A surprise was in store at an August, 2018 public Open House designed to show residents and guests progress being made at the Columbia Lake Technology Center – reveal of a larger master plan for roughly 400 acres of land at the former Canfor mill site.
The Plan envisions:
- A water canal that provides a central amenity
- Approx. 1000 new residents at build out (150% of current population)
- A new downtown core
- An employment centre (CLTC) – roughly 75-100% of today’s Canal Flats labour force
- Mixed use commercial-residential approach
- Housing affordability via housing innovation (e.g. work-live, smaller, apartment/condo, etc.)
- Hotel accommodation
The aim is to build an affordable mountain modern community that is unique among mountain communities….a community that re-imagines the types of jobs generated in rural communities, builds a village atmosphere that people are inspired by, builds affordable, innovative housing attractive to local workers, families, millennials, and footloose entrepreneurs and creators who are important to building a self-sufficient community, all connected by fibre broadband and district heating supplied by the Podtech data centre.
The plan reveal for Kootenay Landing follows announcement of the launch, and first business operations, and the Columbia Lake Technology Center (CLTC) in June 2018 (http://kast.com/canal-flats-welcomes-new-rural-tech-centre/). The CLTC features current operation of BID Group (www.bidco.ca) – North America’s largest fabricator of forestry mill sites, and Podtech – a 30MW provider of cryptocurrency mining and digital process solutions, and a manufacturer of scalable “MegaPod” modular container data centre solutions. Waste heat generating by the Podtech data center is envisioned to be used by 300,000 sq. ft. of greenhouses to be constructed. Eighty jobs are anticipated to be created on site by the end of 2019.
