BOWDEN – The Town of Bowden is reclaiming a big portion of its land.
The province recently approved the annexation of 320 acres of land from Red Deer County that was previously owned by the town.
The two quarters of land are located in the southwest portion of Bowden.
"In the 1950s we bought land from Red Deer County across the tracks on the south side, for our sewage lagoons, our water, and our landfill,” said Robb Stuart, mayor of Bowden. "So we owned the land but it was still in county jurisdiction and it’s been like that for 60 or 70 years.
"We don’t need any more land technically, but since we owned this land already, now we’ll get the taxes from it,” said Stuart, adding the process to reclaim the land took about one year.
Stuart noted W.A. Grain and Pulse Solutions moved into the area in 2014 and now want to expand. The company requested to go through the town but was told they had (to be approved) through the rural municipality because the county owned the land.
"That’s when we started the annexation process. Red Deer County has been really good about it,” said Stuart, noting the land in the area, including the newly annexed land, has been zoned for industrial use and will continue as such in the future.
He also pointed to an increase in interest in the land.
"We’ve had a couple of inquiries similar to W.A. Grain and Pulse Solutions (expansion) and there’s been a couple of other inquiries about a similar manufacturing process, whether it be canola, seed cleaning or agricultural functions mainly,” he added.
Stuart noted the cooperation between the town and county over the years.
"The county’s been really good with anything that we’ve approached them with. They’re doing all of our planning and development now under contract,” said Stuart. "They still make those recommendations to our Municipal Planning Commission.
"Any development out there, because it was under their jurisdiction, would (go) to the Red Deer County Municipal Planning Commission and they would decide what was happening. Now it will come to the Town of Bowden,” he explained.
"We have control of it again.”
In addition to the newly annexed land, added Stuart, there are two more quarters of land on the east side of Highway 2 that Bowden annexed several years ago.
"We own two quarters of land on the other side of the highway,” he said. "We annexed that 10 years ago but there’s been no development over there. We service that land too, but nobody has seemed to buy it yet.”
Robb Stuart, Bowden mayor
"We have control of it again."
