By Angela Brown

Incentive for growth

Administration reviewing city incentive policies

Feb 20, 2019 | 9:30 AM

City administrators are proposing North Battleford continue with its Downtown Incentive Policy for tax abatements after seeing how much it has spurred growth since it was introduced in 2017.

Administration recommended renewing the policy for another 24 months during Tuesday’s planning committee meeting.

Following the meeting, Mayor Ryan Bater said with all the new development downtown, it’s exciting to see the city has had such a good return on the investment so soon.

“It’s working, in short,” the mayor said. “We’re seeing new developments in the downtown. We’re seeing the renovation of properties downtown.”

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Businesses who have taken advantage of the existing incentive policy are the Capital Theatre’s new Annex project and renovation of the old theatre, Giant Tiger, Linda’s Northern Pawn for renovation and Moon’s Kitchen also for renovation.

The mayor said the city is just at the beginning of its downtown revitalization plan and still has several years to go.

“In a lot of communities, when you renovate your downtown or you invest in your downtown, you usually don’t see economic development associated with that for some time after; we’re seeing it during,” said Bater. “So it is exciting… Part of that has been providing an incentive for commercial property owners and new developers.”

Administration didn’t recommend providing incentives for commercial development outside of the downtown core in 2019 since that could hinder potential development down the road. They did, however, recommended continuing the disincentive policy for long-standing vacant commercial properties in the key corridor.

Administration proposed an incentive for renovating properties along 100 St. south of Territorial Drive, and Railway Avenue from Battleford Road to 100 Street.

A comprehensive land sale summary report was presented during the meeting that showed commercial land sales in 2018 were the second highest in the past five years and triple of 2017 sales. Residential land sales were negligible in 2018 however, reflecting a slump in the market comparatively.

As a result, administration proposed reducing prices for city-owned residential lots in Killdeer Park and Fairview Heights, as well as offering tax incentives for all new residential builds.

City Planner Ryan MacKrell said 2018 was a bad year across the province for housing builds so recommended “incentivizing” to boost residential lot sales, similar to many other municipalities.

All of administration’s recommendations related to incentives as well as disincentives will come to the next council meeting in March.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow