Port Alberni, British Columbia
A Vancouver Island mill town where the public record is unusually full because the landlord is a federal Crown corporation. The Port Alberni Port Authority publishes a property appraisal naming Port Alberni land sales with prices and dates, and audited statements that record it selling the Clutesi Haven Marina infrastructure to the City for $1,000,000 on 31 December 2025. Domtar's own site names it as the mill at 4000 Stamp Avenue and "the single largest employer in the community"; the City owns the 43-acre Somass sawmill site it bought in 2021; and the former APD sawmill at 2500 1st Avenue sold for $7,300,000 in March 2025.
8 buildings · 8 with an owner established · 19 sources · 6 tier A · 2 tier B · prepared 2026-10-03
Ownership in Port Alberni is public but priced, and the unusual thing here is who the public landowner is. British Columbia's land title register is run by the Land Title and Survey Authority and anyone may search it, but every search is a paid transaction: the LTSA Customer Fee Listing current at 1 April 2026 prices a title search at $11.06. There is no bulk owner product and no price-paid file; the province publishes only monthly counts and aggregate fair market value by municipality. The free half of the system is the Land Owner Transparency Registry — filings required from 30 November 2020, search open since 30 April 2021, the deadline for pre-existing interests 30 November 2022 — which names the individuals behind corporations, trusts and partnerships holding BC land; a search under section 35 of the Land Owner Transparency Act is priced NIL on the same schedule. It is used here to establish which entity holds an asset, never as a source of names to publish. Port Alberni appears on LTSA's Tax Certificates Online table at $105.26. Because the harbour is federal, the Port Alberni Port Authority appears in the Directory of Federal Real Property with ten Crown Owned parcels inside the city, and because it is a port authority under the Canada Marine Act it publishes audited statements and a commissioned land appraisal — which together put real prices and dates on Port Alberni ground that no title search would give you for free. The City's own website, by contrast, is unreachable to automation: portalberni.ca serves a CAPTCHA page, so the City's own financial statements could not be read and its land at cost is not published here.
- bcassessment.ca — “Any commercial use of these data in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, including the use of such data for business, residential address or telephone directory services or any solicitation service is specifically prohibited except with the prior written authority of the owner of the copyright.”
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domtar Port Alberni Mill 4000 Stamp Avenue 330,000 tonnes a year of directory and coated papers |
Industrial | Domtar Corporation Domtar's own location page for the Port Alberni Mill calls it "the single largest employer in the community", states it was "commissioned in 1946" and was "the first British Columbia mill to integrate residuals from sawmills", gives production capacity as "Directory and coated papers: 330,000 tonnes per year", 340 employees, and the address 4000 Stamp Ave. The page's contact email is info@paperexcellence.com, the Paper Excellence group Domtar sits inside. The province's facility inventory separately records mill 487 at 4000 Stamp Ave under the name Paper Excellence Group, status Op, at 131,440 tonnes of pulp and 276,350 tonnes of paper. Major industry on the 2026 city roll is $91,675,600. |
Private company | —A |
| Somass Lands (the former Somass sawmill) 3500 Harbour Road 43 acres plus adjacent parking; 53.902 acres in the five-title sale |
Land | City of Port Alberni The City's own Somass Lands page states "the City of Port Alberni" owns the lands, "purchased the land in 2021", describes a "43-acre waterfront property and adjacent parking lot", and sets out the deal with Matthews West Developments Ltd. — selected December 2023, described there as "a private Canadian development company based in Squamish, BC" — under a master development agreement, a partnering agreement and an option to purchase agreement all signed in April 2025, under which Matthews West "will have the option to purchase the Lands" at a price reflecting reimbursement of the City's costs. The sawmill ceased operations in 2017 and virtually all structures were removed after the sale. |
Government | CAD $5,326,375 2021-08 The Port Authority's commissioned appraisal gives the August 2021 sale of five titles — 3500 Harbour Rd, 5025 Dunbar St and portions of Harbour Rd, 53.902 acres — at $5,326,375, or $2.27 a square foot. The City's own engagement site says it had invested $5.6 million in the purchase and $3.1 million in demolition and remediation as at 31 December 2024. A |
| Former Alberni Pacific Division sawmill 2500 1st Avenue 44.97 acres |
Industrial | Amix Group The Port Authority's July 2025 market rent study records the sale of Lot 1, Plan VIP55507, PID 006-341-837, 2500 1st Avenue, 44.97 acres, zoned M3 Heavy Industrial, for $7,300,000 in March 2025: "This transaction was the former APD sawmill site to the S.W. of Port Alberni. The operations had curtailed in 2022, citing a lack of fibre supply… Amix Group, a marine tug and servicing company were the purchasers… there were no plans to continue sawmill operations." Local reporting records the mayor welcoming "the sale of the APD Sawmill to Amex from Campbell River". The appraisal carries a DRAFT watermark. |
