Residents of Rimbey can expect to see a lot of construction activity throughout the community this summer as a bit of a building boom is currently underway, and you don’t have to look very hard to see it.
While the Home Hardware store on the town’s east side is nearing the completion of a major expansion, a new building is on the rise just one block away under the direction of developers Duane and Nancy Adams.
“We’ve been in town for a few years and obviously, we try to support the local businesses as much as we can – instead of shopping out of town,” Duane Adams said. “That’s the only way a small town is going to grow, I think, so we figured in order for people to shop locally, you have to have the businesses here to do it. If you’re going to have businesses, you need a place to put them so that’s why we decided to go ahead.”
Adams said the timing of the construction of their new building couldn’t come at a better time, in light of all the other activity in the area.
“With all the development that’s going on around Rimbey, we thought that this was a good time to have a look at it and we thought we’d take a chance on it and see how it works,” he said.
While he acknowledged that he has no particular type of retail store in mind for one of the two outlets that the new building will contain, he is confident both sides will be leased in short order.
“There’ll be rockwork on the front and a stucco finish all the way around with a loading dock in the rear,” Adams said in describing the structure. “We haven’t really set a completion date yet but we’re thinking somewhere around September. Possibly before that, but we’re shooting for September.”
Keeping with his philosophy of supporting the local economy as much as possible, he said if things go as expected, the plans are already in place for another, much larger building further east on 50th Avenue.
“Everything is going to be local as much as possible. We’ve hired a local plumber, local dry waller, local framing contractor; so we’re going to go with local guys as much as possible,” Adams said. “If this building works out, if it’s leased out by September, there’ll be another one coming on the east end of town, only it’ll be bigger.”
He said the design of the building has already been completed and will be located on the vacant, fenced-off lot east of the FasGas outlet on the site of the former abattoir.
“That one will be five-bays and more of a light industrial type thing with big bay doors in the back and store fronts facing the street,” Adams said. “Hopefully it works. I think things will go good. I think Rimbey needs a bit of a kick to get things going and a little bit of pride back into Main Street and hopefully this well help things along.”
Rimbey Mayor Dale Barr said the construction of the new building is just one of several that have either already been approved or are in the final stages.
“Council has had a number of proposals in front of it for the last few months and certainly, with the business incentives that our community offers, it is the right place for this kind of boom to take off, and yes, we’ve got some good commercial projects that are starting up this year,” Barr said. “Some of them are just being finalized and we see this as probably one of our bigger growth years in the commercial sector.”
He said Town Council has recently approved three projects and a number of others are in the review process for development permits that should be forthcoming within the next few months, including a new ambulance facility.
“The new ambulance building has been discussed by Council and has been approved by the Emergency Services Board to go ahead for construction this year,” Barr said. “We have funding that was received and supported by the County of Ponoka and we’re just working on detailed designs for that structure and hope to go into construction as soon as that is completed.”
In his nearly ten years as mayor of the community, Barr said 2008 could prove to be a record year for property development in Rimbey.
“We’ve had a number of large projects come into the town. The hospital, at $20 million, is certainly the biggest institutional-type project that the community has ever had come in,” he said. “But we have to wait and see how the commercial development goes because we’ve had large projects come forward in recent years, but we’re shooting for a record this year and we think we’ve got the right stuff to make it happen.”
Barr was quick to credit the work of Council over the past number of months in setting the table for development projects and feels there’ll be plenty of commercial, industrial and even residential property available in the near future.
“I think a lot of preliminary work has been done by Council to set the right environment for the commercial construction and, certainly, we’ve been working with a number of developers over the last two years, and their projects are just coming to completion now,” Barr said. “So we see significant property being available for commercial, industrial and residential for the next two or three years and all those in the initial stages of planning should show good benefit and growth for the community over the next few years.”
In another, unrelated area, Barr said construction work on the new drag strip at the Central Alberta Raceway is proceeding, however he added that they could really use some help from Mother Nature.
“Well, we’re waiting for the weather,” he said. “There’s nothing to really update on that side of it right now. We’re still working on design for the cement part of the drag strip and the weather to clear up for us to finish base construction.”
Barr added that a new web site has been established where the public can access all sorts of information as well as a schedule of events at Central Alberta Raceways. That site is located at: caraceways.ca