Scout for a Stout- Locational Analysis for Maple Ridge’s Newest Brewery
Background Information
I have decided to conduct a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) for the most suitable locations for a new brewery in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. I think that I will find that the best location will be somewhere close to the downtown core, as this is the most densely populated area (due to apartment buildings). As well, this area is an area that I think is easily accessible by transit, well lit and has many parcels of land that could be developed, or redeveloped, to be suitable locations.
This project is important because Maple Ridge is a growing city that has seen rapid population increases from:
48,422 in 1991 (District of Maple Ridge, 2004)
63,169 in 2001 (District of Maple Ridge, 2004)
76,052 in 2011 (Statistics Canada, 2017)
and the latest data shows 82,256 in 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2017).
The jump has been substantial and clearly the cities population is increasing, yet there is still a slow social climate. Currently, there are only 3 breweries within city boundaries and the number of bars is not far behind. Increasingly, people are finding that there is nowhere to go and hangout in a social setting and many are spending their weekends out of the city, relocating to other municipalities where there is more opportunities. This means that there is an opportunity for economic growth in this sector as many are looking for a fun place to hang out on the weekends. Creating a new brewery is a good opportunity for investors in this market who would like to see Maple Ridge grow.
This problem effects people over the age of 19 who are looking for places to hangout. The craft beer market is a sector that has been exploding in popularity as explained by Howard which can be seen in cities such as Vancouver and Port Moody (2017). Of course this will not effect every single person in the city over 19, but there are not many locations that one can visit with friends in a social setting within the city, so this would encourage that and could also add to the community vibrancy within the city.
There are policy implications that would effect the building of a new brewery which include, but are not limited to: applying for development applications, going through proper consultation with the public and involved stakeholders and obtaining the proper permits (City of Maple Ridge, 2014). For this reason, I have created areas using the Official Community Plan for Maple Ridge that are suitable for development (commercial land, industrial, etc.) and areas that are not suitable such as conservation areas, parks, waterways, roads, residential areas, etc (City of Maple Ridge, 2014) .
The data that I used to create this analysis was almost all collected from the municipal government of Maple Ridge’s website on their open data portal (City of Maple Ridge, 2017) As well, I collected data from the Canadian 2016 census about population in different areas of town (neighbourhoods/dissemination areas) via CHASS (Statistics Canada, 2017). I then used a shapefile of the dissemination areas of Canada and clipped it down so that only the areas in Maple Ridge were shown. Then I spatially joined the attribute data of population together with the shapefile so that I would know the population of each area.
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