A Vancouver industrial real estate executive says the BC Liquor Distribution Branch’s new warehouse will be the biggest build-to-suit lease or design-build project of its kind in the region.
“There are big users and then there’s the BC LDB,” Avison Young principal Ryan Kerr told Business in Vancouver. “There is a very short list of options in order to accommodate the scale of a 1 million square foot distribution centre.”
LDB wants to move out of its aging East Vancouver warehouse and into a new facility by September 2019. But first it needs to find a new site and get cabinet approval for a business plan. It went to tender in late February with PartnershipsBC, the government’s privatization and infrastructure middleman, to seek consulting experts. Tendering documents emphasized the tight schedule: LDB wants cabinet to approve the business case by this summer so that it can choose a proponent by April 2017. The next provincial election is May 9, 2017.
Bill Anderson, director of communications for the Small Business and Red Tape Reduction Ministry, told BIV on May 5 that Newmark Knight Frank Devencore was chosen as the land adviser over Cushman and Wakefield and CBRE.
Stantec is the facility consultant adviser; DGBK Architects was the only other firm shortlisted.
LEC was named for the quantity surveyor contract. Turner and Townsend and SSA QS were also shortlisted.
The tendering documents said the government wanted to have the consultants in place in March and April, but it took until May 5 for the ministry to disclose their names to BIV because Anderson said it took that long to finalize contracts. Anderson did not indicate whether the project remains on schedule or whether a new site had been tentatively chosen, as originally planned, by mid-April.
“The proposed LDB Distribution Centre Project will provide a new warehouse and distribution centre with upgraded warehouse systems to increase operational efficiency, improve wholesale customer satisfaction and decrease operating costs,” said the tendering documents. “It is expected that the business plan will also finalize the service delivery model and select the optimal procurement method for the service delivery.”
Kerr said LDB will likely have to work with an existing industrial landowner, such as Onni at Golden Ears Business Park in Pitt Meadows or the Hopewell Development business park in South Surrey. He added that both sites offer access to major transportation routes.
The aging East Broadway warehouse property was sold in August 2014 to the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh first nations and the Aquilini Investment Group for $37 million. The original post-sale plan called for a 2017 move.
An attempt to privatize LDB warehousing and distribution in 2012 was scuttled by the BC Liberal government after BIV reported on leaked documents that showed the leading bidder, Ohio-based Exel Logistics, sought to use its BC Liberal-connected lobbyists to influence the writing of tendering documents. The government admitted that it did not have a business plan to justify the liquor logistics privatization. Instead, it embarked on a series of moves to deregulate liquor sales, marketing, wholesale and retail.
