The January 2025 official community plan draft has been released and the city is no longer proposing to remove the 118-acre area near Piccadilly Mall from the Agricultural Land Reserve.
This shows public input does have an impact.
Unfortunately, the plan to remove 146 acres of ALR land near the airport to build a second industrial park remains in the current OCP draft.
My objection to the removal of the ALR land near Picadilly Mall was that it would likely increase sprawl and threaten our downtown, while also eliminating much needed farmland. My objection here is that there is a proposal to use scarce public resources to facilitate the development of a new industrial park on land that is currently in the ALR.
The only analysis ever done on the availability of industrial land in Salmon Arm was a consultant’s report commissioned by the city which determined there is adequate available land for decades of growth.
Anecdotal evidence would suggest the same conclusion. When talking to one new industrial park tenant, they told me they had no trouble finding a suitable and affordable location and that there is vacant land available for development.
I believe this initiative is being primarily driven by land speculators, the same individuals who drove the building of the underpass.
Industrial land in the Lower Mainland has reached prices that are causing large distribution companies to look further afield for locations to set up centres. Salmon Arm could be an attractive location to establish a few of these facilities if the conditions were right. However, meeting these conditions would require a significant outlay of funds by the city as the current land owners would prefer not to have to fund this themselves. At an OCP stakeholder meeting held on Oct. 9, 2024, the city proposed support for the idea of sharing the costs required to connect city services to the area. I see this as a problem for several reasons. Number one is that would clearly be a transfer of wealth from the public purse to these land owners as the value of this land would immediately increase. Secondly, the development of distribution centres is not a significant source of value creation or productivity for the local economy. The value created by this development flows to the property owners, developers and the operators, not typically the local workforce as the jobs are low paying and sometimes rely on temporary foreign labour.
Lastly, I am fundamentally opposed to the removal of land from the ALR, particularly in a case like this where all of the profit will flow to a few large investors but the public will be left with the cost of maintaining the new infrastructure indefinitely. If the city is going to go through with this, there should be real analysis and debate at the council level – this should not be led by city staff.
If a new industrial park is truly needed in the future, let’s build it then, but for now focus on real community driven priorities like fixing our failing recreation facilities and leave the 146 acres of land near the airport in the ALR.
