Powell River, British Columbia
Powell River is a mill town whose mill came off the assessment roll entirely: major industry fell from $114.1 million in 2023 to exactly zero on the 2026 roll, and the tiskwat site it stood on has been split between the Tla'amin Nation, which reacquired 120 acres in 16 parcels fronting the river and ocean, and Cranberry Business Park Ltd., which agreed to buy the rest from Domtar in July 2025. The town's shopping centre changed hands in November 2025 to Jim Pattison Developments. Two-thirds of the city's dry land is private, and the City's annual report prints a "Legal Owner" column that names the companies behind the rest.
8 buildings · 7 with an owner established · 18 sources · 4 tier B · 4 tier A · prepared 2026-10-03
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: $11.06 for a search under section 377 of the Land Title Act on the LTSA Customer Fee Listing current at 1 April 2026. There is no bulk owner product and no price-paid file. What is unusual is the Land Owner Transparency Registry — filing obligations running from 30 November 2020 and public search live since 30 April 2021 — which names the individuals behind corporations, trusts and partnerships that own BC land; the same LTSA schedule prices a search of publicly accessible information under section 35 of the Land Owner Transparency Act at NIL. Powell River is cheaper to search than most of British Columbia: it sits on LTSA's Tax Certificates Online table at $107.26, the second-lowest municipal figure on the list of 82 participating municipalities. It also publishes something better than a fee. The City's annual report prints its property tax exemption schedule with a column headed "Legal Owner" beside the applicant and the civic address, which makes the audited annual report an owner register for every exempt parcel in the city — and it names private companies, not just societies. What no fee buys is coverage: no open dataset names the owner of a BC parcel and BC publishes no price-paid file.
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tiskwat (former Powell River paper mill) — reacquired lands West bank of the Powell River at the Historic Townsite 120 acres in 16 parcels |
Land | Tla'amin Nation Tla'amin Nation's own release states that on 27 December 2024 the Nation and Domtar initialled an Asset Purchase Agreement for "close to half of the former mill site at tiskwat", that "Sixteen parcels comprise the 120 acres of Tla'amin reacquisition lands", that they "primarily front the river and ocean and are among the least industrialized areas", and that 94% of participating citizens supported the reacquisition. Domtar's own release of 17 March 2025 confirms the agreement was signed on 14 March 2025 at a ceremony in Tla'amin Territory. The City's 2025 Annual Report records "new ownership of the tiskwat mill site by ɫaʔamɩn Nation and Cranberry Group". No price was published. |
Government | —B |
| tiskwat (former Powell River paper mill) — remaining lands tiskwat Paper Mill site, Powell River |
Industrial | Cranberry Business Park Ltd. Domtar's release of 2 July 2025 states that the company "has signed a purchase agreement with Cranberry Business Park Ltd. for the sale of the remaining half of its lands at the former tiskwat Paper Mill site in Powell River, B.C.", quotes Craig Austin and Thomas Logocki of Cranberry Business Park on "waterfront access and abundant energy sources" and the revitalization of the Historic Townsite, and says "Closing is expected to take place later in the year, subject to the completion of standard regulatory approvals." The City's 2025 Annual Report, published June 2026, describes the ownership as in place. No price was published. |
Private company | —B |
| Powell River Town Centre 7100 Alberni Street, Powell River |
Retail | Jim Pattison Developments The Powell River Peak reported on 19 November 2025 that the mall "has been sold to Jim Pattison Developments", quoting a post on the mall's own website and David Bell, president of Jim Pattison Developments, that "this acquisition made a lot of sense for us". Frank Picard, the buyer's vice-president of asset management, told the paper the sale involves the mall, the Town Centre Court apartment building to the south-west and the Starbucks pad at the south entrance, that the previous owner was a named individual not recorded here, and that the company also owns Chahko Mika Mall in Nelson, Lansdowne Mall in Kamloops and Mariner Square in Campbell River. No price was stated. |
Family / private | —B |
| Patricia Theatre 5848 Ash Avenue, Powell River |
Institutional | Patricia Entertainment Co. The City of Powell River's 2025 Annual Report lists the 2025 property tax exemptions with three columns — applicant, property address and "Legal Owner" — and against qathet Film Society at 5848 Ash Avenue it names Patricia Entertainment Co. as the legal owner, with $4,474 of exemption. This is the City stating, in an audited annual report under section 98 of the Community Charter, who holds title. The company is the owner; no individual is named here. |
Private company | —A |
| 4320 Joyce Avenue (Powell River Sport and Fitness Society premises) 4320 Joyce Avenue, Powell River |
Institutional | Western Mortgage Corporation The City's 2025 exemption schedule names Western Mortgage Corporation as the legal owner of 4320 Joyce Avenue, where the Powell River Sport and Fitness Society holds the largest private-landlord exemption in the city at $22,320. The same schedule names CNB Enterprises Ltd. as legal owner of 4760 Joyce Avenue, occupied by Tourism Powell River with $8,950 exempted, and Dave Formosa Holdings Ltd. as legal owner of 101-7020 Duncan Street, occupied by the Powell River Brain Injury Society with $3,158 exempted. These are the only private companies the City identifies as landowners. |
Private company | —A |
| Timberlane Park and the civic recreation campus 5401 Timberlane Avenue, Powell River |
Civic | City of Powell River The City names itself as "Legal Owner" of 5401 Timberlane against four separate exemption lines in its 2025 annual report — Far off Broadway Theatre Company Society, Powell River Villa Soccer Club, Timberlane Barracks Sponsor Committee and Timberlane Fine Arts Association — and as legal owner of 4790 Marine Avenue (qathet Museum & Archives, $38,419), 4835 Marine Avenue (the Forestry Museum), 4949 Ontario Avenue (Life Cycle Housing Society), 5714 Marine Avenue, 7508 Duncan Street and 215-6975 Alberni Street. The City carries land at a cost of $17,326,858 within $321,308,474 of tangible capital asset cost. |
Government | —A |
| North Harbour and Westview/South Harbour Westview waterfront, Powell River |
Civic | City of Powell River The City's 2025 Annual Report lists Harbours, North Harbour and Westview/South Harbour among the services its Operations department delivers, and its long-term debt schedule carries Municipal Finance Authority debenture #117 for North Harbour at $4,012,746 outstanding at 31 December 2025, maturing October 2041 at 1.47%. Marine and airport infrastructure is carried at $31,396,050 of cost. The federal register separately shows Transport Canada as Crown Owned custodian of 0.7122 ha at "Powell River Harbour" and of the airport navigation sites. |
Government | —B |
| The tiskwat dam Powell River, at the former mill site |
Industrial | Not established the jurisdiction does not disclose owners Tla'amin Nation's own release states that its reacquisition of 120 acres at tiskwat "does not include the dam, which is encumbered by a bare land trust between Domtar and Brookfield Power." No document opened states who holds registered title to it. Two adjacent facts are recorded without being joined: Domtar's 10-K states that on 8 September 2025 it "transferred certain power generation assets to Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation, an affiliated company, for consideration of $62 million"; and the City's utilities assessment class rose from $1,880,200 on the 2025 roll to $37,056,200 on the 2026 roll. Neither document connects the two. |
Not established | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
The single most important number about property in Powell River is a zero. Major industry on the provincial assessment roll went $114,077,000 (2023), $82,335,000 (2024), $81,597,000 (2025), $0 (2026) — a mill town with no mill on its roll. Figures are the 2026 and prior provincial assessment rolls (Schedule 701), the City's audited 2025 financial statements as printed in its annual report, the province's 2025 property transfer tax file and the province's treaty and forest tenure layers. The Land Designations for Forest Management layer is a forest-management product and its own catalogue entry says it "SHOULD NOT be used for operational level analysis". Inside a built-up municipality its residual class "Forest Management Unit" swallows whatever it has not mapped — we probed it and it returned that class for roads, rail corridor, parks, hospital land, filled foreshore and the bed of the Fraser River — so it is NOT read here as Crown forest inside a town boundary. Outside the boundary, over a rural box, that class is the provincial forest land base and is read as Crown.
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.
