Interim city manager Merete Heggelund listens to a presentation on human resource policy at a committee meeting Tuesday. She says staff are contemplating how to approach a council request for options regarding clubs located on city land proposed for a long-term industrial park plan.--NEWS Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
City administrators are now developing potential options to assuage fears of local clubs that worry their facilities will be swallowed by a proposed industrial park, but they may have had their final say at a public hearing last week.
On March 7, a three-hour public hearing heard presentations from clubs which lease portions of city-owned land in the northwest outlined as a major industrial attraction project by the economic development department.
It concluded with councillors asking the land-planning matter for the NW Industrial Park be tabled and brought back next week with potential solutions either in the area structure plan or via leases between clubs and the city.
Top administrators told the News this week City Hall is determining a course of action but that may not include formal discussions with clubs.
“The public hearing is closed, so we can’t put anymore information on the public record,” said Merete Heggelund, who took over as interim city manager Monday. “Obviously there’s an ongoing lobbying effort from the clubs and what they are talking to council (members about), but the hearing is adjourned with no decision.”
The item is technically an area structure plan, which is a high level layout of the area, its planned uses and infrastructure layout. Clubs expressed concern over staging of development, stating a potential rail link to the west might conflict with their facilities in the short term.
Coun. Shila Sharps pressed Invest Medicine Hat consultants Stantec on the potential scheduling and told council she would prefer to see leases extended to give some assurance to leaseholders.
Council voted 9-0 in favour of bringing it back March 21.
There is some legal question about how items outside the document could be folded in, or whether council could amend the plan itself or require it to go back to the applicant – in this case, Invest MH – before approving it.
“Council could flow it back to Invest, if that was an option they were willing to pursue,” said Heggelund.
Of the six quarter-sections in question, the clubs are located in the northern two.
Development would initiate in the southernmost two, and when 75 per cent of the non-club land, (comprising several hundred acres) was under contract, a consultation process would be triggered between the city and its tenants.
Consultants drew up the proposed structure plan, which might not come to fruition for 20 years, but including the northern phase provides certainty for buyers.
As written, clubs have more security than if the parcel was owned by a private developer, they argued.
The clubs say that leaves them with little security or the confidence to go ahead with upgrades or improvements to the properties leased from the city.
Officials with the Medicine Hat Rifle and Revolver Club said at the hearing that their 1,000 members are willing to purchase the land under their facility near the city’s Unit 16 and 17 power plants.
Officials from other clubs argued that events at the Medicine Hat Speedway and Medicine Hat Drag Strip bring in out-of-towners and a good level of business activity.
