The Corner That Could Define Maple Ridge's Future Has Been Sitting Empty for a Decade. Council Keeps Looking the Other Way.

A heritage property on Jim Robson Way sits at one of the most visible gateways in Maple Ridge — steps from Planet Ice, right on the Lougheed. The owner has been trying to build something the community can be proud of for ten years. The city has handed him nothing but obstacles.

Drive into Maple Ridge from the Lougheed Highway and one of the first things you see is a fenced-off heritage house on the corner of Jim Robson Way. It sits there, surrounded by chain-link, monitored and maintained at significant cost, in what should be one of the most activated corners in the city. Across the way is Planet Ice — Maple Ridge's hub for minor hockey, skating, community fairs, and family events that draw thousands of residents throughout the year. This is not a forgotten back alley. This is a gateway.

Ken Brookes, the property's owner, has been trying to do something meaningful with that corner for the better part of a decade. He has not been asking for a favour. He has been asking for the same thing any responsible property owner asks for: the ability to put his land to productive use in a way that serves the community around it.

The proposals he has brought forward have not been unreasonable. A small retail development. A professional services building. A mixed-use concept combining housing with ground-floor commercial — exactly the kind of development that community planners, housing advocates, and business groups have been calling for across the Lower Mainland. Each time, the answer from the City of Maple Ridge has amounted to the same thing: not this, not now, come back later.

"We have been trying to create something this community can be proud of," Brookes told the Maple Ridge Post. "We have brought forward multiple concepts — retail, professional services, mixed-use housing and commercial. Every time, the city gives us a box of chains and tells us to go for a swim. It is not a complicated site. It just requires a city that actually wants to see something happen there."

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In the absence of development, the property has become a liability rather than an asset. Its heritage designation — which comes with restrictions on what can be done with the structure — combined with its visibility and accessibility makes it attractive to individuals seeking shelter. Brookes has had to fence the property and arrange ongoing monitoring to keep it safe and compliant. That is not cheap. And it is not what anyone envisioned for a corner this prominent.

Meanwhile, forty kilometres down the highway, Langley is busy becoming one of the most economically dynamic communities in British Columbia. Langley Township was ranked the most economically resilient city in BC for 2026. The SkyTrain extension is reshaping its development pipeline. Mixed-use projects are being approved, funded, and built. New businesses are arriving. The tax base is growing. The community is visibly investing in what it wants to become.

Maple Ridge is not Langley. But the gap between the two communities is not simply geographic — it is a gap in civic ambition. Langley's council has made a deliberate choice to attract development, to clear the path for mixed-use projects, to treat private investment as a resource rather than a problem to be managed. Maple Ridge's council, by the evidence of sites like Jim Robson Way, has made a different choice.

The irony is that the corner on Jim Robson Way is not in a marginal location. It is immediately adjacent to one of the most family-trafficked facilities in the city. Planet Ice draws parents, kids, coaches, and spectators through that intersection every week of the year. The tournaments and fairs that use the surrounding area bring people from across the region. A well-designed mixed-use development on that corner — retail at grade, housing or professional space above, designed with the heritage structure as an anchor rather than an obstacle — would be seen by more people on more days than almost any other site in Maple Ridge.

Instead, it is a fenced relic. Not because the owner doesn't want to build. Not because the community doesn't need what could be built there. But because the city has not made it possible.

Ken Brookes is still trying. He has not given up on the site or on Maple Ridge. But a decade is a long time to wait for a city to decide that one of its most important corners deserves better than a chain-link fence.

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