Quote:
Originally Posted by thefourthtower
http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/global-transportation-hub-inks-new-deal
The Global Transportation Hub on the west side of Regina has announced a new tenant: Brightenview Development International — which is also seeking to build a wholesale-warehouse-logistics facility near Dundurn, south of Saskatoon.
But Thursday’s news was Brightenview’s plan to spend $7.6 million to buy 30 acres of land in the GTH areas.
Brightenview CEO Joe Zhou said more details will be announced “when conditions are removed, which is expected later this year.”
However, his news release noted the GTH’s recent designation as a foreign trade zone (FTZ) point in Canada.
Expanding on that, Brightenview spokesman Lorne Nystrom said the two projects “go hand-in-hand,” adding that FTZ status is “very, very important” to overseas businesses looking at Canada.
“When it sits in a zone, you don’t pay tax on it,” he said. “Then you can assemble it there, you can add value to it there, you can add to it there — and, then, when the buyer buys it, the buyer pays the tax on the way out.
And in November, the GTH sold 13 acres worth $2.6 million to a private company that wants to build a commercial service centre for truckers at the GTH’s northeast corner. Construction is expected to start in 2016
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Brightenviews interest in the GTH & the GTH's willingness to sell land to them seems entirely fitting... Brightenviews' plans for Dundurn have been laughable since the get-go (and nothing they've done since has changed my opinion).
I've long maintained that the GTH faces an exceptionally difficult path (well before any of the land valuation & bypass controversy came up) - there is nothing particularly special about the GTH... numerous other locations for multinationals to consider (Chicago & Texas are key logistics centres, with the requisite qualified labour pools). The argument that Home Depots, WalMarts, etc of the world will see the GTH as a logical place to establish warehouses/distribution centres hold about as much water as Brightenview's theory that international wholesale-logistics-distribution centre in Dundurn makes sense because it's almost centrally-located in North America
These two entities will go well together - I can imagine each convincing the other of their unique attributes, and each confused as heck when major international entities continually bypass them for Chicago, Texas, Winnipeg, Calgary, etc...
(or, why these entities only stay until the government incentives dry up - we all remember how quickly most of Regina's call centres pulled up & left after incentives dried up. Or, if they didn't leave, how quickly they switched away from SaskTel at their first opportunity).
Logistic centres like the GTH hopes to be are essentially a commodity. I'm happy to see history prove me wrong, but I doubt it will.