the street. That building will be mixed-use – the first floor will be commercial, while the other floors will include 112 rental units, with 12 or 13 of those units being townhouses and the rest condos. Once again, all of the residential floors will be delivered to Passive House standards. “Doing things better is one of the fun parts about what we do,” he adds. “With every new project, whether we’re developing for ourselves or working for clients, we’re trying to get a little bit better and a little bit more efficient.” Moving forward, Spire Development will continue to pursue that kind of continuous improvement in every facet of their business. They will also continue to pursue growth in all sectors. When it comes to residential projects, their goal is do more work locally. When it comes to their industrial and office work, they see the most opportunity out of town, where they have been very active in recent years. “We do quite a bit of out of town work,” Pete says. “We recently finished one project in Dawson Creek, another in Edmonton, another in Calgary. We’re working in Squamish right now. We’ve been in Kelowna before. We’re going to continue to look at those outlying markets. We like going to those markets, and we have some key people who are willing to travel for us.” Pete envisions a future where local residential work makes up a third of Spire’s portfolio at any given time, while industrial work and office work – “whichever the market needs from us” – makes up the rest. Lastly, Pete also envisions slow-but-steady growth for the company’s financial division, which does first and second mortgages. They call that division Spire Capital, they launched it last February, and Pete says “we’re finding that it really complements our business.” “We’re using our knowledge of construction and development to analyze these deals and decide whether we want to lend money on them or raise money from investors,” Pete explains. “It’s been a really interesting bolt-on piece for the business.” MARCH 2023
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