St. Albert city council made the right decision Monday when it chose to borrow $15.9 million and extend Ray Gibbon Drive from Giroux Road to Villeneuve Road. Ray Gibbon Drive is slated to replace St. Albert Trail as Highway 2 once the province completes the leg from Villeneuve to a new intersection near Highway 37, about four kilometres north of St. Albert.
The borrowing decision will allow St. Albert to complete this section of Ray Gibbon Drive while construction costs remain relatively low. More importantly, it will support development along this important transportation corridor linking St. Albert to the Anthony Henday Drive ring road, to Villeneuve Airport and to the burgeoning developments in Northern Alberta.
City council needs to continue to push the province to finalize the alignment north of Villeneuve Road and get on with building the road. Committing to phase three of Ray Gibbon Drive clearly signals that St. Albert is serious about completing this link in the province’s primary highway network sooner rather than later.
St. Albert Trail is already very congested and not suited to light industrial development. Its transformation to a market road lined by commercial development and interrupted by dozens of traffic lights means its role as a provincial highway is nearing an end. One only has to look south to Red Deer to see the future. St. Albert Trail has become our Gaetz Avenue. An extended Ray Gibbon Drive has the potential to open the surrounding lands to significant tax-generating development, perhaps not unlike what Red Deer has created along its piece of the Queen Elizabeth II Highway.
The recent report outlining St. Albert’s light industrial land needs clearly sets out the benefits to all residents from this type of development. City administration is currently reviewing the possible locations for development, but even a cursory examination of the potential locations makes the lands abutting Ray Gibbon Drive and near major intersections such as Villeneuve Road the obvious choice. It’s why the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce asked council to consider that the Rampart Avenir lands were ideally situated for light industrial and to delay approval of this largely residential development until we know where the light industrial parks are best sited.
All of this would set up St. Albert perfectly for the next boom when it comes. There is so much light industrial development happening right on our doorstep, and while it might be too late to get on board with that this time around, the city is well poised to be waiting at the station when the next gravy train comes down the tracks.
Aside from the economic benefits, though, the timing couldn’t be better for city council to make this move. The Bank of Canada has kept its trendsetting interest rates low to give investors confidence in turbulent times. That means that the cost of borrowing is low, and when that is coupled with construction and labour costs that have dipped down from the peaks we saw in the boom of a couple of years ago, all signs point to now being the time to take advantage of the situation and save some money.
No development is possible without road access and council deserves kudos for proceeding on this front. Now if it could just unite around a vision for building our tax and employment base around a light industrial strategy, taxpayers will be well served by the lengthy and costly decision to grow our boundaries through annexation.
