BC Business
Last brewOne of the last vestiges of False Creek’s industrial past has been sold. On Thursday, Molson Coors announced that it had sold the 55-year-old Molson brewery, the largest in Western Canada. The company will continue to lease the site from the new owner until a new brewery is completed, elsewhere in the region, in three to five years. Molson disclosed neither the buyer nor the sale price, only disclosing that the sale would not be finalized until early 2016. The brewer has been looking to unload the property for at least the last few years, as both competition from B.C.’s craft brewers and the value of the plot of land have increased. Last December, Molson announced that it would cease brewing at the Vancouver plant.
The deal also opens up the future of the lands south of False Creek, which have largely escaped the condo high-rise boom of the opposing shore. The land, zoned industrial, was assessed last year at a paltry $18 million. For comparison the smaller armoury lot, with which Molson shares a city block (and which is also zoned industrial) is valued at $58 million. Nonetheless, the city seems keen to keep the land zoned for commercial use, even as the Squamish Nation seeks to develop its 11-acre plot at the foot of the Burrard Street bridge adjacent to the brewery (that land isn’t constrained by the same zoning rules as elsewhere in the area). As the city’s assistant director of planning, Keith Munro, told the Vancouver Sun: “I think it is the city’s intent to keep it as employment-generating land use down there in a great location, close to where people live and close to the city centre.”
Jobs, jobs, jobsB.C. job numbers went up 3 per cent in October, and the federal election might have had something to do with it. According to Statistics Canada data released Friday, B.C. added 23,000 jobs in October, and at least one economist credits the election campaign. In a release to clients, TD economist Leslie Preston writes: “In October, part of this can be chalked up to temporary election-related hiring, but private sector job growth was still strong.” The province’s unemployment rate, however, remains unchanged at 6.3 per cent, in part due to new job seekers entering the market.
Wine regionsB.C.’s wine country is about to get a whole lot larger, thanks to a new report from an industry task group. The group is proposing that Shuswap, the Kootenays, Lillooet-Lytton and the Thompson Valley, join the province’s five existing wine growing regions, which are largely concentrated in the Okanagan. The report, released by the B.C. Wine Appellation Task Group, is also proposing the way that so-called sub-appellation’s are classified, which would allow winemakers to pinpoint the exact origins of their wine.