Quote:
Originally Posted by Changing City
The status of industrial land, and the finite nature of supply has been the focus of a lot of work by Metro Vancouver over a number of years. This presentation covers a lot of the issues, and has a lot of detail on where the industrial lands are located, whether they're at risk of loss to other uses, or protected (for the time being) through zoning and OCP designation.
The development status and potential for industrial lands has the same set of issues that affect housing and affordability - the limited land base, the land values that have run up over the past few years, and the very high cost of developing. It's possible to build 2-level (or even multi level) distribution centres for example, and there's an example shown in that presentation in Seattle. However, it seems that tenants have to be willing to pay more than they're currently willing, or able to do, to justify the additional costs of construction. If trucking costs rise then presumably it will become more logical/affordable for Home Depot (for example) to pay to have a Greater Vancouver distribution centre, rather than service the Lower Mainland from a Calgary distribution base (where land is plentiful, and cheaper). It appears that it's major warehouse/distribution centres that are most in need of additional land (although 20% of industrial land - over 2,000 ha. - is identified as 'vacant' in the Metro Vancouver inventory). |
The issue is that that development near Skytrain or City Centers is accelerating the decline in industrial land availability; it's far easier to build on factories and warehouses than single-family housing (even though the latter is honestly less efficient form a urban perspective). That's understandable, but the land isn't being replaced with more land elsewhere.
I am aware Metro and Port Vancouver have been making alarm bells about the issue; the municipalities are to blame for not listening.
Honestly, it might take for the land shortage to reach critical shortage levels (literally no logistics-oriented land left ie. in 5-10 years), and the inevitable flurry of ALR rezoning applications for them to realize mistakes may have been made.
There's still
some land and vacancy left- but that's the case with literally any real estate market. There's just scant breathing room. The time to stop it, as with climate change, and unchecked urban sprawl, is
before the critical shortage happens, not after.