, does the legwork to make the land ready for development and get the zoning in place. That would result in a valuation ‘land lift,’ with the land being more valuable because the hurdles are out of the way.”
UFV engaged with the provincial government and Indigenous partners prior to the launch of the trust, and the trust is working with local governments to ensure all details are addressed.
