Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Sep 19/01) - Despite a Yellowknife housing shortage and a banner home sales year, industrial property sales in the Kam Lake area are moving at a snail's pace.
 Willy Chidowe |
"Part of the reason is access," he said. "The city has been talking about opening up the road. There is a road but it is blocked off now."
The city has been looking at building an access road around the airport to the Kam Lake industrial park. Chidowe is convinced that if that access was available then business would be more eager to move in.
"In 1999 the city completed a feasibility study for access to the Kam Lake industrial park," said Yellowknife works engineer Norman Kyle.
The cost of an access road totalled about $3 million. The study showed the costs would be feasible but came out to "more than the paving budget for this year for the City of Yellowknife," he said.
Lots in the Kam Lake area range in price from $40,000 to $70,000 for a large 113-foot by 239-foot lot.
"The number of transactions is less than the number in other areas," said Yellowknife Appraisal Services and Consulting's John Soderberg.
"There has not been a flurry of sales in Kam Lake. There is still a lot more for sale there than has moved."
A lack of residential property and a zero-vacancy rate has been the target of many reports linked to a labour shortage in the city.
People have been turning down employment because there is no place for them to live.
Real estate has moved quickly this year and vendors have been seeing close to their asking price.
"There has to be a slow down because there isn't a continuing supply and it's coming fairly close to that now," said Soderberg. "Kam Lake was never intended to be a residential development."
There have been only about half a dozen real estate transactions in the Kam Lake area this year. But lots typically thought of as industrial have been considered for housing development in other areas of the city.
"Lately there has been a flurry of activity in the downtown core," said Soderberg.
Many of those lots are zoned for commercial use as well as residential, he said.
"It's meant that houses have sold in the downtown area where they might not have last year," he said.
Residential housing prices have increased six per cent since the beginning of the year.
