Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Fairview Port becoming an economic engine, for Prince George

While much is made of the impact of the container port on Prince Rupert’s speculative residential real estate market, 8 hours east it seems is where some of the real and tangible action is taking place.

Industrial lands around the Prince George airport are being snapped up, flipped and sold again at a record clip as developers there realize that Prince George may become a major shipment point fed by the Prince Rupert port.

CN has already announced plans for an inland container port for the city and the Prince George Airport Authority is making its plans to capitalize on those daily container trains roaring out of Rupert for points east.

The Airport has already announced plans to spend 33 million dollars in order to increase the length of its runway from 7400 feet to 11,400 feet which will allow it to receive the largest of cargo and passenger aircraft.

With that expansion, industrial park development and the jobs that go with it are now on the front burner in Prince George, which has 318.5 acres ready to be developed around the airport which is expected to bring in some 60 million dollars in private investment development. All part of the city’s plan to become the freight movement hub for northern BC.

The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business has an in depth look at how regional airports around the province are starting to re-invent themselves to take advantage of opportunities that are arriving now or on the horizon.

The portion of that report dealing with the plans of Prince George is provided below:

"Meanwhile, the Prince George Airport Authority is spending $33-million to extend its main runway to 11,400 feet, from 7,400, to accommodate large passenger and cargo jets.
Prince George, which has 318.5 acres available for development, anticipates attracting up to $60-million in private investment with the runway expansion, scheduled to be completed in 2009.

Most of the available land within five kilometres of the airport has changed hands in the past year, added airport authority chairman Jim Blake, a sign of the interest that the airport authority's plans are stimulating in commercial development circles.

Mr. Blake said Canadian National Railway Co.'s plans for a $20-million transload facility in Prince George with an 84,000-square-foot warehouse and 10 acres of outside storage also bodes well for development opportunities at and around the airport. While CN's facility will focus on natural resources exports, he said it could help the Prince George airport achieve its goal of becoming an air freight hub for imported goods, too.

"Goods can be shipped through Rupert and then come to Prince George and then be dispersed by air to various locations so that the major retailers aren't holding on to inventory," he explained. "That's looking a little further down the road, but it's certainly a very distinct possibility."

Prince George has surely found a potential niche for itself with the containerization of the Fairview port, with those trains loading their containers on site and leaving on the main line, the normal business of a container port is about to see a major shift.

Normally, container ports feature a huge holding area in the port city that they service creating a number of direct jobs and secondary jobs in that location, that may not necessarily be the case here. While we will benefit from the direct jobs at Fairview itself, those secondary jobs that the ports in Vancouver, Delta and Halifax on the east coast generate won’t necessarily be found here.

With the trains loading up on almost a just in time delivery schedule, many of those jobs of storing, moving, stuffing and redirecting the containers will be found somewhere else, whether it be Edmonton, Chicago or Memphis. At least credit Prince George for acting fast and taking the steps to try and make sure that they are one of those locations, if even on in a smaller scale.

They have seen the transportation changes coming and are actively courting those developers that will take advantage of the port in Prince Rupert, providing jobs and opportunities for Prince George.

Hopefully, Prince Rupert residents will soon hear some plans about potential industrial development here. An indication from local officials, as to how we may be able to share in the expected win fall of jobs that seem to be on the horizon in other locations.

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