A Burnaby office building sold by the BC NDP to what appeared to be foreign investors in 2015 was gutted by an early morning fire Friday.
Fire broke out in the now-vacant building at 5367 Kingsway, east of Royal Oak, at about 3 a.m.
By the time crews arrived, the two-storey structure was already fully engulfed in flames.
“Basically there was fire and smoke showing out of every window. There was a huge plume of black smoke,” fire Captain Joey Marra told the NOW. “It was basically defensive right off the bat.”
A Best Western Plus hotel next to the building was evacuated as a precaution, and Kingsway was shut down at Royal Oak.
Marra said the busy route will likely be shut down into the afternoon as the walls of the building are unstable and could collapse.
“We don’t want that south wall coming down onto Kingsway,” he said.
Fire officials were in the process of getting hold of the owner Friday morning before bringing in an excavator to knock down the unstable structure.
The cause of the blaze is still unknown, but fire investigators were expected on scene Friday morning.
The building had housed the offices of the Beedie Development Group for 53 years before being sold to the BC NDP for $1.7 million in 2007, according to a 2016 Vancouver Sun story.
The party used it as its headquarters until 2015, when it was sold for $2.15 million to a company called Utmost Enterprises Ltd.
According to theSun, Utmost Enterprises had been incorporated just two months before the purchase and listed a registered office at 120-3751 Shell Rd. in Richmond – the same address as an accounting firm whose website said it specialized in “non-resident taxation” practice.
The Sun story noted that, when Attorney General David Eby was the NDP’s housing critic, he had criticized the B.C. Liberal government repeatedly for not pursuing a tax on foreign owners who leave properties vacant.
