NOVEMBER 2017 BCBUSINESS 59 BCBUSINESS.CA
Vancouver developer had tapped into a winning product.
Although sales haven't launched yet, phase two of River-
shore has mostly sold out by word of mouth, Fiorvento says.
The target market: small businesses that need high ceilings and
big areas for loading trucks. The largest unit is about 12,000
square feet, but buyers can merge units to create bigger spaces.
Fiorvento says "demand has been insane," from food manufac-
turers, importers and construction companies. "That's what's
nice about it—you're building for local businesses," he adds.
Much of the demand for industrial land is from big compa-
nies looking to put down roots or to further expand into Metro
Vancouver, says Curtis Scott, manager of market intelligence
for Colliers Canada International. A prime example is Amazon.
com Inc., which recently moved into the Vancouver area. The
U.S. online retail titan occupies 236,000 square feet of distribu-
tion space on Braid Street in New Westminster, and it's report-
edly seeking more. "We have a lot of major occupiers and major
companies that are looking for space and wanting to get into it
for a long-term basis," says Scott, one of the authors of a recent
Colliers report on the commercial strata market.
Even land that was previously undesirable is up for grabs,
Neufeld observes. "We are consuming land at the rate of over
200 acres a year," he says. "And that is eating away at a ‚xed
base of land. So we are heading for trouble."
This shortage puts tremendous pressure on land values, he
stresses, pointing out that a couple of years ago, you could buy
on Mitchell Island for $1.1 million or $1.2 million an acre. "Now
land is going for just under $2 million an acre."
Another factor is the Metro Vancouver vacancy rate of less
than 2 per cent, Neufeld says. Landlords can command $8 to $10
a square foot, making industrial property even more enticing
as a revenue generator.
Losing ground
As a reminder of what we stand to lose, many planners now
prefer to call industrial land "employment land" or "jobs land."
Part of the reason people don't think about its growing scarcity
is that such property is an ugly necessity. De‚ned in the tra-
ditional sense, industrial land is clanking machinery, belching
smokestacks, trucks moving in and out of warehouse loading
bays. It's pulp mills and ‚sh plants, and factories that make
everything from textiles to concrete.
Generally speaking, though, industrial is any property that
Raising the Bar
VANCOUVER BURNABY RICHMOND DELTA NORTH VANCOUVER
(DISTRICT)
SURREY METRO
VANCOUVER
131%
70% 70%
65%
40%
76%
54%
71%
73%
53%
69%
73%
59%
66%
In many Metro Vancouver municipalities, the average assessed value of industrial
property has outstripped that of residential from 2012 to 2017
SOURCE:
BC ASSESSMENT, 2012-17
PROPERTY ASSESSMENTS.
ANALYSIS BY ANDY YAN,
CITY PROGRAM, SFU
INDUSTRIAL
RESIDENTIAL
