It was another packed house at the Maury Young Arts Centre for the Whistler Real Estate Company's (WREC) second annual View From Here event on Saturday, Feb. 2.
The event's stated mission is to bring together idea-focused minds and policy makers to provide insight into the factors that impact Whistler's business and investment environment.
Speakers at this year's event included WREC president Pat Kelly, BC Chamber president and CEO Val Litwin and Central Credit Union 1 chief economist Helmut Pastrick.
"Our current situation, we're returning to historical levels of activity in our marketplace, which is somewhere between 500 and 650 transactions in Whistler," Kelly said in his presentation.
"In Whistler there is very strong interest in Phase 1 condominiums and things that can be rented—let's call that the Airbnb impact."
Commercially, you'd be hard pressed to get into a Whistler Village space for under $45/square foot today, Kelly said.
"Roughly speaking, the average transaction-dollar per square foot is just over a thousand dollars a square foot pretty much anywhere in the valley at the current time," Kelly said.
This year's iteration also included presentations and a panel discussion with Resort Municipality of Whistler Chief Administrative Officer Mike Furey, Kerry Mehaffey, director of business and economic development with the Lil'wat Nation, Lil'wat councillor Maxine Joseph-Bruce, Whistler Blackcomb COO Pete Sonntag, Tourism Whistler's director of research and destination development Meredith Kunza, and Sue Adams, director and board vice chair with the Whistler Learning Centre.
Check back with Pique next week for more from the event.
