Q&A With Colliers' Kirk Kuester On Bulking Up Its Kelowna Operation

Colliers International just added four brokers to its team in Kelowna, an emerging tech hub that'll need 3M SF of additional commercial space by 2030 to absorb projected growth. Executive managing director Kirk Kuester tells us more.

Here are the new recruits for Colliers' Kelowna squad: Peter Taillon; Jason Wills; Jason's dad, and new VP and managing broker Murray Wills; and Murray's other son, Chris Wills. 

Bisnow: Why did Colliers decide it needed to expand its force in Kelowna?

Kirk Kuester: Kelowna and the Central Okanagan is an amazing market that not many people understand in terms of its potential and the growth happening there. Most of us go up and spend a week visiting wineries and hanging out on the lake. But when you actually get into the marketplace, you see there’s an amazing amount of growth occurring there. The population in the Central Okanagan has doubled over the last 25 years. Stats Canada named Kelowna Canada’s fastest-growing city in 2015. And the amount of growth from an economic perspective is inspiring. So we want to be aligned around a big growth story. 

The tech sector there is really taking off (tech business has grown 13% since 2010), and Kelowna’s attracting companies because of where it is and what it offers, which is stable geology. As we move more into a paperless economy, and cloud storage becomes more prevalent, the ability to store and manage data safely and securely becomes really important. So firms are finding Kelowna attractive because of its geology: it’s not in any kind of fault area, so it’s safe from earthquakes; it’s got predictable climate, lots of water, hydro power and a strong workforce. And of course, the amazing lifestyle.

Kirk Kuester, Colliers International’s Vancouver-based executive managing director, is overseeing the Kelowna operation transformation.

Bisnow: All that growth means the city will need a lot more commercial space. How does that shape what you’re aiming to do there?

Kirk: By 2030 Kelowna’s population will grow from 120,000 to 160,000, and they’ll require 20,000 more housing units, 3M SF of additional commercial space and 5M SF of additional industrial space, and all the resulting land needs to be brought into circulation. It’s a big challenge as Kelowna is a very land-constrained market—it’s in a valley, and protected significantly by the ALR. So a lot of development and growth will occur like it does in Vancouver: through redevelopment of existing buildings and sites and creating higher density. Kelowna suffers from urban sprawl. To create space, they’ll have to come back into core areas and redevelop where they can.

At Colliers we want to advance our business in order to support those needs. Kelowna is a smaller market and our professionals have been somewhat general in their approach to business. We’ve found over the years—and Vancouver is a prime example—that to grow market share and become more relevant and compelling to clients you need to develop specializations. In Vancouver, we have people focused on the legal industry, logistics, digital media and tech. And that’s the next phase for us in Kelowna, to provide the support and training to make sure we’re better aligned with the various sectors of the economy there.

Above is Shadow Ridge Golf Course in Kelowna. The Colliers team brokered the sale of the site to the city, for future airport expansion.

Bisnow: The addition of four new brokers in Kelowna builds on Colliers International’s 2014 acquisition of Centre Group Commercial Realty. What’s the strategic aim here?

Kirk: Until 2014, Centre Group—which includes both the Kelowna and Kamloops businesses—operated as an affiliate of ours; it was owned by Perry Freeman and we had a licensing arrangement. We agreed it was time to transform that arrangement, for us to acquire the business 100% and roll it into the Colliers corporate platform. It is our objective to create one consistent operating platform within the province, because there’s a lot of business that just flows from market to market and we want to be consistent in how we service our clients and support our professionals (with technology and property marketing resources). So that’s the big driver for us: consistency and alignment. 

With an affiliate, we were constricted. They were a partner office, so we weren’t able to drive the same resources and extend the platform into that market as consistently as we do, say, in Victoria or Vancouver, which are both corporate offices (others are in Surrey and Nanaimo) where both our advisors and their clients are able to enjoy all of Colliers’ resources. So we were able to bring on Murray Wills and his two sons and Peter Taillon as as a result of the DTZ transition. They were essentially orphaned in Kelowna and looking for a new platform to become associated with. And we’d had a few people leave over the course of last year. So everything lined up perfectly.