New Development Encouraging

New residential development planned for Cold Lake

Mayor of Cold Lake, Craig Copeland, says he is encouraged by the new development planned for Cold Lake. The development, Deer Meadows, presented Council with its area structure plan last week. Mayor Copeland says it’s “good to see people still wanting to develop in Cold Lake and looking towards the future.”

The property is in the south east part of the city. Mayor Copeland says even with new investment in the city, it’ll take a while for things to bounce back from the high of 2015. “I think 2017 is going to be just as difficult as 2016. I see it picking up a little bit; but we’ve certainly changed the price of doing business in Alberta, when you look at the corporate tax increase and the carbon levy.”

Although heavily reliant on the oilfield, Cold Lake is fortunate to have other economic resources, explains the Mayor. “We’re lucky to have the air base. There’s a lot of money being spent on the base, doing improvements. The City’s also doing a lot of capital projects, we’re hanging in there.”

Mayor Copeland recognizes the service industry is feeling the pinch the most, “the gas stations, restaurants and hotels are feeling it the most. Really, everybody’s feeling the effects of the economy.”

“It’ll come back, it always will.” The mayor sticks to his stance on pipelines, “the Trans-Mountain approval in December is key for the Lakeland area. That’ll set the table for pipelines across Alberta.” Mayor Copeland has always maintain a strong opinion that pipelines are vital to health and growth of the provincial economy. “People don’t realize that if you look at the pipelines across Alberta, they’re pretty-much running at full capacity; there’s not much room left. So if you’re a major company and you’re going to invest significant money in projects, you want to make sure you can get your product to the markets.”

Mayor Copeland says there’s some big projects in the works in the area, “the Imperial Oil expansion will be the real significant one to hang your hat on. That’s the bright light and hopefully, in 2018-19 we’ll see some construction on that.”