It’s no secret that Calgary has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. And in the eyes of many in this prairie city, the growth will continue.
With that growth comes the challenge of ensuring the City of Calgary’s land assets are used strategically, and that’s where the Corporate Industrial Land Strategy (CILS) comes into play.
CILS is a vital document, developed in 2013, that provides a framework for how the City will develop surplus land with the goal of continuing to inject life into the economy.
A vibrant and robust industrial sector is vital to the economic health of a community and the quality of life. The City of Calgary has planned, serviced and sold municipally-owned land assets since the 1960s to ensure availability of industrial lots through strong and weak economies.
This self-sustaining land development program (not taxpayer funded) has serviced approximately 5,000 acres of industrial land, selling to 2,700 businesses and employing more than 50,000 people.
The recent emergence of a regional land supply by private developers has provided new opportunities for businesses that require less proximity to urban amenities, limited services, large lots and lower lot pricing. The diverse private and regional product offering enables Calgary’s industrial land development program to become more strategic and collaborative, and helps the municipality focus its efforts on gaps in the market. These trends in the local industrial market have created a competitive region in Calgary and have provided advantages on a national and international scale.
In light of the changing economic and industrial market opportunities, and new municipal policy directions toward sustainability, the City recently approved its industrial land strategy. The previous strategy (from 2004) anticipated little growth outside of Calgary. Now, the latest version recognizes the region has approximately 40 per cent of the future land inventory in the Calgary market. More importantly, there is a finite availability of industrial land supply within the municipality.
The new strategy’s vision is to lead in the creation of sustainable industrial parks that support economic development in Calgary and maximize long-term benefits.
The vision is supported by five guiding principles:
1. Support local economic development
Supporting business attractiveness remains the primary reason for the City’s ongoing involvement in industrial land development. This is accomplished by providing a supply of serviced industrial lots during weak and strong economies and filling the gaps not being met by private initiatives. Through market research and stakeholder input, CILS focuses on maintaining a one-year supply of small and medium sized lots. The City keeps its focus on small and medium lots for owners/users while supporting economic diversification initiatives.
2. Achieve sustainability objectives
Through its commitment to the triple bottom line approach, the City helps generate employment opportunities, supports social benefits such as helping to fund Calgary’s Affordable Housing program, and pursues eco-industrial design and operations. The financial bottom line makes it challenging for private developers to achieve these objectives, but the City takes a leadership role through the development of its own industrial lands. As a long-term investor, the City strives towards improving its job-housing balance while seeking to reduce the environmental impacts of its projects.
3. Operate within financial capacities
The Industrial Land Development Program is financially self-sustaining and is not tax-payer funded. The program’s capital expenditures for planning, development and construction of new industrial development projects are recovered by revenues from the sale of serviced industrial lots. These revenues support the acquisition of new raw land holdings, future industrial and business park development, the construction of new affordable housing units and transit oriented development around C-Train stations.
4. Foster a fair transparent business environment
The industrial program and its specific customer-oriented services are clearly defined and well-communicated to stakeholders through this strategy. The method of disposition for each project will identify the approach that best achieves the development and business objectives of the project.
5. Attract the right business
Through the strategy, the City targets businesses that are employee intensive, support Calgary’s economic development and diversification initiatives, require fully serviced lands, and already employ sustainability initiatives in their facilities and their operations (e.g. LEED and green technologies). The City works in collaboration with Calgary Economic Development, the real estate and development industry and other key partners such as the Calgary Regional Partnership.
To meet current and future supply targets, the City of Calgary continually plans and undertakes various development initiatives. There will be numerous development projects completed and new ones started within the time frame of the industrial land strategy.
David Purcell-Chung is the development and planning advisor with the City of Calgary’s Office of Land Servicing & Housing which developed the Corporate Industrial Land Strategy. Visit Calgary.ca/OLSH to see the full version of the strategy.
