When it was first planned as an industrial park, there was great demand for lots. As reporter Jorge Barrera discovers, Kam Lake has yet to find its niche. It's part industrial, part residential. Some love it there; others are moving out. It's a development frozen in time.
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 15/00) - In hindsight, Kam Lake Industrial Park should have been a bedroom suburb.
That's according to Larry Babiuk, a Yellowknife city councillor from 1972-79 who added hindsight is infallible and as it turned out, Kam Lake never took a definite shape.
Driving past the big white sign that reads "KAM LAKE INDUSTRIAL PARK" down a road by the same name, the neighbourhood shifts and changes along its winding roads with odd names like Curry and Drybone Drives and Taltheilei Road.
Down south, industrial parks are chiselled into perfect squares. Each lot pruned and coloured to fit into the regiment. Even the vegetation, if there is any, is an extension of that order; the maples have perfectly rounded tops, the evergreens have javelin tips.
Kam Lake Industrial park fits no mold.
It's early November, the rough edges of gutted trucks at the Autowreck and the countless yards littered with the debris of industry are muted beneath a thin layer of new snow. At certain times of the day the barking of dogs rises, a musher getting ready for winter runs. And at all times of the day the muttering of diesel engines, the warning beeps of backing trucks, the grind of saws and other machines ebbs down its twisting gravel streets.
It's an eclectic mix of dog kennels, wrecking yards, trucking companies, the odd house, and small businesses that do everything from printing to designing conductors for power lines.
Work in progress
It's not a brochure community. It doesn't have the polished lines of a Frame Lake South or the Dickens' village quaintness of Old Town. It's a neighbourhood frozen in transition with no solid identity.
Kam Lake has not totally separated itself from its wild surroundings -- the twisting trees, the rocks, the lake. Kam Lake is more a part of its surroundings than the other way around.
Almost 20 years after it was first zoned an industrial site, Kam Lake has yet to become anything more than a work in progress.
Babiuk was a city councillor under the mayorship of Fred Henne. Back then the city was on the cusp of a great boom. The military had moved into town and government jobs were falling from the skies. Frame Lake South was in its planning stages and the city needed an industrial site. So the city hired the consulting company McCally and Associates out of Edmonton to find a good place for industrial development and they pointed to the Kam Lake region.
"The recommendation from the city planners passed unanimously through council," says Babiuk.
Capital Transit Mix was the first to move there from downtown. The next outfit to develop was the auto-wreckers and the development began.
Babiuk says none of the lots were serviced in order to keep prices down and attract buyers.
To this day none of the buildings in Kam Lake have city plumbing or water lines.
During Kam Lake's beginning, the city couldn't keep up with the demand for lots.
The only way the city could distribute land fairly was through raffles.
The city would develop a number of lots and developers would submit proposals. Their names were be put in a box or a hat for a raffle.
The first name drawn would get first crack at the developed lots and so on down the line until all the lots were taken.
"There was box stuffing," said Babiuk. "Sometimes developers would get their friends to submit proposals and if they won they'd just transfer ownership of the lots."
Those days are long past: now the city is sitting on lots and the demand has dropped. Businesses are starting to move out of Kam Lake and migrating to Old Airport Road.
Bill Aho, owner of Central Mechanical, recently moved his outfit out to Old Airport Road.
He says his business was expanding and his Kam Lake location wasn't suitable any more.
"We were broadening our basis, the structure turned more commercial," says Aho, adding, "We moved to a retail front (because) there is no drive-by traffic in Kam Lake. Zero."
It was 12 years ago when Aho won his lot through the raffle.
He says at the time it was a good investment because the zoning allowed both residential and industrial development.
"That way you wouldn't have to keep separate places," says Aho. "It kept costs down."
There was talk at the time of connecting Kam Lake to the highway, but it remained talk and that has caused business owners like Aho to move out.
"The city has never really taken that industrial property to further development," says Aho, noting the city should push for more development at Kam Lake.
He says that things like government offices and trucking outfits should be encouraged to set up in Kam Lake.
Aho says with the coupling of a link to the highway and commercial outlets Kam Lake could become an industrial centre.
"There was no real long term-plan," says Aho.
Frank Kelly, who co-owns K & D Kennels and also won his parcel through the raffle 12 years ago, says Kam Lake's terrain is unsuitable for commercial development.
"The properties here are just rock piles and swamps," says Kelly.
He also says there are too many rules in Kam Lake and it hurts the little businesses.
"You can't set up a little shop here and a home any more," said Kelly. "There are too many regulations and the small guy can't do it."
He does say he's happy with his location, on the edge of Kam Lake, tucked away in a corner just off Curry Drive.
"It's been good," he said.
Not everyone believes that Kam Lake is slowly going down for the count.
Wells Marshall, owner of Artisan, a printing company, says that Kam Lake is perfectly suited for his business.
"As a manufacturer I don't have to worry about the commercial part," he says.
"And the costs here are a lot lower than if I set up downtown."
He doesn't think the gradual exodus of business is a trend.
"It's not booming, but it could be growing or at least staying the same," says Marshall.
He says that people's perception of a dying Kam Lake is only the result of a contrast with an expanding Old Airport Road.
"Old Airport Road can only expand so much," he says, adding, that connecting Kam Lake to the highway would be a good thing.
Isolation is a good thing
Petra Perrino has lived in Kam Lake for eight years and on Taltheilei St. for two years. She's a dog musher and she loves living there.
"You don't have a lot of neighbours out here," says Perrino, "and all around you is bush."
"It's great," she says. "I know others who have neighbours they don't like but we don't."
Perrino could have had neighbours at one time, before development.
Babiuk says that if an industrial site was zoned today it would probably sit beyond the airport.
"But that's hindsight," he adds.
Back then, Henne wanted development to revolve around the downtown core and beyond the airport was out of the question.
