Railtown revival
I-4 zoning (“historic industrial”) came into effect in Railtown last May, and since then sales activity and development in the 15.5-acre district adjacent to the port has surged. While the city stripped software manufacturing from the list of approved uses, advocates for the local tech sector won city permission for “creative products manufacturing” alongside the more traditional “dairy products manufacturing” and “ice manufacturing.”
The latter two activities would be tough to find in an area whose latest claims to fame include companies like Hootsuite Media Inc., Herschel Supply Co. and Aritzia Inc., whose coders and design teams bridge the worlds of creative products and historic apparel manufacturing and printing activities.
The new zoning brought the clarity needed to allow such uses to flourish in the future, said Justin Omichinski, a vice-president with Avison Young, and developers now have the confidence needed to create new space to serve them.
“It legalized a lot of the uses of tenants that had been operating … under software manufacturing,” he said. “Now there’s more clarity in the development community and from the tenants’ perspective on who’s allowed to operate under that new zoning. ... [It’s] really spurred on a lot of the new projects.”
Those projects include Bench, a 35,000-square-foot Rendition Developments Inc. development at 353 Railway Street that recently secured a building permit. It will be the first project built under the area’s I-4 zoning.
Billed as “a tribute to our past while looking to our future,” the project eyes retail and food tenants at grade and clothing and technology companies for the upper five storeys. Completion is set for fall 2019.
A few months later, Rendition expects to complete Maker Exchange at 488 Railway Street in partnership with Nicola Crosby Real Estate and Omicron Development Inc.
“Our property is probably centre ice,” said Tim Loo, an adviser to Omicron and former principal who led the planning for Maker Exchange, noting that it includes the original location of homegrown coffee roaster JJ Bean.
Loo expects creative product manufacturers and similar companies to take space in the 151,000-square-foot development, which should obtain a building permit in February and break ground this August.
“The city has a mandate to save industrial land, but what does industry mean going forward?” he asked.
With the proliferation of engineering firms and craft brewers in urban industrial zones from Mount Pleasant to Lake City, industry clearly isn’t what it was.
ALR, recharged
The province has struck a nine-member committee to review the 45-year-old Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
Many industrial brokers contacted last week were reluctant to comment pending the release of a consultation paper that will set the terms of the review, but a few things are certain.
One, the ALR’s division four years ago into two zones will likely be eliminated. Two zones were rejected in a 2010 report for the Agricultural Land Commission, and B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham wishes to see this honoured – just as she made provision for meaderies, breweries and distilleries to operate within the ALR in keeping with a 2014 report.
Two, given that the committee’s mandate is “revitalizing the ALR,” exclusions from the reserve aren’t likely to become easier.
Chaired by commission veteran Jennifer Dyson, whose family milks water buffalo on Vancouver Island, the review committee includes former Delta South MLA Vicki Huntington, who criticized the optioning of farmland in her riding for industrial development, and Lenore Newman, an associate professor at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) who believes Earth has reached peak farmland.
Newman, director of the UFV’s Centre for Food and Farmland Innovation, argues for better management of Earth’s remaining farmland and champions urban agriculture. •