Private company | CAD $7,300,000 2025-03 $3.72 a square foot on 44.97 acres, per the appraisal commissioned by the Port Alberni Port Authority. B |
| Port Alberni Terminals 2750 Harbour Road 7.3942 ha; three deep-sea berths; sheds 1-7 totalling about 61,661 sq ft on the appraisal schedule |
Industrial | Port Alberni Port Authority The Directory of Federal Real Property records property 29239, "Port Alberni Terminals", custodian Port Alberni Port Authority, interest type Crown Owned: 7.3942 hectares at 2750 Harbour Road, primary use Warehouse, Storage and Workshops. The Port Authority is a federal Crown corporation continued by Letters Patent under the Canada Marine Act, pays the Minister of Transport a gross revenue charge of 2% on the first $10 million, and made a payment in lieu of taxes to the City of Port Alberni of $266,379 in 2025. Its own property and equipment carried $13,836,341 of net book value at 31 December 2025 against about $41.4 million of cost; the terminal berths alone are $1.42 million of that. |
Government | —A |
| Clutesi Haven Marina Clutesi Haven, Port Alberni |
Industrial | City of Port Alberni the infrastructure; the Port Authority held the asset until 31 December 2025 The Port Authority's audited 2025 consolidated statements state: "On December 31, 2025, The Port Authority sold the infrastructure at the Clutesi Haven Marina to the City of Port Alberni in exchange for a $1,000,000 note receivable. The note will be repaid over 4 years in the form of an annual reduction in PILT of $250,000." The marina's $2,122,301 of accumulated amortisation was written out of the Port's books in the same year. The statements also record a long-term lease with the Province for the China Creek Marina lands whose term expired 31 January 2025, with a new lease under discussion. |
Government | CAD $1,000,000 2025-12-31 A note receivable rather than cash: repaid over four years as an annual $250,000 reduction in the Port Authority's payment in lieu of taxes, recognised at amortised cost using a 4.45% rate. A |
| Pacific Rim Shopping Centre 3555 Johnston Road 80,393 sq ft GLA on 7.93 acres |
Retail | Northwest Realty Inc. (dba Northwest Properties) Northwest Properties' own property page gives Pacific Rim Shopping Centre at 3555 Johnston Road, an "open, community shopping centre" of 80,393 square feet of gross leasable area on 7.93 acres, developed 2007, "fully leased", with Staples, Lordco, Dollarama, CIBC and Canada Post as anchor tenants and No Frills and Walmart as shadow anchors. The federal real property register independently records Canada Post leasing 791 square metres at 3555 Johnston Road — which identifies the landlord behind one of the register's "Lease or Licence" rows. The same firm co-owns Discovery Harbour Centre in Campbell River. No price is published. |
Private company | —B |
| San Forest Products remanufacturing plant Stamp Avenue, Port Alberni |
Industrial | 037BC (numbered company), leased to IGV Housing Ltd San Group Inc. filed for creditor protection on 29 November 2024 and its assets went to a court-supervised sale. Reporting on the 12 June 2025 court filings states "the remanufacturing plant on Stamp Avenue has been sold to a numbered company, 037BC, which will in turn lease the premises to IGV Housing Ltd", a Ucluelet company that "specializes in manufacturing scalable and sustainable housing using a hybrid construction system" and intends to "revitalize the…plant as a central hub for prefabrication and production of affordable housing". The price was not disclosed; closing was before 30 June 2025. San Group had not paid its 2024 or 2025 taxes. |
Private company | —A |
| Fisherman's Harbour and the Argyle Street waterfront 5410 Argyle Street, Water Street, Bird Avenue and Harbour Quay |
Mixed use | Port Alberni Port Authority Six further Crown Owned rows in the federal register sit under the Port Alberni Port Authority inside the city: 5410 Argyle Street (0.2307 ha), Water Street (0.1052 ha), the Kingsway Parking Lot at 3204 Kingsway Avenue (0.3884 ha), 3101 Bird Avenue (0.1445 ha), Bruce Street/Harbour Road/First Avenue (0.2558 ha) and a Harbour Road parcel (0.0180 ha). The Port's own appraisal prices Fisherman's Harbour's New Food Hub at 14,876 square feet and the Canadian Maritime/Alberni Engineering building at Bird Avenue at 51,052 square feet, and its audited statements carry Argyle Street development at $3,323,567 and Fisherman's harbour at $2,097,928 of net book value. |
Government | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Port Alberni is the only city in this batch with a published land-value benchmark, because its federal port commissioned one. The appraisal is a market rent study for lease renewals over 2026-2031 and it sets out land values per acre by zone along the Alberni Inlet. It also puts prices and dates on four Port Alberni industrial land sales. The city's own roll is $4.37 billion with major industry of $91.7 million — the largest major-industry assessment of the five towns in this batch by a factor of four.
