Astria Properties, a relative newcomer to B.C.’s industrial development scene, has launched sales for a strata project in Langley the company says is tailored for smaller businesses requiring mixed space for micro-fulfillment, light manufacturing and office uses.

Link 200 is located at 56 Avenue and 200 Street in Langley City. The two-building project completes this fall, adding 61,944 square feet of flex industrial space with a total of 16 small-bay light industrial units ranging from 2,864 to 4,045 square feet and two office units located on the third floor of one of the buildings.

Astria, the sister company to Langley-based industrial construction specialist Orion Construction, aims to specialize in industrial developments in B.C. on sites that are four acres or smaller.

David Basche, Astria's president, told RENX the new company is focused on developing “boutique” industrial projects. He said there are many small businesses in the market that want to own their unit while having ample office space in an industrial setting.

“With projects like this, you’re catering to an array of smaller businesses,” Basche said. “Whether they do (light) manufacturing, or . . . small fulfillment into the core market.”

Basche said the small-site specialty also stems from the fact that it’s easier to find a two-acre site than a 20-acre site in the Lower Mainland industrial inventory.

Link 200 is concrete tilt-up construction with grade-level loading. Each unit has three parking stalls with rough-ins for electric vehicle chargers at each stall and select stalls with chargers included.

The warehouse section of the units have 28-foot ceilings with 13-foot ceiling heights under the mezzanines that would typically be used for office space.

The building has 500-pounds-per-square-foot floor load capacity and is zoned for IB-1, allowing the space to be used for light industrial warehousing, indoor recreation facilities, production studios and general office space.

Project developed quicker than most

"Astria has been in existence since 2018, but we launched the business in May last year and really started making a push into the industrial space," Basche said.

"We've acquired projects on (Vancouver) Island and we've acquired projects in Kelowna and we're in the process of acquiring a project in the Township of Langley."

A development of this size and scale that required rezoning could take three years or longer, but Link 200 was arranged and built in just over two years, Cameron Archer, director of sales and marketing with Orion Construction, said.

Archer told RENX streamlined design and consulting work smoothed out many of the typical wrinkles, but efficiency with local government also helped to expedite the process.

"The other big credit that I'll give is to Langley City," Archer said. "They're incredibly pro-development and they're looking at every economic driver very closely.

"They gave this project a lot of attention and they've got a really quick processing timeline as well."

Archer said Astria’s strategy to work so closely with Orion and focus on sub-four-acre sites will also help streamline the development process. "We're not going through and trying to reinvent the wheel on these projects," he said.

“(Orion has) got . . . 2.5 million square feet constructed, and so . . . that’s repeatability, and the consistency with our consultants really put this thing ahead of (the typical) timeline."

Metro Vancouver market sees vacancy inching up

The overall Metro Vancouver industrial vacancy touched one per cent in mid-2023, according to Avison Young's 2023 Q2 industrial market overview.

In Langley, the vacancy at the mid-point of the year was the same, with asking net rents in Q2 hitting $27.10 regionwide, according to the report.

By mid-2023, roughly 1.6 million square feet of strata industrial space was under construction in the Lower Mainland; 74 per cent of that was small-bay product, the report said.

Economic challenges and rising interest rates have taken some steam out of the industrial market, however.

"I think we're just in a period of normalization," Basche said. "The industrial market has experienced tremendous growth over the last three, four years.”

The market is starting to see vacancy creep up a bit. "But we're still well below a balanced market,” Basche said, “and ultimately, there's a significant amount of scarcity.”

Small business users ideal for Link 200

Basche said his team wants to specialize in building industrial space for small businesses given B.C. has among the most small businesses per capita of any province in Canada.

"These industrial small businesses, they want to own their own land, they want to have their own buildings,” he said. “We've had great success developing specialized tailored solutions for these groups.”

The occupants slated to move in thus far include a real estate marketing and sales company, an engineering firm, a physio/gym business, a furniture company and a logistics company.

Astria has sold 70 per cent of the units in Building A and has one unit in Building B under contract, Basche said. Avison Young is the listing agency for the project.

Basche said the team wants to build more projects in the region similar to Link 200 with industrial density on the ground floor and additional uses above “to try to alleviate some of the pressure that the market is facing.”