A company that owns office and storefront space in North Burnaby has lost round 2 in a battle with its strata over parking spaces.
In a ruling Wednesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Loo upheld a decision by the strata at Ingleton Place on Hastings Street to make commercial tenants pay for 24 parking stalls designated as common property in the strata plan.
Trinden Enterprises Ltd. owns the commercial strata lots at Ingleton Place and rents space to various tenants, including Burnaby North-Seymour MP Terry Beech, whose constituency office is located there.
Trinden's commercial tenants currently have 66 parking spaces identified as "limited common property" for their use.
For 36 years, however, commercial tenants in the building also used 24 stalls that are designated "common property" in the strata plan, according to the ruling.
The strata put an end to that in 2022, demanding Trinden remove certain parking signs and telling some of its commercial tenants they had to rent the parking stalls from the strata or stop using them.
That move cut the commercial tenants parking stalls by 30 per cent, and Trinden applied to the province's Civil Resolution Tribunal for orders forcing the strata to designate the disputed parking stalls exclusively for the use of the commercial tenants and to re-install commercial parking signs.
The company told the tribunal the strata's reallocation of the parking stalls went against an unwritten parking agreement and was "significantly unfair."
But the strata said the disputed parking stalls were common property and there had never been a parking agreement.
The tribunal dismissed Trinden's claim in May 2023, noting all the parking spaces fell within the area indicated on the strata plan as common property.
The tribunal ruled Trinden's expectation that it would permanently control the parking spots was not reasonable.
Trinden then took the case to B.C. Supreme Court for a judicial review, but that court upheld the CRT decision.
Even though Trinden and its predecessor had controlled the 24 parking spots since the strata was built in 1987, Justice Loo agreed it was not reasonable for the company to expect to control them permanently.
"The CRT decision was not patently unreasonable and Trinden was not denied procedural fairness," Loo said.
Trinden was ordered to pay the strata's legal costs.
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