A new townhouse development on the historic McGregor property in Burnaby's Big Bend neighbourhood may not fit the high-density goals of many urban planners.

But the unique heritage of the site, already in a low-density neighbourhood, made accommodating the community and the surrounding environment a challenge, according to the developer and Burnaby's mayor.

The 92 townhouses and four condos will be located at 4250 Marine Drive, on the site of the historic Edwardian-era McGregor home.

Duncan McGregor, who was elected reeve - or mayor - of Burnaby in 1913, owned the property.

The mansion is being restored and will serve as an amenity centre, as well as housing the four condos, according to Rob Vrooman, the manager of development for Amacon.

Amacon is the real estate developer for the 12-acre townhouse development project.

An old barn on the property is being restored, he said, and a pond is being preserved along with some large trees.

"It's larger than typical developments," Vrooman said. "We're trying to keep the feeling of the original heritage."

The amount of land per residence comes out to about 510 square metres (5,500 square feet), he added.

The constraints were challenging, Vrooman said, as there is also a creek on the property that is protected by the federal Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans.

Because it is also located near an industrial area, and a single-home low-density neighbourhood, the development is set far back from the perimeter of the property.

An additional 16 acres has been turned over to the city as parkland, Vrooman said.

There will also be a community garden on site, he added.

The first phase should be ready for occupants by the summer or fall of 2011. The townhouses start at $539,000.

This project was different as many of Amacon's developments are larger, concrete structures, Vrooman said, and there is now a trend towards high rather than low density.

Daniel Fontaine criticized the project on his website, www.citycaucus.com. Fontaine suggested Burnaby city council should be green lighting high-density projects instead.

Fontaine wrote: "If you're not familiar with the Big Bend area, not long ago it housed little more than a lush verdant landscape, some berry farms and the occasional bald eagle. Within the last few years, Mayor Derek Corrigan and his council have approved a massive amount of new development - mostly big box car dependent stores. ... Now comes a new residential development, which one could argue was inevitable given council's penchant for slapping in just about anything they can into this neighbourhood. Unlike Vancouver, which up until a while ago was moving toward making density its main policy tool to lower its carbon footprint, Burnaby appears to be going in the opposite direction."

But Corrigan said the development was a special case, and is actually higher density than the single-home neighbourhood surrounding it.

He called the development "a compromise" with Amacon, to protect the environmental and heritage aspects of the property. Corrigan pointed out that the City of Burnaby had tried to buy the property to develop itself, offering $16 million, but the provincial government eventually sold it to Amacon instead for $13.5 million.

"We were left to bargain with Amacon," Corrigan said.

The city sold the property to the provincial government in 1938. It became the site of the New Haven Borstal Home for Boys and Youthful Offenders and was later the New Haven minimum-security correctional facility, which closed in 2001.