Mark: Hi it’s Mark Bossert, Top Local Lead Generation. We’re here with Darren McCartney talking about Squamish, BC commercial property and stuffs happening I guess. How’re you doing today Darren?

Darren: I’m well Mark, how about yourself?

Mark: Good, so we’re going to talk about some new stuff that’s happening in Squamish. What’s the first thing on your list?

Darren: A big thing that just came up in the last month, I’ve been working for about a year and a half now on a new business park. There’s an industrial area in Squamish and there’s a 20 acre site a client of mine acquired and there’s a mix of all types of different industrial warehouses going in. We’re very excited, we’ve had a new addition to the zoning, this is really going to help things take off in that area. I want to show you a shot of that neighbourhood so I can explain a little bit better.

Mark: We can see the aerial shot

Darren: If you can see here where my cursor arrow is here at the middle of the business park at Hwy 99 right by Walmart and Home Depot. The site my client owns is this 20 acre lot highlighted in red right here, and right now we’re launching Phase 1 of this business park which has four buildings in this Phase 1 area. I’ve already go one building 100% leased with a bunch of outdoor users, climbing gym, martial arts, fitness and I’m about a quarter of the way through another building that’s also under construction now - they’re just preloading on this side of the building. What just came up recently, is in this lower quadrant here, we’ve achieved retail zoning and effectively, what that will do for our business park here is that it’ll really act as a catalyst for us to take advantage of some retail interest in this site and have a bit of a retail service centre for the entire business park that will really help with the initial development here. New arrivals to the business park in the past few years are Toyota, Ford down here just below the screen shot, Home Depot and Walmart not that long ago. With the additional pre leasing we’re doing here and the retail opportunity, it’s really going to increase the opportunity to add different type of businesses. I just changed the screen shot, can you see that in front of you there? This give you a better feel for it. So we’ve pivoted about 90°, Home Depot would be right here. This is the building that’s 100% leased - it’s very much an activity building, the other being a more light industrial over here, and it’s this retail area over here we’ve got rezoned so there will likely be a couple fast food locations, oil and lube we’re discussing, as well as some other retail type anchors here that will service the balance of the business park. The remaining of the L shape of the 20 acres has been rezoned to allow some additions as well, allowing for indoor recreation and recreation technology. So the intention here, we’ve already got indoor recreation happening with the climbing walls, martial arts, fitness, someone talking about trampolines, that kind of thing. We’re talking to recreation technology users up here, where we’re looking at people who manufacture outdoor gear to set up their manufacturing and office facilities. So it’s a really unique synergy with the amount of outdoor people in the corridor and those entrepreneurs how choose to set up Squamish as home. It gives us an opportunity to leverage that and in bringing some local jobs. Effectively this whole park, in addition to being the first real substantial business park offered in the area, we’ve also got support of the local government, local tax incentives, municipal tax rebates for the first 5 years of tenancy. It’s an exciting project for Squamish, it’s really good timing. It took a little bit of time to get the initial  pre leases involved, but we’ve already got two buildings under construction and we have other deals locking in for the back of the site for larger users. Things are really going to change when you pull off the highway here by summer of next year. You’ll see numerous new buildings going up in that area and a real infill in that development.

It’s fun to work on  and now we’re looking for the retail anchors to put in this facility down here. We’ve already got interest, but we’re definitely still taking phone calls to chat to people about this and see if they’re interested in setting up. So a pretty fun project for me to be working on.

Mark: Alright, and you got some new industrial stuff coming as well?

Darren: You know what, I just listed another piece of land, another site in the neighbourhood - I’m just going to pull it up on here. Here is a different aerial rendering but the same neighbourhood, this is the property I was just talking about, and we’ve seen industrial land top a million dollars per acre in most of the Lower Mainland, it’s very expensive and we’ve been affordable here for awhile but we haven’t seen the inflow of people buying but there has been a lot of interest and numerous deals in the last six months on land up here. We just had this site down here in the corner, sell for $870,000 for this acre which is a big number for that location in the business park. There’s just not a heck of a lot for sale. Ford has set up, there are some other users setting up in this neighbourhood here. I just listed a .6 acre site at about $469,000 which is a pretty reasonable price given the fact that we’ve seen 870,000 per acre, this site is serviced, it’s filled and more or less ready to go. When you look at the layout of the business park, this really is the extent of the Squamish business park with the exception of some larger heavy industrial land over here. So things are going to happen very fast in this area with the constraints on the Lower Mainland there is really no where to go but u[ on the industrial land values. Investors and users are starting to look this way and there’s a limited supply of inventory up here for people to work with. It’s going to be busy in the business park this year for sure.

Mark: That’s great news and obviously things are happening in Squamish. So if you have an interest in exploring whether your industry or retail operations or manufacturing operations might be a fit for Squamish - remember Squamish is kind of the outdoor recreation capital, certainly of Canada and perhaps world class - skiing, hiking, you name it, can pretty much everything outdoors happens in Squamish. Fantastic area and great climate. The guy to call is Darren McCartney - Squamish Commercial Realty - www.squamishcommercialproperty.com or give them a call at 1-604-892-4875 . Thanks Darren

Darren: Thank you Mark