Sun shines on warehouse
Nearly 60 years after it went up, the sun is finally shining again on a long-dormant Penticton warehouse where the new owners are trying to shake up the city’s industrial development scene.
Okanagan-based SNFLWR Investment Corporation, which formed earlier this year, is already hard at work transforming its first acquisition: a 26,000-square-foot warehouse on the busy corner of Government Street and Dawson Avenue in the heart of Penticton’s industrial area.
“As cliché as it sounds, it has good bones,” said Jeremy Dawn, the CEO of SNFLWR, in an interview Thursday at the site.
The bones at 2324 Government St. include 22foot ceiling clearance and 16-foot bay doors in the main building, plus ample space outside for new construction.
SNLWR purchased the site -- which was on the market for years after its last tenant, a cardboard company, closed its doors -- earlier this month for $4.35 million and plans to invest another $4.5 million in the redevelopment, according to Dawn.
The building’s first tenant is Granite Rocks, a Lethbridge-based countertop manufacturer that’s expanding into the Okanagan.
Granite Rocks will occupy 13,000 square feet, and Dawn hopes to find another anchor tenant to take the other half of the warehouse, which is getting a new façade, storefront-type improvements and other upgrades.
Plans are also afoot to add another 16,000 square feet of space in three new buildings on the site as needed to build a collection of complementary businesses.
“Their success is our success,” said Dawn. “The last thing I want is a tenant coming in and they go dark.”
Dawn, a former vice-president of acquisitions for Kelowna-based Mission Group, said he’s bullish on industrial space, despite what seems to be a surplus of it in Penticton, where a 10-acre industrial parcel near the hospital was rezoned earlier this year for housing.
“We haven’t even started marketing and this week alone I think we had a dozen people call… so there is demand and I think it’s in that sub-15,000square-feet type of (product),” he explained.
“And a lot of people who have space now, they’re in really old buildings with low ceiling height, or they’re in the back of the retail store, where it’s not ideal to be trying to grow a business.”
Dawn said his team consists of other development professionals and investors with whom he’s connected over his own career in the business.
“I’ve been in development and real estate consulting my whole life, just kind of trying to change the narrative of developers and the development community, and trying to demystify and simplify it,” he said.
“We’re kind of tired of dealing with egos of our industry…. We want to do good things and have fun while we do it and it’s been a very warm welcome.
“And it feels like we’re onto something with good timing to be starting something new in the market, where we don’t have the past baggage from the past couple of years where you may have gotten burned by rising costs.”
SNFLWR, which has a handful of other properties around the region and also plans to go big on rental housing, is also interested in development opportunities. For more information about SNFLWR projects, visit snflwrcorporation.com or call Dawn directly at 250-215-5515.
The number of schools in Summerland may be dropping from three to four -- supposedly due to low enrolment, but a local accountant says Okanagan Skaha School District 67’s math doesn’t add up.
Byron Dolan is a Summerlander with three children in public school. Crunching numbers is what he does, so when it was announced that Giant’s Head Elementary might be getting shuttered, he wanted to gain a thorough understanding of the situation.
“I supported the board during the 2016 closures, I realize tough decisions have to be made sometimes,” he said.
This year’s potential closures are called “The Long Range Facilities Plan” on the District’s website. It’s a page full of information, the timeline of events, and 11 PDFs about how it will look if Giant’s Head, as well as two other schools in Penticton, get closed. It proposes eliminating middle schools throughout the District and redistributing students to elementary and high schools. So there would be two levels of school (K-Grade 7 and Grade 8 to 12) instead of three (K-Grade 5, Grade 6 and 7, and Grade 8 to 12).
But after reading through the District’s rigorous plan, Dolan doesn’t feel persuaded that Summerland’s middle school should close.
He’s got questions.
If the middle schools do close, Dolan wants to know the short-term costs -- how much it will cost to shutter them?
In the medium term, the District claims there will be an operational savings of $1.5 million to $2 million annually. The District also expects to save $15-$20 million through deferred maintenance costs. But he says the District’s assertions are too broad and generic and that there’s no way to check their work.
In the long term, the numbers may show that enrolment numbers are declining across the District, and that trend is projected to continue. But Penticton accounts for most of those numbers -- zooming in on Summerland shows that its student population increased by 4% between 2016 and 2022 and is expected to grow by 8% from 2023 to 2032.
The District aims to keep its schools operating at 95% capacity, but as of December 2023, Penticton classrooms were 82% full while Summerland’s were just 69%.
But regardless of Summerland’s low operating capacity, Dolan considers the 95% target to be arbitrary -- he wants to know the rationale behind it. And he doesn’t see how it’s a good idea to close a school when enrolment is going up. If any of the remaining schools reach capacity, he doubts the cash-strapped District will be able to afford to reopen Giant’s Head or build a new school, and worries that it won’t be long before school lawns are sprinkled with more portables.
James Palanio, chairman of SD67, was unable to respond to questions while faculty is on spring break. But some of these issues were addressed in a District FAQ from last month. One question asks why Summerland’s most populated school -- Giant’s Head -- is on the chopping block if closures are about addressing low enrolment.
“There is no room for any growth at either Trout Creek or Giants Head as both schools are full,” according to the FAQ. “Moving the Giants Head student population to the middle school as a K-6 school allows the population access to a newer school with room to grow.”
If nothing changes, the District says more portables will likely be needed at Giant’s Head, while the middle and high schools are forecast to be just over half full. However it admits that two portables will be needed at Trout Creek under the new arrangement.
The 60-day consultation period, which ends on April 5, has been patchy -- the District’s website was brought down by a cyber attack in March, and then plans have been sitting idle for the past two weeks because of March break.
Trustees will cast their votes on April 10. Dolan hopes their decisions are not made in haste.