I expect that if any tourist headed to Victoria, was first dropped off at the intersection of Bay Street and Bridge Street, they would be aghast and wonder how anyone could think Victoria was a beautiful world class destination. Personally, I love walking along Bay Street, all of the loud sounds of machinery, a fine dust in the air and massive silos and conveyor belts, all sitting just a skip from the city centre. Some of my favourite views of downtown can be found along the stretch from Skinner Street in Vic West to Government Street along Bay. I do get that I might not have the most common perspective on this landscape. I have heard many times that we should be looking to move industrial uses outside of the downtown area in favour of more residential and commercial uses. There is merit to the idea, here we have beautiful waterfront land that is close to downtown, these spaces could easily be expensive condos instead of cement factories or shipyards. That said, to make that change there would be a significant cost and I think we would be losing one of the key benefits we have in Victoria, something that is becoming more and more unique in urban environments. Victoria’s future success may actually hinge on the fact that we have kept a large amount of industrial space close to the core.

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It is pretty clear that the current economy of Victoria is not underpinned by industry, however, it has not always been that way. For decades Victoria had a significant industrial economy, mostly centred around the lumber industry. There was a significant amount of shipbuilding and repair taking place in Victoria and due to our place on the coast a sizable amount of fish processing. As the city moved into the latter half of the 20th century, most aspects of this industrial past were removed in favour of focusing on the tourism and services industry. Still, any large city has to have at least some industrial space to provide services to the residents and businesses. Mostly due to the localized nature of the tourist industry and where the offices and government buildings are located, a large part of Victoria’s industrial space close to downtown has remained relatively untouched. There are pockets of industrial lands in James Bay and North Park, but the bulk of them sit astride the harbour north of the Johnson Street bridge and then carry up along the Douglas Street spine towards Uptown. What many people may not realise, as I have alluded to, is how rare it is in a city of Victoria’s size to have maintained this land for industrial uses so close to downtown.

There are two significant reasons why this land is so valuable to have close to the centre of the city. The first reason is that having this space near to where the largest amount of people live and work means that the services that these businesses supply are easily accessible. This means a lower cost for the businesses in providing that service and hopefully a lower cost for the people buying that service. It also means a lower carbon footprint for these businesses, especially those that rely on a significant amount of large trucks to deliver their goods and maintain the business. The second reason is one that I have touched on before, perhaps most in-depth in my series in 2023 on reviving downtown Victoria following the “Work from Home” shift. You can read that series here starting with the first post. One of the real benefits of having this space so close to downtown is that it actually becomes an employment focus for downtown and as our office population has dwindled, having thousands of people continuing to work at these industrial sites means potential customers for all of the surrounding businesses. As I say in the series I just alluded to, despite the feeling that that there is a large amount of people moving into residences around downtown, we would need to likely build 10x more to make up for the loss of workers we have seen since the pandemic. People can focus on the safety aspect of downtown as to why we see businesses closing, but it is the loss of customers that has been the largest contributing factor in my opinion. It is also likely the desertion of office workers that has led to greater safety issues downtown due to the quieter streets at all times of the day.

Despite the lack of people working downtown, the city is growing at an incredible pace, at least as by Victoria standards. The current metro population of the city is around 402k and between four and five thousand people move here every year. The key issue facing the city outside of the toxic drug supply is housing. We have seen more projects approved at higher heights, greater density and in more places than we have in the entire time I have lived in the city and there are no signs of this letting up. At the same time we are seeing pushback from established neighbourhoods on the encroachment of higher density housing. An easy place to push development is into spaces occupied by what is deemed unwanted uses, such as industrial and light industrial land. As it stands now there is a fairly visual border for downtown Victoria at its north end along Chatham / Caledonia, but that is changing. Recently, and as highlighted on this blog, there are plans to redevelop the lot at Caledonia and Douglas. We are also seeing a large residential project a few blocks to the north at Douglas and Hillside. And perhaps the most visual encroachment of residential development into former industrial lands is Dockside Green in Vic West which is right next to the Point Hope Shipyard. While I personally think that there can be significant benefits from mixing some residential and industrial, that view is not widely shared.

For many years I lived in North Park and the southern portion of that neighbourhood has an excellent mix of light industrial and residential. It creates the unique live / work feel of the area with places like Canadian Linen, Orca Books and Hazpro Environmental intermingled with apartment buildings and houses. That said, I always feel like the industrial uses are looked upon as a problem in the neighbourhood rather than the wonderful centres of employment that they are. There are louder conflicts across the city starting to occur. In Dockside Green, while new residents, are required to sign a form saying that they understand that they are moving into a residence that is alongside an industrial space that makes significant noise, there are still complaints about the shipyard to the City on a regular basis. To the north, the excellent city resource of Schnitzer Steel, which recycles a tremendous amount of material, is constantly getting noise complaints from the nearby Selkirk and Railyard developments. Some uses just don’t mix well.

One example of both hope and concern is the new Capital Iron project from Reliance Properties. On the positive side the project is adding a significant amount of harbourside light industrial (Of which Finest at Sea of James Bay has shown interest which makes you wonder what will happen to their current site…) which is badly needed. On the opposite side there were two pieces that were significantly concerning, one is that the project will include a large amount of residential looking over the harbour, which makes sense from a financial perspective for the developer, but how long will those residents truly put up with a fish plant right below them. Second, was City Council which insisted on including a right of way for a public walkway in front of the industrial space in case the space didn’t work. Which I think shows both Council’s negative perspective on industrial lands and also a clear lack of understanding on the current need for industrial land in Victoria. As it is now, Victoria has some of the highest lease rates for industrial space and some of the lowest vacancy rates. If you thought our 1.6% rental vacancy rate was bad, imagine what the cost of rentals would be if the vacancy rate was the 0.1% that the industrial sector sees in our city. The final form of the Capital Iron project has not been released since the last council meeting where the city approved the project in principle, but asked for significant changes, so I will wait and see what the final proposal looks like.

So what would I want to see? I think that we should first start to talk about industrial land more in this city. I would hope that those conversations would identify the huge positive impacts of these workplaces on our city, and would lead to looking for opportunities such the Capital Iron project where we could expand it. I also think that as our residential footprint expands, we need to ensure that we are not doing that at the expense of our current industrial base. We should I think be taking stock of the current industrial land base in the region and knowing the low vacancy rate, identify and plan to protect the current lands; and then look at ways that the land base can be expanded upon. One option that I have mentioned previously is that at least with certain light industrial uses we should be looking to our growing vacancy of office buildings and see if we can have it turned over to light industrial. Certain uses like print shops, textiles or some CNC machines are not going to create huge problems if they sit within our Central Business District. No matter what, we need to start paying attention to Victoria’s industrial workspaces and ensuring that they are a clear part of the City’s vision into the future. What do you think? What can we do to protect our industrial lands? Or if you think it should all be moved out to the Westshore, let me why in the comments!