By Sheena Roszell

City official predicts strong retail growth in 2019

Nov 14, 2018 | 12:59 PM

Next year is looking like it will be a strong year for retail growth in the city.

 The city’s Deputy Director of Economic Development, Brian Glavin presented an economic forecast for Grande Prairie as budget deliberations got underway this morning.

 “We have the largest single-level Canadian Tire in the country under construction right now at 173,000 square feet, that’s double the current size of the Canadian Tire we have here.   As well, we have the largest Ford dealership in Canada under construction, and some of the smaller projects like the new CO-OP grocery store/gas bar.”

Canadian Tire has been posting some of their new construction progess on social media.

Glavin also mentioned the Nauticol Energy project as an indicator for projected growth in the region.  The company is proposing a methanol plant just south of the city. The roughly $2 billion project is anticipated to open in 2021.

 He says the reason we have stores that are more often in larger centres is because Grande Prairie is a retail hub for the region and serves 280,000 people.

 “We have over 4.2 million square feet of retail and that’s just indicative of the amount of the population that utilizes Grande Prairie and that’s why we have stores like Costco, Bed Bath and Beyond, and many other multi-national retailers that you don’t see in communities our size.”

 He anticipates we should see more retail come on board over the next couple of years as the hospital and other projects get built and as production increases to service the LNG development on the west coast.

 “As they scale up the hospital, they are going to need to find hundreds of people that are well educated and have fairly high paying jobs.  So, you should start to see more demand for everything that goes along with that, whether it be houses or retail,” he said.

 “As a general rule, every person needs about 30 square feet of retail space for themselves to survive in a city. So, if you said 500 people that’s 15,000 square feet of retail that needs to be there just to service them.”

 Glavin says they are also seeing an increase in activity south of the city in the Montney natural gas play.  Capital budgets in that area are roughly 10 per cent above what they were in 2014.

 He says traffic levels on Highway 40 are now above what they were in 2014 and are in record-setting territory.

 With the increases, a new safety-minded group has been established. The Coalition for Safer Roads for Highway 40 and 43 is a group made up of industry and government members.

“They are looking for ways to ensure that with that increased traffic and activity in that area that we will be able to keep people safe on their way to and from work,” adds Glavin.

Budget deliberations are scheduled to wrap up Friday from city hall with a tax impact presentation.

w/files from Justine Kelsie