The first few shovels were turned Wednesday of what will be a huge amount of dirt at the site of a future industrial park in the Iron Mask area in southwest Kamloops.
The 190-acre parcel of land and former mine site off Highway 5 between Sugarloaf Road and Bowers Place is being converted into a light industrial park by Comet Industries.
Company president Mike O’Reilly said after more than a decade in development crews will now spend the next year and a half flattening the site so lots can be sold.
“There’s a lot of earth and rock that we have to move and that’ll take close to about a year and a half to get the site even prepared, but starting this year and hopefully we’ll have lots ready for fall of [20]25,” O’Reilly said.
Comet has tapped Brendan Shaw of Brendan Shaw Real Estate and Blake Gozda of Cushman & Wakefield as the sales team for the lots.
O’Reilly, who is also a city councillor, said the project will be revolutionary for Kamloops by providing much needed light industrial commercial space in the city.
“The need is here, there are a significant amount of Kamloops companies that took a chance to open a business 20, 30, 40 years ago, that are looking to grow and expand and they can’t,” O’Reilly said.
“They can’t find a location in Kamloops to grow — this will give them that avenue.”
Having received a rezoning permit from future development and agriculture to light industrial last year, and after three years of geotechnical studies, as well as design work this past year, O’Reilly said Comet is now ready to complete earthworks needed to prepare the fee-simple lots for sale.
“It is a substantial amount of earthworks that needs to be done just by the very nature and topography of the site,” he said.
”There’s a lot of highs and a lot of lows and you need to get rid of the highs and fill in the lows and that’s the situation we’re in right now.”
He said of the 190-acres Iron Mask will have about 140 acres worth of lots for sale to light industrial users. He said the biggest demand he's seen is coming from light manufacturing and warehousing and distribution.
In addition to the groundbreaking, Comet has also launched a survey to gather input from future potential tenants for feedback that will help the company "fine-tune" the development to meet the precise needs of businesses the industrial park aims to attract, a press release from the company stated.
