With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1406705
46 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 this one is a manufactured home that's big enough she can stretch out her arms with- out touching the walls, and it has a water connection. There was still nothing avail- able actually in the town. The only significant construction going on in Vanderhoof is a couple of projects funded by BC Housing, one of them a seniors' apartment building. The mayor, like the mayor in Clinton with a similar seniors' project, is hoping that will help by getting some older people out of the near- empty houses where they raised children and opening up those homes for others. In the meantime, prices are going up as newcomers arrive. A young couple from Vancouver Island paid $279,000 for their house this March, $60,000 above the assessed value, while a geographic information system ( GIS) specialist mov- ing to town paid $254,000 last September —almost $50,000 over assessment. "Peo- ple want to move out of the city, and dur- ing the pandemic, they decided now is the time," says Mayor Gerry Thiessen, also a realtor. "But if you get eight or nine new people in a town like Vanderhoof, that's pushing the limits." A R E I N D I G E N O U S D E V E L O P E R S T H E A N S W E R T O S O M E H O U S I N G P R O B L E M S ? Chief Wayne Sparrow is one of the handful of Indigenous leaders in the Lower Mainland who may end up being a key part of the solution to B.C.'s never-ending hous- ing squeeze. As the head of the Musqueam band, which now holds several large par- cels of valuable property, including the land that River Rock Casino Resort sits on, two golf courses, two chunks in the Univer- sity Endowment Lands and more, Sparrow now counts "developer" among his roles. But it's a much more complicated job than that of a regular private builder. Sparrow is just one of several regional Indigenous leaders in the same position. Indigenous bands and nations in the Lower Mainland are now the region's big- gest private developers, with potentially tens of millions of square feet of new con- struction on the way. The Se ' nákw devel- opment by the Squamish Nation is the highest-profile project in the works, with 12 towers planned for land around the south end of Vancouver's Burrard Bridge, and construction due to start at the end of this year. There's much more. The Squa- mish, Musqueam and Tsleil-waututh, individually or jointly, have substan- tial holdings in many municipalities. In Vancouver, the three, operating together through MST Development Corp., are planning on 20 million square feet of development on the Jericho Lands in West Point Grey, the Heather Lands near Oak Street that used to be RCMP headquarters and the BC Liquor Distribution Branch site on East Broadway. The Musqueam, besides their parcels in southwest Vancouver and north Richmond, co-own land with the Tsleil-waututh at Willingdon Avenue and Canada Way, the former site of addiction and youth-treatment centres. In North Vancouver, both the Squamish and Tsleil-waututh have extensive holdings. All of them are working with some of the region's largest developers—Ian Gillespie at Westbank Corp., Aquilini Development, Polygon Homes. They don't see it as their job to solve all the housing problems created by NIMBYs in the non-Indigenous communi- ties. Their focus is on providing eco- nomic benefits for their own peoples, either by providing them with hous- ing within their developments (as is being considered at the Se ' nákw and Heather Lands projects) or using the profits from development for housing on reserve land. In the Musqueam's Lel ' m project at UBC, apartments will be rented or sold to whomever and the profits will be used for housing on the reserve, where it's des- perately needed. About 350 people are currently waiting for housing on the Mus- queam reserve, and the list is only growing. Only five to 10 houses are built each year, even though 20 new households get added to the list in the same time period. But the leaders are also saying they won't take a standard approach to density, to design or to social mission. "I do think the nations want to do things differently," says Khelsilem, the young Squamish coun- cillor who frequently speaks for that nation. Some of the Squamish developments, because they're on property that's considered reserve land and therefore not regulated by city governments, can be planned for very high density since they're not restricted by any zoning. That's what is happening with Se ' nákw, which is also being designed to reflect an Indigenous aesthetic in its architecture and will incor- porate some Indigenous businesses and agencies in the complex. The freedom from rules on density isn't confined to the Se ' nákw site. It's also a fac- tor in the planning for a development on the North Shore near the Phibbs Exchange bus loop, another piece of Squamish prop- erty exempted from city zoning. "The consultants presented it to us and said we could do four to six storeys," Khelsilem recalls. "I said, Can we push it to 14 to 16 sto- reys?" The development will be next to the COMMUNITY BUILDER Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow, shown near his band's Lel ' m project at UBC, is now a key local developer R E A L E S TAT E R E P O R T 2 0 2 1