WESTLOCK – Westlock County will tap local relators for help to sell the remaining lots at the municipality’s industrial park.
Councillors voted 7-0 at their May 17 governance and priorities meeting to follow the municipality's procurement policy and ask for proposals from local realtors to become the agent for the county in the marketing and sale of the remaining seven lots at the industrial park located on Highway 44 just south of the town’s border. Coun. Stuart Fox-Robinson noted that based on his calculations of assessed value, getting the remaining lots sold will lead to the county bringing in another $270,000 to $320,000 in revenue.
“That would be phenomenal and create a great boost,” replied interim CAO Pat Vincent.
“Let’s get it sold,” added reeve Christine Wiese.
In his briefing to council, Vincent said that there are 36 lots in the industrial park, two of which are public utility lots — of the original 34 lots which were subdivided and for which titles were created, the county has sold 24, with seven still available. Vincent said the sale price on the lots was previously set via resolution at $35,000 per acre for the first three acres, then lowered to $25,000 for each following acre. Six of the lots left for sale range in size from 2.40 acres to 3.19 acres, with the seventh coming in at 14.78 acres.
“I thought there was a lot more lots left there … I thought there was 10 or 15 or 20 lots. There’s only seven?” asked deputy reeve Ray Marquette.
The park has a somewhat checkered history, starting with the county spending $1 million to purchase the land in 2003, to the fact they’ve never been able to secure water and sewer service from the Town of Westlock, to questionable land transactions over the years including the 2015 deal with Horizon North Camp & Catering Partnership — a shady deal authored by then CAO Peter Kelly and singled out in the 2017 Municipal Inspection Report that wound up costing the county an estimated $200,000.
Those facts aside, the park has seen moderate success and is home to the municipality's public works shop, as well as several high-profile businesses like CropMaxx, the Alberta Trappers Association, Emcom Services, Wild Rose REA and Pentagon, which was the first major commercial tenant.
Intersection follow up
Following an in-camera discussion at the Oct. 12, 2021, meeting, the final of the past council’s four-year mandate, councillors agreed to allocate $110,000 from the municipality’s industrial park reserve to fund a study on the 19-year-old park.
Former CAO Kay Spiess said at the time the effort would catalogue what’s in place and then offer suggestions as to what to do next at the 100-acre site. At the same meeting, councillors voted 6-0 to contribute $444,000 to an Alberta Transportation plan for upgrades to Highway 44 which will see the addition of new turning lanes, a traffic light and the closure of two of the park’s exits/entrances.
Vincent clarified May 17 that the $110,000 is for an area structure plan for the quarter section immediately west of the park that the county doesn’t currently own but is part of the long-term strategy for expansion.
He also told council he’s planning to follow up with Alberta Transportation with respect to the costs to improve the park’s entrance as Coun. Jared Stitsen said a draft plan was previously viewed by council.
“If there’s money budgeted for it, we should be looking at doing that quickly,” said Vincent regarding the intersection.
“Let’s get it done,” added Fox-Robinson.
