For a number of years, the Shantz Village Land Corporation has been publicly promoting the inclusion of a Buy Low Foods grocery store (including its size, location and artist renderings of front façade) in Shantz Village.
While the recent Buy Low Foods announcement confirming the above is interesting, it is not a complete surprise.
What does the future hold for the existing AG Foods building? Despite past protestations to the contrary by town council, could it be the site chosen long ago for an expanded Didsbury library?
Included in the May 8, 2018 council agenda was the following from a March 2018 meeting of the library board of trustees under the heading Library Expansion:
“….moved that we as a Board are comfortable moving forward, however we remain concerned about the costs and the impact of renovating within the given budget."
This suggests a process whereby the town dictated the future of the library; one which is diametrically opposite the process identified in the Alberta Libraries Act.
Readers may recall the town identified in budget presentations, without any supporting rationale, $2 million for an expanded library.
While acknowledging the reality that the process for obtaining municipal funding needs to be undertaken in a collaborative manner, the Alberta Libraries Act is clear in identifying the library board of trustees as being the “lead steer” in requests for library building and equipment funding.
The mayor has not responded to a query as to whether council intends to follow the Alberta Libraries Act.
After considerable due diligence, the renovation and expansion of the library into the former town office was determined to be greater than $2 million, and would be little more than “putting lipstick on a pig” (plus one that was not large enough to meet the future needs of the community).
One might ask if the present vison of town council for an expanded library is to “put lipstick on a pig” – albeit a larger one.
What will be the town’s total cost to develop the Shantz Village project?
Tracking these costs is part science and part art, as the discipline of accounting is known to be.
Total capital costs in my estimation will likely be around $13 million, plus residents will see increases in their utility bills (water and wastewater) as the capital for the Valarosa lift station and Rosebud sanitary trunkline is included in amortization cost recovery calculations.
The estimated $13 million is derived as follows:
1.) $6.980 million recorded as costs at Dec. 31, 2018 per the audited financial statements. The auditor indicates approximately $4.4 million of infrastructure costs will be retained by the town (the $6.980 million includes $1.6 million of outstanding debt owed to Canadian Minerals Inc. (CMI) from the original purchase, plus remaining debenture borrowings).
2.) $1.8 million for the Rosebud sanitary trunkline to replace the “temporary” services previously installed (Didsbury Review March 17 and 24, 2015).
3.) $1.5 million for the Valarosa lift station required to provide water at sufficient pressure for the fire hydrants and to generally service Shantz Village development.
4.) $1.7 million for road repairs and intersection reconfiguration at Highway 582 and the entrance to Shantz Village.
5.) $1 million for interest on debt, plus legal costs, realtor fees and administration costs.
Feel free to add costs associated with whistle cessation and culvert remediation to the above.
The twists and turns in history of what is now known as Shantz Village is worthy of a novel.
Commencing with the purchase from CMI, through the controversy of the town spending “build it and they will come money”, the failures to finalize transactions with N-Viro (biosolids and food waste recycler), Bruce Steel (metal fabricators) and others, through the transition from an industrial project to a residential/commercial project proposed by the Shantz Village Land Corporation that is unlikely to be completed as scheduled in 2020 (so we won’t know how much the town receives from the sales for some time), it has been quite a journey.
It is a story worthy of being added to academic research on small-town economic development initiatives.
Kevin Bentley,
Didsbury
