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/1498118
INVEST in BC 2 0 2 3 21 Official Publication of the BC Economic Development Association. In special partnership with BCBusiness. or two, is the region's manufacturing hub, with some 8,000 advanced manufacturing and robotics suppliers alone creating a ro- bust local supply chain. City council recently approved build-out of the South Campbell Heights business park, adding needed indus- trial land to the marketplace. In recent years Campbell Heights became the headquarters of laboratory equipment supplier Alliance Scientific as well as a regional distribution centre for Amazon, Sobey's (owner of Canada Safeway) and pharmaceutical distributor McKesson Canada. In 2022, the University of British Columbia announced it would build a Surrey campus. Simon Fraser University, meanwhile, is adding a new Quantum Algorithms Institute and BC Centre for Agritech Innovation at its SFU Innovation Plaza in Surrey City Centre. Federal and provincial funding was announced for the BC Centre for Agricultural Innovation based at SFU Surrey, a collaboration between nine colleges and universities with a goal to help farmers leverage new innovations around food production and processing technologies. The institution also has based its Fuel Cell Research Lab Centre of Excellence, Powertech Labs and Sustainable Energy Engineering hubs in the municipality. VALLEY BOUND As Vancouver and its suburbs grow denser and more costly, migration of people and businesses continues to the less crowded, more affordable Fraser Valley to the east. Chilliwack was the second fastest-growing city in Canada between the 2016 and 2021 censuses, surpassed only by another B.C. city, Kelowna. Its population grew 12.1% to 113,767 over the five-year period. (Another Fraser Valley municipality, the Township of Langley, grew even faster, by 13%, but was not included in the list of census metropolitan areas.) Agriculture remains a pillar of the Fraser Valley economy, and because much of it is supply-managed (including dairy, poultry and egg production), it is close to recession-proof. As for industrial space, land that not long ago cost half a million dollars per acre now typically fetches $3.5-5 million, which is causing owner- occupiers and developers alike to upgrade their properties for more intensive uses. Examples include the Beedie Group's 15- acre Skyline Business Park, Denciti's 12.5- acre Fraser Gateway and the Chilliwack Food and Beverage Processing Park centered on the Molson Coors brewery. The nearby City of Abbotsford continues see expansion of the Abbotsford Inter- national Airport, which now hosts more 500,000 passengers annually. The city's profile rose in 2021 with the relocation of the Vancouver Canucks farm team to the Abbotsford Centre from Utica, NY. The American Hockey League franchise is now known as the Abbotsford Canucks. Some of the most ambitious plans for community development are coming out of Mission, a small city north of the Fraser River. Last year Mission adopted a Waterfront Revitalization Master Plan into its official community plan that will guide the redevelopment of nearly 300 acres stretching along 3.5 kilometres of Fraser River frontage. The plan calls for a mix of commercial, institutional, light industrial and residential uses combined with parks and open spaces. The city also adopted a plan for the Silverdale area of southwest Mission that, upon completion, will effectively double the city's population with 20,000 new homes and more than a half million square feet of retail and office space. Recent land settlements with the provincial and federal governments have enabled the urban Musqueam, Squa- mish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations to emerge in recent years as the leading real estate developers in Metro Vancou- ver. Collectively, the three nations have 25,500 new homes in various stages of development. Some of these are owned by an individual First Nation, like the Musqueam's recently opened Lelem com- plex near the University of B.C. and the Squamish's massive Senakw project on Kitsilano Point. But they also have a joint venture, MST Development Corp. with a property portfolio worth an estimated $5 billion. •