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Small businesses have faced insurmountable challenges in the last three years, from pandemic restrictions to labor shortages. Growing businesses that rely on e-commerce or order fulfillment and shipping face an additional challenge: finding warehouse space.
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According to real estate firm CBRE Ltd., Ottawa’s industrial vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2022 stood at 1.2 percent. This rate is still at an all-time low for the Ottawa market and is expected to decline as activity is anticipated to increase throughout the year. As Ottawa continues to increase its position as a distribution hub, these fees are likely to continue to pose challenges for business owners.
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“The pipeline in 2022 will provide limited relief to the market as most of the space under construction has been previously leased or is currently on offer,” the CBRE report noted.
In my work with local entrepreneurs, I have learned that some are at their peak and not growing as fast as they could due to lack of space. Others have come up with creative, temporary solutions that involve renting multiple mini-storage facilities to meet demand, adding to the logistical challenges in running their businesses.
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Some are looking to move all of their businesses to other regions of the country where they can find the space they desperately need. Ultimately, a customer was looking to establish a manufacturing facility in Ottawa, but decided on Edmonton, AB, as he found that supply and support would be more favorable to his business.
Let’s face it: Ottawa is geographically the perfect place to become a distribution center due to its proximity to the border and other big cities like Toronto and Montreal. However, a number of factors – excessive and unusable NCC land, regulatory and logistical hurdles that developers must resolve to get projects off the ground, and a notable lack of innovative design on the part of developers – make it a perfect storm for the local industry look elsewhere to settle. upstairs from the store.
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Ottawa’s industrial business community needs solutions fast. If we want Ottawa to be a best-in-class manufacturing and distribution city, we can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results.
This is a great opportunity to create a shared storage space, similar to the co-working spaces that are popping up everywhere. It’s also an opportunity for developers to come up with creative and innovative design plans to offer more space, perhaps through stackable storage.
Ultimately, this is a challenge for local politicians and stakeholders to take on and figure out together how they can retain and attract innovative Canadian businesses that want to make Ottawa their home.
It’s time to show more ingenuity, support, and consideration for our growing local businesses than was shown to a single American giant: Amazon.
Karla Briones is a local immigrant entrepreneur and owner of Global Pet Foods Kanata & Hintonburg; Freshii Westboro; founder of the Academy of Immigrants in Business Development; and an independent business consultant. The opinions here are hers. Her column appears every two weeks.
