Chestermere City Council accepted five Letters of Intent, including, three last minute additions to the agenda, from companies interested in purchasing about 11.5 acres in the City’s new Webster Industrial Park.
“The clients can’t wait to start investing and building in Chestermere,” said the City of Chestermere’s Economic Development Manager Jean-Marc Lacasse.
With these five new Letters of Intent, 28 per cent of the concept lots in the industrial park have either been sold or have had Letters of Intent accepted by the city.
Lacasse said that this level of interest outstanding especially since the city has only been marketing lots in the park for about the last two months.
“This is quite remarkable and several months ahead of schedule,” he said.
The city hired Colliers International on Sept. 5 to market and sell Webster Industrial Park to industry.
“They are mandated to find clients for Webster, within the parameters of increasing non-residential tax revenues and creating employment,” said Lacasse.
Given the level of interest in the park, Lacasse explained that the city is only accepting Letters of Interest rather than sales agreements because the industrial park has not been subdivided yet.
“The lots do not have legal descriptions yet,” he said.
“Legal descriptions occur at the subdivision stage,” said Laccase, “Sales agreements can only be executed when there is a legal description in place.”
Chestermere’s Mayor Marshall Chalmers said that since the subdivision process has not yet been completed these Letters of Interest are showing him, and the rest of the new city council, the amount of interest that has been generated by this project.
Having 28 per cent of the park already spoken for is a good sign for the city as it works to diversify the tax base.
“With such a high residential tax base, Council needs to consider all possibilities of enhancing non-residential taxes,” said Chalmers.
The creation of the subdivision plan for Webster Industrial Park is the next step in the development process.
The city both issued and closed a Request for Proposal to select an engineering firm to create a subdivision plan for the industrial park on Nov. 13.
Lacasse said that the City hopes to have an engineering firm selected in the next few weeks.
After a subdivision plan is drawn up and regulatory approvals have been obtained, Chestermere City Council will consider and select a subdivision plan from the submitted options.
So far, the development of the industrial park is on schedule with the original timeline.
“If everything goes as planned and everything else being equal, clients could start building in late 2019 and open in 2020,” said Lacasse.
