The first steps towards creating a new 190-acre industrial park in Kamloops have begun with the filing of a re-zoning application.

Comet Industries is hoping to create the Iron Mask Industrial Park at the site of the former Iron Mask mine between Sugarloaf Road and Bowers Place, near where the Coquihalla Highway and Trans-Canada Highway meet.

President and CEO, Mike O’Reilly – a Kamloops City Councillor – says his company has worked on this proposal since 2020.

“You know obviously going through all the process of trying to see what we can do with our land, what the City would want to see up there, what the market is demanding and trying to have all of that aligned,” he said, on NL Newsday.

O’Reilly expects there to be about 150 sellable acres of land available after developers take grades and roads into consideration.

“Distribution, warehousing…if you almost vision a Laval and Dalhousie Crescent type set up,” he said. “The majority of the property is going to be around two acres. They are small places for warehousing but a lot of storage area as well out back for a lot of these companies which need that yard space.”

In Oct. 2021, City Council voted to redesignate the Pineview property from “Future Development Area” to “Light Industrial” in the official community plan, clearing the way for an expansion of industrial land in Kamloops.

O’Reilly, who’s been recusing himself from any discussions on industrial park developments at City Council, anticipates this proposal to go to a public hearing next year, with lots ready for lease or sale by 2024.

“The demand for light industrial land in Kamloops is very high with very little supply of industrial land for sale or lease,” O’Reilly added, noting the entire project is valued at $150-million.

“We’ve heard from new companies that are wanting to move to Kamloops from the Lower Mainland, Calgary, Kelowna area, but also local Kamloops companies that want to expand and they can’t because there is nowhere else for them to go.”

Comet Industries is currently in the process of a stage 2 environmental site investigation with the expectation that some localized environmental remediation will be needed before getting a certificate of compliance from the BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

O’Reilly also says this will be the first light industrial park in Kamloops in 25 years.