Two-thirds of the dry land inside the city is private — 66.2% — but widen to a 514 km² box and the picture inverts: 48.2% named provincial Crown, 38.7% private, and 14.3% of the whole box under a community forest agreement that the City's own company holds as a licence rather than owns. The largest single landholding anywhere near Powell River is the Tla'amin Nation's 8,377.6 ha of treaty settlement lands, which are not tenure and not reserve.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| Tla'amin Nation The province's treaty land layer returns 27 features for the Nation totalling 8,377.6 ha effective 5 April 2016, of which 6,418.6 ha is former provincial Crown land including subsurface and 1,949.7 ha former Indian reserve. The Nation's own release records the reacquisition of 120 acres in 16 parcels at tiskwat, agreed in December 2024 and signed in March 2025, and the City's annual report records the resulting ownership. Only 3.9 ha of the treaty lands lie inside the city boundary; the holding surrounds it. |
Government | 8,377.6 ha of treaty settlement lands plus 120 acres at tiskwatB |
| Privately held land (owner not published) Derived from our 25 m grid sample of the province's Land Designations for Forest Management layer: 1,903.2 ha Private Parcel, 102.3 ha "Private First Nation Title" and 3.9 ha Land Claim Settlement Area inside the boundary. Over a 514 km² box around the city, private land is 11,662.0 ha, 38.7% of the dry land, of which 5,184.2 ha is Land Claim Settlement Area and 6,362.2 ha Private Parcel, against 14,531.4 ha of named provincial Crown designations. The layer records the designation and never the owner's name, and is licensed "Access Only", so only the aggregate is published. |
Private company | 2,009.5 ha inside the city, 66.2% of its dry landA |
| City of Powell River The land-designation sample gives 421.4 ha of municipal parcels and 93.4 ha of local and regional park inside the boundary, 17.0% of the dry land — a high municipal share for a BC city. Schedule 2 of the audited 2025 statements carries land at a closing cost of $17,326,858 and land improvements at $11,825,811. The City also names itself the "Legal Owner" of ten exempt parcels in its own annual report. |
Government | 514.8 ha of municipal parcels and park; $17,326,858 of land at costB |
| Powell River Community Forest Ltd. (tenure, not ownership) The province's managed licence layer returns K3G, Schedule B, ACTIVE, 7,109.1 ha, client POWELL RIVER COMMUNITY FOREST LTD. Schedule B land is Crown land and the agreement is a right to harvest, so the company is not a landowner on that basis. It is a government business enterprise of the City: investment carried at $1 of cost with $3,048,519 of accumulated net equity, $7,153,363 of revenue and $3,666,425 of net income in 2025, and $1,702,621 of dividends declared to the City. |
Government | 7,109.1 ha of Crown land under community forest agreement K3GB |
| Government of Canada The federal real property register records Transport Canada as Crown Owned custodian of three small Powell River sites — the meteorological and non-directional-beacon plots on Lot 5118 and 0.7122 ha at Powell River Harbour — Fisheries and Oceans Canada of 3.25 ha across three properties, and Canada Post of 0.65 ha. Everything else federal in the city is held under "Lease or Licence": the RCMP detachment at 7070 Barnet Street and two Public Services and Procurement Canada sites on Duncan Street, which means Canada is a tenant there and the landlord is behind the register. |
Government | about 5.1 ha Crown Owned in the cityA |
Where property meets office
Recorded only where a public record states it — a disclosure registry, council minutes, a land-use decision. Stated as fact, with nothing inferred from it.
| Holder | Office | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Powell River Community Forest Ltd. | Council appointees to the Community Forest Board; Council representative named in the 2025 Annual Report | A community forest agreement over 7,109.1 ha of Crown land, held by a company the City owns outright The City's 2025 Annual Report lists Council appointments and liaisons to "Powell River Community Forest Ltd." and to the Community Forest Board and Working Group, and its audited statements account for the company as a government business enterprise whose dividends fund City capital. The province's tenure layer records the licence as Schedule B — Crown land. The arrangement is published by the City in an audited document; nothing here suggests any private interest. A |
| City of Powell River | City Council, 2022–2026 term | A statutory exemption schedule that names the legal owner of every exempt parcel Section 98 of the Community Charter requires the annual report to list permissive exemptions. Powell River goes further than most BC municipalities and prints a "Legal Owner" column beside the applicant and the civic address, which is how Western Mortgage Corporation, CNB Enterprises Ltd., Patricia Entertainment Co. and Dave Formosa Holdings Ltd. are established as owners of city property without a title search. One line names a private individual as legal owner; that name is not reproduced here. A |
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.
