Apr 18, 2023

First Building in Xchange Business Park fully leased and ready for occupancy in Q4 2024

Vancouver, B.C. April 18, 2023: QuadReal Property Group and Hungerford Properties are pleased to announce that Building #3 of its 11-building complex has already been fully leased. Building #3 is a build-to-suit for Cintas Corporation, the parent company of Cintas Canada Limited, a U.S.-based Fortune 500 company that provides facility services, uniforms and apparel to companies throughout Metro Vancouver. Cintas Corporation has more than one million customers in the U.S. and Canada, and by expanding to the new building at Xchange Business Park, they will more than double their square footage in Metro Vancouver and be closer to where many of their employees reside. The expansion will lead to the addition of approximately 100 jobs in the Abbotsford area.

“We hope to commence business operations in this new facility in late 2024 and will use the preceding months to bolster our team for the exciting business opportunities that lie ahead,” said Michelle Goret, Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Cintas Corporation. “The Xchange Business Park property offers many benefits to both our employee-partners and our company as a whole. We value its location adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway and within the growing Abbotsford community and its many nearby shops and services. Xchange Business Park is also serviced by public transit, allowing easy access to future and existing employee-partners.”

Overall, vacancy rates for the industrial asset class in Metro Vancouver continue to be low. They were 0.2% as at Q4 2022, with demand outpacing supply in almost all submarkets. The Fraser Valley has seen the bulk of the new supply coming online, and Xchange Business Park is the largest of these developments.

“Industrial was less affected by the pandemic than other commercial real estate asset classes,” said Jeff Rank, Senior Vice President of Leasing for QuadReal Property Group. “In fact, many warehouse users in the region increased their footprint in order to bring their products closer to the end customers, replacing ‘just-in-time’ with ‘just-in-case’ inventories.”

“With the change in interest rates and construction costs, some industrial projects in Metro Vancouver may be put on hold,” said Michael Hungerford, Partner, Hungerford Properties. “So, we are anticipating that vacancy will continue to remain tight in what is already an undersupplied market.”

The 140-acre Xchange Business Park, a joint venture of QuadReal Property Group and Hungerford Properties, will eventually have 1.3 million square feet of purpose-built light industrial space less than an hour’s drive from Vancouver’s downtown core and 20 minutes from two U.S. border crossings. Only six minutes from Abbotsford International Airport and an hour from Vancouver International Airport, its location along the Trans-Canada Highway highlights Abbotsford’s rising prominence as a logistics and warehousing hub for the province. Nearly a third of the city’s population is made up of an industrial workforce, which will benefit from the generation of 1,000 direct jobs at Xchange Business Park.

www.xchangebusinesspark.com