Surrey City Centre.
4 candidates, one seat.

The City of Surrey says its City Centre area is on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people, including the Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahmoo nations, who have ancient and ongoing ties to this place. Each Nation describes its own territory. The Katzie First Nation says it has lived in its territory for thousands of years, and that the places now called Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Langley and Delta carry ancient Katzie names for the sites where its ancestors lived and worked. The Kwantlen First Nation says its traditional territory extends from Richmond and New Westminster in the west to Surrey and Langley in the south, east to Mission, and to the northernmost reaches of Stave Lake.

The Semiahmoo First Nation says its people have inhabited extensive territory across Washington state, the Strait of Georgia and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia for thousands of years, and that its members on the Canadian side live on the Semiahmoo Reserve in South Surrey. The Canadian Encyclopedia says the Kwantlen and Semiahmoo people, part of the Straits Salish group, have lived in the Fraser River and Boundary Bay area for more than 6,000 years.

BC Geographical Names records that Surrey was incorporated on 10 November 1879 as The Corporation of the District of Surrey, and that it was re-incorporated as a city on 11 September 1993. The record gives the origin of the name as Surrey in England and quotes the recollections of several early residents, who name different people as the source of the choice. The Canadian Encyclopedia says an early pioneer named the district after Surrey County in England. The City of Surrey adds that the district municipality became the largest geographical municipality in British Columbia in 1882.

The City says settlers began pre-empting land near today's City Centre as early as the 1880s, when the area was a rural farming and logging community. The Green Timbers Heritage Society says the road that crosses Green Timbers began as the Yale Wagon Road to the interior, built by a company of Royal Engineers in 1875.

The Green Timbers Heritage Society says the Yale Wagon Road was renamed the Pacific Highway in 1923, when Surrey was linked by road to Blaine in Washington State. The forest beside it once covered 5,000 acres. Until 1929 people travelled from afar to see the 200-foot trees along the highway. The King and Farris Company logged the forest for seven years to supply its sawmill in Newton, and the last giant trees were felled in 1930 despite a campaign to save them.

The BC Forest Service began replanting on 15 March 1930 with an Inaugural Plantation. Canada's Historic Places register says community leaders sponsored the planting of 121 seedlings that day and calls it the first reforestation project in British Columbia. Twenty-seven trees from that planting survive. The City of Surrey's heritage register says a tree nursery and a forest training school were set up on the site at the same time as unemployment relief projects during the Depression, and that the Green Timbers Nursery is the oldest Forest Service nursery. The City says the arboretum planted there in the 1930s has more than 70 tree species.

The City of Surrey says Whalley takes its name from Arthur Whalley, who settled near the corner of King George Boulevard and 108 Avenue in 1925, and that the area was then known as Whalley's Corner. BC Geographical Names gives the same origin and adds that a stop of the Pacific Stages bus line at the intersection of Ferguson and Bergstrom Roads was called Whalley's Corner. The name Whalley (Post Office) was adopted on 5 August 1948.

The City says the Pattullo Bridge opened in November 1937 and gave the impetus for more rapid settlement of North Surrey. When the bridge tolls were removed in 1952, the Whalley and City Centre area saw a major commercial and residential building boom. Three entries on the City's heritage register date from those years. The Goodmanson Building on King George Boulevard was built in 1949 following rapid development along King George Highway as the commercial focus for Whalley. St. Mary's Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 135A Street was built between 1950 and 1955. A neon sign of a rickshaw and its driver on King George Boulevard was built circa 1963 and was one of three Rickshaw Restaurant signs in the Lower Mainland.

The Green Timbers Heritage Society says that in 1966 a part of the forest reserve, 33 acres, became the site of Douglas College. In 1970 a trade transferred 400 acres to the City of Surrey. The city then cut 100 Avenue through the forest and widened and extended 96 Avenue to 140 Street. In 1987 the public objected when 42 acres were cleared for a sports complex, and the society was formed to save that area. Its membership reached 1,000, and after eight years of lobbying the 42 acres were designated part of Green Timbers.

The society says two referendums secured the rest of the forest as an urban forest park. The first, in 1988, won an 86% yes vote. The second, in 1996, won a 95% yes vote and added 53.3 acres north of 100 Avenue. The society puts the forest at 560 acres in total, counting the Ministry of Forests area. Canada's Historic Places register records the Inaugural Plantation as formally recognized by local government on 12 January 2004.

The City of Surrey says four SkyTrain stations opened in Surrey in 1994, with three of them in City Centre, and that this laid the foundation for a more urban framework. The Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association, first called the Whalley Business Improvement Association, was formed in 2003 and now has more than 1,400 members.

Simon Fraser University opened a temporary campus in 2002 in Central City Mall, in space that TechBC had used and that was once a Zellers store. In 2006 it moved into its permanent space in the Central City complex, designed by the architect Bing Thom. The City says it redeveloped Holland Park in the mid 2000s, that the park became one of the province's Spirit Squares in 2008 for British Columbia's 150th anniversary, and that it was a celebration site during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

The Surrey Now-Leader reported on 20 February 2014 that the new city hall at 13450 104 Avenue was open for business, with all city services available from the set opening date of 17 February. The paper gave the cost as $97 million, the size as 180,000 square feet and the staff housed there as 750. The City says its Council endorsed a new plan for City Centre in 2017.