A Nakusp wood home manufacturer says the lack of suitable land for companies like his is costing the town jobs and tax revenue.
Dave Madden says he’s been looking for 13 years for light industrial land for his sawmill. He also says he knows other manufacturers who also want to move to Nakusp, but can’t find the land they need.
“If people are looking at starting up a business, the first thing they are going to look for is a place to do it,” says Madden, who owns Madden Timber Construction. “And if they can’t find a place to do it, they’ll find somewhere else.”
Madden Timber Construction builds prefabricated homes, and component parts they sell to other manufacturers. They employ 8-12 people during the course of the year. He says he could hire five more people tomorrow if he had the land to consolidate his operations.
Madden currently uses three separate properties for his business, and commutes 30 kilometres between his work sites. He owns one of the properties and rents the others, an arrangement he says doesn’t work well.
“None of those sites are a perfect fit, and it does introduce some logistical challenges to think about expanding or maintaining a stable business,” he says.
Madden is looking for about five acres of land zoned M1, or light industrial. The designation allows activities like an auto body repair, garden supplies, fuel storage, a gas station, animal hospital, or wood manufacturing to take place on the property.
“The only appropriately zoned property which has come up for sale was the Columbia Machinery property, but I don’t think a sawmill in the middle of town would have been appreciated by the neighbors,” says Madden.
Madden says the shortage is ironic, as the town used to have plenty of light industrial land along the shore of Arrow Lake. Once the flooding occurred back in the 1960s, however, that land disappeared and wasn’t replaced.
“Maybe no one thought at the time, if we’re going to flood a bunch of land and businesses, maybe we should make a new space for them,” he says. “Whereas some of the other towns in the area, didn’t have that happen to them. They still have spaces for sawmills and places like that.”
Madden feels industries like his can find it difficult to get support from government.
“There’s a fad for technology-based kinds of businesses. They’re kind of the sexy industries now,” he says. “Maybe the more traditional industries, which have been an anchor for rural BC, they’re taking a bit of a back seat.”
The village, which sets land use zoning, says it can’t do much to help Madden or other light industries looking to set up shop in Nakusp.
“The village doesn’t own a stockpile of land,” says Chief Administration Officer Laurie Taylor. “We have some public works land and the airport, and that’s about it.”
Taylor says some municipalities have access to land they own, or nearby Crown land, and that is often how local governments can help people looking for industrial land. But in the Nakusp area, most land is in use or privately owned.
“If someone was interested in buying a lot, and made a deal with the owner, we could look at rezoning it,” she says. “The village is not against light industrial land. We would welcome business.”
Other groups are beginning to move on the issue as well. The Nakusp and Area Development Board has set the creation of light industrial land as one of its priorities for the year.
Tom Zeleznik is on the village council and is a member of the NADB.
“To me it’s a no-brainer, you find the land, hire more people and keep expanding, and that way you attract more businesses,” he says.
Zeleznik unfolds a map showing the zoning designations of all the property in town. Light industrial, coloured light pink, is only in a few scattered spots, mostly up the Hot Springs road around the airport. He notes a few years ago there was an attempt to create a business park south of town, but it got complicated by the land claims process.
“We did look up by Box Lake, but the Ktunaxa First Nations have the land and it’s tied up, we don’t know where that’s going to go yet,” he says. “We have to find space in the outskirts of town, you can’t have it near residential properties.
He admits it’ll be hard finding new suitable property to zone for businesses like Madden’s, though he’s hopeful the NADB can help get action on the problem.
In the meantime, Madden is getting more frustrated. He’s bullish on Nakusp, and wants to see it succeed like other municipalities.
“If you start looking at places like Salmon Arm, Golden, and Invermere, they’ve put in business parks in all of those places. They all seem to have businesses that are popping up there,” he says.
“There are a lot of nay-sayers about wood manufacturing based on they don’t think it would work in Nakusp, because we’re remote,” he says. “But my thought on that is, if we can figure out a way to ship raw materials from Nakusp, we can figure out a way to ship manufactured products.”
But time may be running out. Madden has written to the NADB, and indicated that Nakusp stands to lose jobs and business if the issue can’t be solved.
“We have also been actively looking in the New Denver area and would consider moving in that direction if the right land comes available,” he warned. “But [we] prefer to base our business in Nakusp.”
