According to one Grande Prairie City Councillor, the municipality is working on putting incentives in place to encourage the creation of residential properties in the city’s downtown core.
Councillor Wade Pilat explains that the downtown core is seeing a strong mix of tenant businesses and owner businesses that are engaged in the community. However, while there is a strong business community, the downtown area is the least populated per density area in the city when it comes to residential living. He says there are options for smaller-scale apartment buildings in the area that could have between 30 to 100 apartment units.
However, he says, putting on his industry hat, the hurdle with these sorts of projects is that most builders want a “traditional product.”
“When you’re looking at downtown builds, you’re really custom designing for a specific lot, right? So you’re trying to make the best density and the best use of that lot,” Pilat states. “So you’re not able to take your blueprint from [a previous] project over to downtown and make it work all the time.”
He adds that to build downtown, it takes a bit of creativity.
Pilat says if you look at most urban downtown centres, there is a good residential component to them, which Grande Prairie just does not have at this point. However, the buildings that do have apartments above them, he believes, are full.
He explains that seeing more multifamily projects happen in the city is positive, as there is a gap in the rental market right now. According to Pilat, these projects could also help with the need being seen in the city for low-end entry-level housing. However, the region is seeing some good signs when it comes to building.
“We have seen an uptick in that recently, and I think there are three, potentially four large apartment projects that are going on, which will be the first big apartment build of this scale we’ve seen in almost a decade,” Pilat says. “Another encouraging thing, I think, for our region right now is that our house prices have really moved up a lot in the last 12 to 18 months, and I can see a trend of that continuing to happen in the next 12 or 18 months. I know on the affordability side hurts, but, you know, on the other side of it, what we’re seeing is these rents move to a point where the math is starting to look at making sense to want to build a project in Grand Prairie.”
He says with rental rates going up and vacancies staying low, it’s a lot more appealing for industry to start looking at building again in Grand Prairie.