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
Around Port Alberni the forest-tenure rule produces the most consequential finding in this batch. Tree Farm Licence 44 covers 137,618 hectares and reaches both the Port Alberni and the Parksville boxes, and its licensee is now Tsawak-Qin Forestry Inc. But a licence over Crown timber is not freehold: the province's Tree Farm Licence Schedule A layer, which maps land a licensee actually owns, returns 8,677 hectares inside the Port Alberni box — about one hectare of freehold for every sixteen hectares of tenure. That 8,677 hectares is the largest licensee freehold found anywhere in this batch, and it is still only 6% of the licence area.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| Tsawak-Qin Forestry Inc. The province's tree farm licence current-view layer names Tsawak-Qin Forestry Inc. as licensee of TFL 44, 137,618.2 hectares, reaching a box from 49.0N to 49.5N and 125.3W to 124.5W around Port Alberni. The Schedule A layer returns 8,677.1 hectares against TFL 44 inside that box across 45 features — the land the licence holder owns rather than cuts. Both layers are licensed Access Only, so only this derived result is published. The company name is what the register records; no corporate structure is asserted here. |
Institution | 137,618 ha of Crown tenure; 8,677 ha of licensee-owned land in the boxA |
| Port Alberni Port Authority Directory of Federal Real Property, ten Crown Owned rows. Its audited statements set out the structure: a head lease with the Province of British Columbia for the management of provincial property in and along the Alberni Inlet, originally from 1 January 1986 with a term to 31 December 2023 and a 50/50 revenue split to the end of 2025, plus a long-term lease from the Regional District of Alberni-Clayoquot for a campground to 2029 and a provincial lease for the China Creek Marina lands. Sublease income was $1,637,201 in 2025. |
Government | 12.257 ha of federal freehold in the city; over 100 leases managed for two CrownsA |
| Fisheries and Oceans Canada The federal register records property 32507, "Port Alberni - Fishing Harbour", Crown Owned, 3.665 hectares described as "TC Title - Part of the Bed of Alberni Harbour, Alberni District, Vicinity of Bird Street". DFO's Robertson Creek Hatchery, 15.12 hectares and 17 buildings, and the Stamp Falls Fishway sit in the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District rather than the city, and are not counted here. |
Government | 3.665 ha of fishing harbour bed, plus a hatchery outside the cityA |
| City of Port Alberni Bought in 2021; $5.6 million invested in the purchase and $3.1 million in demolition and remediation to 31 December 2024 on the City's own figures. The City's land at historical cost is not published here because its website could not be opened. |
Government | 43 acres of waterfront at 3500 Harbour RoadB |
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
Port Alberni permitted 67 residential units in 2025 and 79 in 2024, and BC Housing's New Homes Registry shows the balance tipping towards rental: 31 single-detached, 21 multi-unit and 35 purpose-built rental homes registered in 2024, against 195 purpose-built rental in 2022. Fifty-eight companies hold a residential builder licence at a Port Alberni address — more than Smithers, Terrace and Dawson Creek combined — but none publishes a unit count, and the most consequential housing announcement in the city is an industrial one: a Ucluelet company leasing the former San Group reman plant to prefabricate affordable homes.
