Demand for industrial facilities is arguably higher than ever in the Lower Mainland, but dwindling land availability in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley means that nothing stays on the market for long.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the remaining lands are considered \u2018low lands,\u2019 meaning they\u2019re sitting by water and have [poor] soil conditions, but there\u2019s adequate demand locally, so most of the projects we\u2019re working on are sold out or leased before the projects are completed,\u201d said Josh Gaglardi, principal of Orion Construction. \u201cThere are supply-side constraints and increasing regulatory requirements from the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government, and from the Agricultural Land Commission, which has many lands protected, so we\u2019re seeing extended timelines to get through the city and bring new product to market. Each year, it seems to take longer and longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaglardi\u2019s observations are bolstered by a Q1 Colliers Canada report on the Vancouver industrial market in which it determined the vacancy rate is a record-low 1%. Consequently, rents rose by 7.5% year-over-year in the first quarter of the year to $14.09 psf, a record high.<\/p>\n
Orion is constructing Pacific Corporate Centre and Coastal Heights Distribution Centre, and at 443,000 sq ft and 427,000 sq ft, respectively, they could be among the last industrial developments of their size in the region due to the dearth of land.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo create facilities that size, you need about 18-20 acres of land and we\u2019re running out of opportunities for sites that size in the Lower Mainland,\u201d said Gaglardi. \u201cThe complexity associated with the remaining land is with demand as high as it is, and supply as low as it is, we have to be creative in finding new sites and making them work, and that sometimes takes time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some developers have indeed . One of them is Wesbild, which, at six storeys each, is building Canada\u2019s largest stacked mixed-use industrial and office facilities in South Vancouver. Slated to begin construction early next year, Marine Landing will have units ranging from 600-34,000 sq ft, and depending on a business\u2019s needs, up to three 300 sq ft units can be combined.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarine Landing is somewhat of a unique project in that it\u2019s six storeys tall. One of the reasons we designed that way is there\u2019s a lack of land, which pushes land prices up, so in order to make it work we\u2019ve pushed the height and the size of the buildings up,\u201d said Lilian Arishenkoff, Wesbild’s SVP of development. \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting about it is it\u2019s a vertical expression of traditional industrial uses and, effectively, we\u2019re pushing what are typically one or two levels of industrial up to the higher levels by providing services and components businesses would still need to function as industrial businesses, like freight elevators and ramps, and that allows people to establish their businesses on a higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marine Landing\u2019s unique layout could even abet business partnerships at the facility, added Arishenkoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur main mission statement is creating community and we will be able to do that within this project by bringing different folks together and allowing them to grow. They can also build equity because this is not a leasing project; people can come in and own units themselves\u2014it\u2019s strata. There are a number of amenities we\u2019re providing to this project as well: we have a lounge, an area that can be booked for meetings, an amazing rooftop patio with spectacular views, a bike workshop, and a dog run. There will be a lot of opportunities for relationships amongst owner-operators who want to get together and create synergies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Demand for industrial facilities is arguably higher than ever in the Lower Mainland, but dwindling land availability in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley means that nothing stays on the market for long. \u201cA lot of the remaining lands are considered \u2018low lands,\u2019 meaning they\u2019re sitting by water and have [poor] soil conditions, but there\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23746,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9214\/revisions\/23746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}