Manufacturing plants, like Molycop in Kamloops, are not likely to find affordable land to expand to Kamloops or Kelowna.

Image Credit: Google Maps/Kris Gunderson

Industrial is quickly being eaten up in the Lower Mainland, but interior cities like Kamloops and Kelowna aren't going to provide much alternative.

We have a similar land shortage here.

“The long and short of it is, we’re tight on industrial here,” Mike Geddes, principal of NAI Commercial Okanagan, told iNFOnews. “You have to go north into Lumby or east of Coldstream to the old Lavington glass plant, that sort of area, for anything of any real substance.”

In fact, given the high cost of industrial land in Kelowna, if he gets clients interested in buying more than five acres, he’s suggesting Prince George, Cache Creek or Kamloops.

Except Larry Goode, the managing broker in NAI Commercial's Kamloops office, says there’s not much there either.

“We’re short of commercial serviced land,” he told iNFOnews.ca.

The Gateway Industrial Park on the east side of the city is basically full with a 140,000-square-foot building currently under construction.

READ MORE: Why Kamloops is missing out on the industrial boom that’s taking the Okanagan by storm

Husky Oil owns a 14-acre piece of the industrial park between Highway 1 and the rail line but that’s zoned for hospitality.

There is another 20-acre parcel west of the Molycop steel ball manufacturing plant but it’s not fully serviced and the owner is talking about dividing it in half to build a warehouse and subdivide the rest.

The land to the left of the yellow-roofed building at Molycop is one of the last large industrial parcels available in Kamloops.

Image Credit: Apple iMaps

“The landowner thinks it’s worth $1.5 to $2 million an acre, unserviced, and no one’s prepared to pay that so it just sits there,” Goode said. “If it was divided into two or three acre parcels, I could lease them all tomorrow.”

Fifteen years ago the Tk’emlups First Nation announced the seven-mile-long St. Paul Industrial Park but only Finning Tractor has built there.

Part of the problem is that the band does not own all of that land. Some is owned by band members so there has not been a coordinated development approach, Goode said.

One promising area is a large piece of land between Lac La Jeune Road and the Coquihalla Highway. That has water service to it and the city secured a sewer right of way last year, he said.

“I think they’ve got future plans but, we don’t need it in 20 years,” Goode said. “We need it in two or three years.”

This shows the area of potential industrial development between Lac Le Jeune Road and the Coquihalla Highway.

Image Credit: iMaps

The problem there is the land is “interlaced” with mining claims, making a coordinated development approach difficult.

The demand for industrial land in Kamloops is coming from things like trucking and distribution companies, a recycling company, construction sub-trades and machinery dealers.

The market is a bit different in Kelowna.

“Industrial here typically supports the construction industry – the tin smiths, plumbers and electricians, the suppliers of garage doors,” Geddes said. “As the construction industry goes, so does the industrial demand.”

Despite the City of Kelowna issuing a record $1.2 billion in building permits in 2022, the construction industry is slowing down with the demand for single-family and other housing easing due to high interest rates, Geddes said.

“There will be a lag, then we will see industrial vacancies start to rise,” he predicted.

There is also a difference between heavy and light industrial.

“You can’t really consider the Airport Business Park industrial because there’s no outdoor storage there so there’s no manufacturing there,” Geddes said. “You really have to go out to Beaver Lake Road.”

READ MORE: Huge business centre proposed for Kelowna airport industrial park

There are problems there with servicing but a recent agreement between the District of Lake Country, City of Kelowna and Okanagan Indian Band may solve that in time.

READ MORE: Rail Trail guaranteed to run through OKIB lands with historic new agreement

The other drawback is the steep hill up Beaver Lake Road to Highway 97.

Much of the private land is owned by either the Callahan (Argus Properties and Callahan Property Group) or Bennett (McIntosh Properties) families.

The Bennetts are not yet ready to develop and the Callahans are building light industrial complexes.

A new area around Appaloosa and Pinto roads off Sexsmith Road is slowly opening up but that, too, won’t allow for outdoor storage so won’t be suitable for manufacturing, Geddes said.

The area to the centre-left of this image shows the area north of Sexsmith Road and west of Highway 97 that is slowly being converted to industrial.

Image Credit: iMaps

“Other than warehousing and storage, I don’t think you’ll see anything come here to set up large scale manufacturing,” he said.

That means manufacturing jobs are not going to come to the either city.

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