Powell River publishes no builder league table and no document opened names a private homebuilder with a unit count. What the City does name, in its own audited exemption schedule, is who owns the non-market housing: four societies and the City itself. The housing providers below are therefore recorded as owners the City identifies, not as builders with output figures — the distinction matters and the record keeps it.
| Name | Type | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Powell River Sunset Homes Society Named as legal owner of both 4165 & 4167 Westview Avenue ($15,909) and 4374 Joyce Avenue ($37,133) in the City of Powell River's 2025 property tax exemption schedule, which prints a "Legal Owner" column. The two lines together are the largest housing exemption in the city. No unit count is published in that report. |
Institution | $53,042 of City taxes exempted in 2025 across two sitesA |
| Life Cycle Housing Society The City's 2025 exemption schedule names Life Cycle Housing Society as legal owner of 6647 Cranberry Street ($6,295) and names the City of Powell River as legal owner of 4949 Ontario Avenue ($6,448), where the Society is the applicant — so one site is the Society's and one is the City's, occupied by it. That distinction is only visible because the City publishes the owner. |
Institution | $12,743 of City taxes exempted in 2025A |
| Senior Citizens Association of BC Branch #49 Powell River Named as legal owner of 6792 Cranberry Street in the City's 2025 exemption schedule. No unit figure is published. |
Institution | $9,798 of City taxes exempted in 2025A |
| Tla'amin Nation The City's 2025 exemption schedule names Tla'amin Nation as the legal owner of 5895 Arbutus Avenue, where the Alano Club of Powell River is the applicant with $10,876 exempted — the Nation appearing as a landlord inside the city boundary. Separately the Nation holds 8,377.6 ha of treaty settlement lands with an effective date of 5 April 2016 and has reacquired 120 acres of the tiskwat site. |
Government | legal owner of 5895 Arbutus Avenue; 8,377.6 ha of treaty lands around the cityB |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
The commercial roll is $292.45 million, a fourteenth of the city, and only twelve commercial transactions completed in 2025. Two of the three pieces of commercial property that matter changed hands within eight months of each other: the mill site in March and July 2025, the shopping centre in November. The named owners below each rest on a document — a company release, named reporting that quotes the buyer's own officers, or the City's own "Legal Owner" column.
| Name | Type | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Jim Pattison Developments The Powell River Peak reported on 19 November 2025 that the mall had been sold to Jim Pattison Developments, quoting the company's president David Bell and its vice-president of asset management Frank Picard, who described the scope of the sale and named the company's other small-city BC centres (Chahko Mika in Nelson, Lansdowne in Kamloops, Mariner Square in Campbell River). The company publishes no reachable portfolio page and no price was stated by either side. |
Family / private | Powell River Town Centre, Town Centre Court apartments and the Starbucks padB |
| Cranberry Business Park Ltd. Domtar's release of 2 July 2025 names the company as purchaser of "the remaining half of its lands at the former tiskwat Paper Mill site", with closing expected later in 2025 subject to regulatory approvals, and quotes Craig Austin and Thomas Logocki of Cranberry Business Park. The City's 2025 Annual Report treats the ownership as settled. The site includes the paper machine buildings and most of the millsite infrastructure. |
Private company | the remaining half of the tiskwat mill landsB |
| Western Mortgage Corporation Named by the City of Powell River as the "Legal Owner" of 4320 Joyce Avenue in the 2025 property tax exemption schedule in its audited annual report, with the Powell River Sport and Fitness Society as applicant and $22,320 of City taxes exempted — the largest exemption the City grants on privately owned land. |
Private company | 4320 Joyce AvenueA |
| CNB Enterprises Ltd. Named by the City as "Legal Owner" of 4760 Joyce Avenue in the same schedule, with Tourism Powell River as applicant and $8,950 exempted. |
Private company | 4760 Joyce AvenueA |
| Patricia Entertainment Co. Named by the City as "Legal Owner" of 5848 Ash Avenue, with the qathet Film Society as applicant and $4,474 exempted. The company name is the owner recorded; no individual is named. |
Private company | 5848 Ash Avenue (Patricia Theatre)A |
| 987 Asset Management Ltd. (formerly 1170987 B.C. Ltd.) The City's audited statements name the company as its counterparty in a revitalization tax exemption agreement dated 1 October 2018 over two identified parcel identifiers, under which the exemption began at 100% in 2019 and declines to nil in 2030. Forgone revenue was $5,327 in 2025. A revitalization exemption agreement is made with the owner of the parcel; the statements do not independently describe the company as owner, so this is recorded at tier B. |
Private company | PID 015-357-791 and PID 015-357-813, District Lot 5117B |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- What the Tla'amin Nation paid for the 120 acres at tiskwat, and what Cranberry Business Park Ltd. paid for the remaining half. Both transactions are documented by the parties; neither price was published.
