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In July, council approved a rezoning application for the church to build a 57-storey condo tower on church lands in a partnership with developer Westbank.

But the extraordinary increase in the assessed value of the parking lot has nothing to do that rezoning, according to B.C. Assessment. Instead, the increase is because of a change in city land use policy, said Paul Borgo, B.C. Assessment’s acting assessor for Greater Vancouver. The church parking lot falls within the area of the recently implemented West End Community Plan, Borgo said, which “allows a significantly greater density through rezoning.”

The plan, Borgo said, led to many West End properties getting “significant increases in value.”

Indeed, the assessed value of the First Baptist parking lot was $2.5 million in 2014, $2.7 million in 2015, then soared to $22.8 million last year.

Other West End properties with massive value increases were protected from huge tax increases, to some extent, by what’s called “land averaging.” That means for properties with year-over-year value increases above a certain threshold, taxes are assessed on a three-year average, softening the blow.

But First Baptist Church, apparently through no fault of its own, was deemed ineligible for land-averaging by the city, forcing it to pay the full $284,000 bill in June.

B.C. Assessment had incorrectly classified the church’s public pay-parking lot as residential for several years, and last year, the assessment authority corrected the error by reclassifying it as commercial. If a property’s classification changes, it’s ineligible for averaging.