| Name | Type | Units |
|---|---|---|
| IGV Housing Ltd Court documents reported in June 2025 state that the Stamp Avenue remanufacturing plant was sold to a numbered company, 037BC, which will lease it to IGV Housing Ltd of Ucluelet, a company that "specializes in manufacturing scalable and sustainable housing using a hybrid construction system" and intends to "revitalize the…plant as a central hub for prefabrication and production of affordable housing". The mayor is quoted saying "those types of industries are future looking and it's the next step of the forest sector." It is a factory, not a subdivision builder, and no unit count is published. |
Private company | the former San Group reman plant on Stamp Avenue, leasedA |
| Fifty-eight licensed residential builders with Port Alberni addresses BC Housing's Public Registry of Licensed Residential Builders, filtered to Port Alberni, returns 58 licensees in good standing, among them Airborne Construction Ltd., AJIA Canadian Building Systems Inc., Civitas Builders Inc., Coastal Lot Creations Inc., David Galloway Construction Ltd., Don Saywell Developments Ltd., Dycon Construction Ltd., Goorts Construction Ltd., John Schlitz Construction Ltd., Mahoe Properties (2002) Ltd., Progressive Homes Development Inc., Saywell Contracting Ltd., Trafalgar Homes Ltd. and Zelkova Design Ltd. The registry gives the licensee's registered address, not where the homes were built, and no unit counts; individual licensees are not named here. |
Private company | 58 licences in good standingA |
| New-home registrations, all builders BC Housing's New Homes Registry records single-detached registrations in Port Alberni of 54, 65, 60, 55, 54, 71, 49, 43 and 31 across 2016 to 2024; multi-unit registrations of 11, 5, 23, 16, 9 and 21 in 2017, 2019 and 2021 to 2024; and purpose-built rental registrations of 24 in 2016, 20 in 2018, 141 in 2019, 46 in 2020, 195 in 2022 and 35 in 2024. Licensed Access Only, so only these stated figures are quoted. |
Private company | 31 single detached + 21 multi-unit + 35 purpose-built rental, 2024A |
| Residential building permits, all builders BC Stats' Building Permits (BPER) series records 67 residential units permitted in Port Alberni (CSD 5923008) across 2025 and 79 in 2024, with residential permit value of $26.716 million in 2025 and $24.073 million in 2024. Open Government Licence – British Columbia. |
Private company | 67 units, $26.7M, 2025A |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
Business and other is $432.4 million on the 2026 roll and 25 commercial sales completed in 2025, but the striking thing about commercial property in Port Alberni is how much of it the state holds. A federal Crown corporation owns ten parcels in the harbour and manages over a hundred leases on behalf of the federal and provincial Crowns; the City owns 43 acres of waterfront it is redeveloping; and the biggest private landlord in the retail core is a Vancouver firm.
| Name | Type | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Port Alberni Port Authority Directory of Federal Real Property: ten Crown Owned rows under this custodian inside the city boundary, 12.257 hectares in all, led by Port Alberni Terminals at 2750 Harbour Road (7.3942 ha). Its audited 2025 statements record $13,836,341 of net property and equipment, $1,637,201 of sublease income in 2025, a head lease with the Province for provincial property along the Alberni Inlet whose term expired 31 December 2023 with a replacement under discussion, and a $266,379 payment in lieu of taxes to the City. |
Government | 10 Crown Owned parcels, 12.26 ha inside the city; $13.8M of net book valueA |
| Northwest Realty Inc. (dba Northwest Properties) Its own property page gives the centre at 3555 Johnston Road, 80,393 sq ft of gross leasable area on 7.93 acres, developed 2007 and fully leased, with Staples, Lordco, Dollarama, CIBC and Canada Post as anchors. The firm is a Vancouver-based private landlord that also co-owns Discovery Harbour Centre in Campbell River and owns Coronation Centre in Duncan; no filing was opened and no portfolio total is published. |
Private company | 80,393 sq ft GLA on 7.93 acres at Pacific Rim Shopping CentreA |
| City of Port Alberni The City's own Somass Lands page states it owns the 43-acre waterfront property and adjacent parking lot bought in 2021, had invested $5.6 million in the purchase and $3.1 million in demolition and remediation as at 31 December 2024, and signed a master development agreement, partnering agreement and option to purchase with Matthews West Developments Ltd. in April 2025. The Port Authority's statements record the City buying the Clutesi Haven Marina infrastructure for a $1,000,000 note on 31 December 2025. The City's own financial statements could not be opened: portalberni.ca serves a CAPTCHA to automation. |
Government | 43 acres of waterfront plus the Clutesi Haven Marina infrastructureA |
| Domtar Corporation Domtar's own page for the Port Alberni Mill at 4000 Stamp Avenue states 330,000 tonnes a year of directory and coated papers, 340 employees, commissioned 1946, and calls it the community's single largest employer. The province's facility inventory records the same address under the name Paper Excellence Group. Major industry across the whole city is assessed at $91,675,600 on the 2026 roll. |
Private company | a 330,000-tonne paper mill; $91.7M of major industry on the rollA |
| Matthews West Developments Ltd. Selected as development partner in December 2023 and described on the City's own engagement site as "a private Canadian development company based in Squamish, BC". Under the April 2025 agreements it holds an option to purchase rather than title, and "should they proceed, the sale price will be determined by multiple factors, including reimbursement to the City for all costs incurred". It is therefore not recorded as an owner of anything in Port Alberni today. |
Developer | an option to purchase the 43-acre Somass LandsA |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- Everything the City of Port Alberni publishes about itself. portalberni.ca answers automation with a CAPTCHA page ("error code : 338"), so the City's annual report, audited financial statements, land at cost, permissive tax exemption bylaw and principal taxpayers were all unreachable. Only letsconnectpa.ca, the City's engagement platform on a different host, could be read.
