Pickton family loses bid to rezone pig farm

An artist rendition shows Robert Pickton listening to the guilty verdict in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, B.C. on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007. (Felicity Don / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The Pickton family has lost its bid to have the notorious pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., where Robert Pickton killed six women, re-zoned as farmland.

Pickton, his brother David and sister Linda Wright asked the B.C. Supreme Court to review a decision that reclassified the land as residential because it significantly increased the property taxes.

A property assessment review panel ruled in 2003 that the land should be classified as residential and not a mix of residential and light industry, which it had been classified before.

The Picktons wanted the value of the land to be set at less than $1 million. But the panel assessed it as residential land with a value of more than $4 million in 2004, which means the Picktons would have to pay significantly more in property taxes.

The family argued earlier decisions didn't acknowledge that the land was off-limits for almost nine years as police searched the property for evidence against Pickton.

But B.C. Supreme Court Judge Austin Cullen says the Picktons failed to appeal the earlier decision, which was held up by an appeal panel, and never offered any evidence to suggest the assessment was unreasonable.

What to do with the land?

Earlier this month, a group called Partners in Care Alliance (PICA), representing B.C. funeral directors and clergymen, suggested the 14 acre property should be designated as a not-for-profit public cemetery and memorial for Pickton's victims.

The B.C. government currently has a lien on the property for $10 million as part of the Pickton defense fund. The cost of the investigation alone is estimated to be upwards of $70 million.

The former pig farmer was sentenced last December to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years after he was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.

He still faces the possibility of trial on another 20 counts of first-degree murder. An appeal hearing is tentatively scheduled for nine days in Vancouver starting March 30, 2009.

With a report from The Canadian Press