A League of His Own

After a pro hockey career spent in the minors, Derek Prue is shooting out the lights with his development company, SkyRider Holdings. The game-breaker: an innovative approach to First Nations housing

Jan 1, 2009  

by Mike Sadava

Prue came up with a system to save the reserve money, whereby SkyRider manages the project rather than the general contractor. The band pays the bills as they come in, and there are fewer price markups along the way as SkyRider keeps tabs on exactly how much the various trades and sub-trades should cost.

So far the company has nearly completed a five-storey, 108-unit, $14-million rental apartment building for Enoch families about a kilometre west of the reserve’s landmark River Cree Casino, with occupancy expected to start early in the new year. The first cul-de-sac with a dozen single-family homes has also been completed, and nearly 100 more are planned over the next few years.
This turns out to be one of the largest projects of its kind ever done on a reserve in Canada. Prue feels good that the project plowed $3 million back into the community in paycheques alone. At construction peak, about 30 band members were trained and employed, a spinoff that might not have happened in a traditional development scenario.

Prue’s link with Enoch and other First Nations through hockey has “enabled him to understand the aboriginal culture,” says Morin, so “doing business with him almost comes as second nature.”

It would take decades to ease the housing shortage by building only single-family homes, Morin adds. More units can be completed faster under the multi-family model. But the apartment complex encountered obstacles. The banks initially wouldn’t touch it, and some members of the band were against it. The project was eventually approved in a band plebiscite and, thanks to Prue’s close work with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, received financing.

This is all part of a big economic development push by the Enoch council. Services have already been installed for a commercial big-box store complex planned west of the casino-hotel complex. A second hotel is in the works for the casino and plans are being prepared for “the biggest minor sports facility on earth,” with eight ice sheets and eight indoor soccer fields, Morin says.

SkyRider is also developing a 123-unit condominium complex just west of this housing. The condos, made available to the general public, have already sold out in the $300,000 range, and a second building is planned in the medium term. The condo land is owned by an individual band member in a certificate of possession, not by the band as a whole. (By law, reserve land cannot be alienated from aboriginal ownership.) Condo owners, instead of having a share in ownership of the land, have a share in the 98-year lease of the land.

SkyRider has also acted as a housing consultant for other aboriginal groups such as the Metis Settlements General Council and Tribal Chief Ventures and has proposals out for off-reserve housing under the province’s affordable housing initiative announced last spring.

Prue hopes to create a one-stop shop for First Nations housing. Currently the process can be unwieldy and time-consuming, he says. First the band hires a consultant to report on what housing is needed, and then it has to find a designer, engineer and, in the end, a contractor to build it. Prue says that with his staff and web of contacts, he can do it all in less time.

SkyRider has not put all of its eggs into the First Nations basket or even in Alberta, though. Prue is especially pumped about a three-storey combination condominium/commercial project on two hectares of land in the Vancouver Island town of Comox. With the busiest airport on northern Vancouver Island and daily air service to and from Edmonton, Calgary and soon Seattle, Comox has become a hotbed for development. It’s also only 25 minutes from Mount Washington ski resort, where a number of foreign teams will be training in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Prue is planning a Whistler-inspired, pedestrian-friendly development featuring commercial space on the ground floor topped by two floors of condos.

Getting a toehold in B.C. is another way of diversifying and not being dependent on one market, he says. He’s also confident that the demand for housing on Vancouver Island, newly accessible to Albertans, will remain buoyant despite the global real estate contraction.

If Comox is Prue’s way of branching out, a project starting to take shape just spitting distance from the arena in Stony Plain where he played hockey as a youngster is a tribute to his roots. Services, a main road and a couple of show homes have been established in the 21.6-hectare Lakeview Village, the first subdivision in a new area zoned to eventually almost double the 12,000 population of this town. The SkyRider/Brute Force development will eventually have 650 units, including a combination of single-family homes, townhouses and four-storey, multi-family housing.

Among all of these projects, there is still one more that is nearest to Prue’s heart: the big outdoor rink he’s building for his boys at his new house near the Devon Highway.

“I even bought the old score clock from Bruderheim. The kids are going to be able to play with a time clock and a buzzer.” No matter how big SkyRider grows, hockey will continue to play a big part in Prue’s life.

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