- What Amix Group paid for the APD sawmill site is published; what it intends to do with it is not. The appraisal says the purchaser is a marine tug and servicing company with no plans to continue sawmill operations.
- What 037BC paid for the San Group remanufacturing plant on Stamp Avenue, and what Fraserview paid for the Coulson Mill. Both prices were undisclosed in the court process reported; Fraserview did agree to pay $104,000 of back taxes to 31 May 2025 and $56,000 of additional licence fees.
- Who holds title to the Domtar mill land at 4000 Stamp Avenue. Domtar's own page states the operation, the capacity and the employment; it is not a title register, and the province's facility inventory names Paper Excellence Group at the same address.
- Who owns West Coast General Hospital. No Island Health document was opened in this pass, and no claim is made.
- Who owns the four buildings Canada leases in Port Alberni beyond the Canada Post space at 3555 Johnston Road, where Northwest Properties' own page identifies it as the landlord.
- The Port Authority's appraisal carries a DRAFT watermark throughout. It is published by the Port Authority on its own site under the heading of a 2025 consulting valuation report; the land values and comparable sales are quoted as what that document states, not as settled valuations.
- No open dataset names the owner of any BC parcel. ParcelMap BC's public extract is geometry plus PID; the fully attributed variant is licensed to government only; BC Assessment's full roll is 'named users' only.
- BC publishes no price-paid file. Property transfer tax data is monthly counts and aggregate fair market value by municipality, with small counts suppressed — in Port Alberni the corporate-transaction count was suppressed in 10 of 12 months of 2025.
- LOTR covers only land held through corporations, trusts and partnerships. Land held directly by an individual is out of scope, and nothing from LOTR is published here.
Sources
- Fees — LTSA Customer Fee Listing as at April 1, 2026, and Tax Certificates Online participating-municipality table — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- About the Land Owner Transparency Registry — Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia · openA
- BC Assessment homepage, terms of use and copyright notice — BC Assessment · openA
- Local Government Statistics — Schedule 701, Assessed Values for the year 2026 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA
- Local Government Statistics — Schedule 201, General Statistics for 2024 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA
- Property Transfer Tax Data 2025 — municipal monthly file — BC Ministry of Finance / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property — full open-data extract (dfrp-rbif.zip) — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- Municipalities — Legally Defined Administrative Areas of BC (ABMS_MUNICIPALITIES_SP), WFS — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- BC Address Geocoder — addresses.json — GeoBC / Province of British Columbia · openA
- Building Permits (BPER) — Residential Total Units and Residential Value, monthly, by census subdivision — BC Stats / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- New Homes Registry (2016-2024) — new home registrations by community and home type — BC Housing / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Public Registry of Licensed Residential Builders — licence search by city — BC Housing, Licensing and Consumer Services · openA
- Port Alberni Mill — location page; and British Columbia Major Timber Processing Facilities (GSR_TMBR_PRCSSING_FAC_SV), mill 487 — Domtar Corporation; BC Ministry of Forests / GeoBC · openA
- Somass Lands — project page — City of Port Alberni (Let's Connect Port Alberni) · openA
- Market Rent Study Report concerning multiple sites throughout Port Alberni and the Alberni Canal, File No. 90438-C, 31 July 2025 (effective 28 May 2025), prepared by Baker & Osland Appraisals Ltd. — Port Alberni Port Authority · openA
- Consolidated Financial Statements, Year Ended December 31, 2025 (audited); and Directory of Federal Real Property — Port Alberni Port Authority and DFO rows — Port Alberni Port Authority; Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- Pacific Rim Shopping Centre — property page — Northwest Realty Inc. dba Northwest Properties · openA
- San Group's Port Alberni holdings sold — Vancouver Island Free Daily / Alberni Valley News · openA
- FADM — Tree Farm License Current View (FADM_TFL_ALL_SP) and Tree Farm License Schedule A (FADM_TFL_SCHED_A), WFS — BC Ministry of Forests / BC Data Catalogue · openA