- What Jim Pattison Developments paid for Powell River Town Centre. The buyer's own officers were quoted on the scope of the sale but no price was stated, and the company publishes no reachable portfolio page to confirm the holding first-hand.
- Who holds registered title to the tiskwat dam. Tla'amin Nation's release says it is "encumbered by a bare land trust between Domtar and Brookfield Power" and excluded from the reacquisition; no document opened names the registered owner.
- Why the City's utilities assessment class rose from $1,880,200 to $37,056,200 between the 2025 and 2026 rolls. Domtar's 10-K records a transfer of "certain power generation assets to Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation" for $62 million on 8 September 2025, but no document connects the two and the connection is not made here.
- Who owns the qathet General Hospital site, the BC Ferries Westview terminal and the Historic Townsite's commercial blocks. None appears in the City's exemption schedule and no document opened names an owner.
- The City's ParcelMap BC parcel-level ownership split. No parcel-count split by owner type is published here; the land-designation grid sample is a designation sample, not a parcel census.
- No open dataset names the owner of any BC parcel; BC publishes no price-paid file; and LOTR covers only land held through corporations, trusts and partnerships, not land held directly by an individual.
Sources
- Fees — LTSA Customer Fee Listing as at April 1, 2026 — 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
- Land Designations for Forest Management (ANA_LDFM_LND_DESIG_FOR_MGMT_SP) — BC Ministry of Forests / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Municipalities — Legally Defined Administrative Areas of BC (ABMS_MUNICIPALITIES_SP), WFS — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property — full dataset — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- 2025 Annual Report — City of Powell River (mayor's message, 2025 Property Tax Exemptions with Legal Owner column, audited consolidated financial statements, Schedule 2 Tangible Capital Assets) — City of Powell River · openA
- Domtar Corporation Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (Catalyst restructuring, British Columbia mills; Catalyst acquisition) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission / Domtar Corporation · openA
- Tla'amin Set to Reacquire 120 Acres of Former Village Site at tiskwat — Tla'amin Nation · openA
- Domtar and Tla'amin Nation Celebrate Historic tiskwat Land Agreement, March 17, 2025 — Domtar Corporation · openA
- Domtar signs agreement with Cranberry Business Park Ltd., July 2, 2025 (Domtar release as published) — Pulp and Paper Canada · openA
- Updated: Purchase of Powell River Town Centre mall completed — sale to Jim Pattison Developments announced — Powell River Peak · openA
- FNT_TREATY_LAND_SP — First Nations treaty land, WFS (Tla'amin Nation treaty settlement lands, effective 2016-04-05) — GeoBC / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- FTEN_MANAGED_LICENCE_POLY_SVW — forest managed licence polygons, WFS (community forest agreement K3G) — BC Ministry of Forests / BC Data Catalogue · openA
- Local Government Statistics — Schedule 701, Assessed Values for 2023, 2024 and 2025 — BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs · openA