St. Albert must aggressively pursue economic development to stay competitive as a municipality within our region. Attracting commerce benefits our community in many ways.

New businesses add significant tax revenue to our city, which eases the tax burden on the residential rate payer.  For individuals, new businesses offer fresh employment opportunities close to home, which reduces commuting time and costs.  For our established business community, increased commercial activity within our municipal boundary, will generate a synergistic effect of improving the economic fortunes of all business located in St. Albert.

How is this accomplished?

First, for sustained economic development to continue in St. Albert, available serviced land needs to be available for companies seeking to locate in our community.  With the completion of Project Number 9 (a sanitary sewer line servicing west St. Albert), the capacity within the City’s servicing infrastructure allowed for development to occur in South Riel.  Consequently, new businesses have located to our city in such a number that in the last four years, land in South Riel is virtually sold out.

To support the continued momentum of light industrial business development in St. Albert, Council’s decision to make the servicing of the Range Road 260 lands “shovel-ready” enabled this project to be eligible for Federal Covid-19 infrastructure improvement funding.  St. Albert was successful in obtaining this funding, which facilitated additional services expansion in the Lakeview Business District, which is now ready for light industrial development. 

This work is key to the on-going effort to reduce the reliance on the residential rate payer for funding St. Albert’s operations. Currently, our community has achieved the 80/20 tax split.  It is time to reshape our goals to a 70/30 residential/commercial tax revenue split. 

This will take time – it starts by servicing the Lakeview Business District.