Sea Island is evolving into a bustling mini-city thanks to several mega-developments and the global trend of companies promising speedier deliveries to customers and requiring the same from suppliers.
Vancouver International Airport Authority (YVR) executives are mulling four bids from architects to provide a vision for a business park with one million square feet of space on the northeast edge of Sea Island. They plan to announce the winning architectural firm this fall. YVR would then work with architects to develop a master plan for the park and determine whether to develop it alone or to take on a partner.
"We see this as an opportunity for YVR to take a more active role in the development," YVR senior vice-president of business development Tony Gugliotta told Business in Vancouver. "There's an opportunity for YVR to be more involved and partner up with people as opposed to just leasing the land."
YVR last year released preliminary guidance for architects that described the future 32-acre Sea Island Business Park south of the Templeton Canada Line station as:
•costing about $250 million to build;
•containing 800,000 square feet of office space; and
•including 250 hotel rooms on 32 acres south of the Templeton Canada Line station.
The business park will be south of a 2,500-space park-and-ride facility that was built two years ago for airport employees and be on land that YVR leases from the federal government.
To the west of the business park will be the 700,000-square-foot mail-processing plant that Canada Post plans to occupy starting in 2014. (See sidebar.)
The business park will also be north of a 340,000-square-foot outlet mall that YVR and partner McArthurGlen Group are building on a 30-acre site, now being cleared, in the island's southeast corner.
"Vancouver's Sea Island is an emerging aerotropolis," said John Kasarda, who is a business professor at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flager Business School.
Kasarda has written nine books on airport cities, aviation and infrastructure and is known for exploring the evolution of what he calls the "aerotropolis."
He also advised YVR's board of directors earlier this year.
"Canada Post's facility will drive a lot of time-critical product movement and perhaps even high-value manufacturing to the area," Kasarda told BIV.
"Obviously there will be the customs brokers, freight forwarders and third-party logistics providers – but I'm talking about something well beyond that. There will be people who process, move and sometimes assemble microelectronics, pharmaceutical products, medical instruments, digitized auto parts, aerospace components and high-value perishables."
Gary Collins, president of online eyewear-seller Coastal Contacts, told BIV that if his company were to open a U.S. manufacturing facility, it would likely be near Memphis International Airport because that's where FedEx has its main sorting facility.
Collins' e-commerce enterprise is the kind of new economy manufacturer that Kasarda believes will want to locate in the future Sea Island Business Park.
