On May 16, a group of approximately 30 Thompson residents filed into the multipurpose room at the Vale Regional Community Centre to glean some information about the city’s plan to develop acreage lots north of the Burntwood River.
While the finer details of this project still need to be ironed out, Thompson Mayor Dennis Fenske spent about an hour fielding questions from the public and laying out what the city has planned so far.
Fenske opened the meeting by talking about how this project is a part of the Thompson 2020 initiative; a plan to ensure that Thompson is an attractive place to live once local nickel refinery and smelting operations close down in 2018.
According to the city, one of the ways to maintain the community is to developroughly 150 acres worth of land north of the Burntwood River, which could provide Thompson residents with space for farming land, residential plots and/or recreational activities.
“They want more than a 60 foot or 50 foot residential lot. We are an outdoor community, so we want to take advantage of the outdoors,” said Fenske. “In other cases we’ve had people move here from southern Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, or other places where they’ve had acreages … we don’t have that opportunity here and we have a growing need and a growing interest for that type of development.”
However, Fenske was quick to point out that these acreage lots wouldn’t have access to the same services and infrastructure that residents are used to south of the river.
“There’s no expectation that there will be water and sewer services in these developments,” he said. “It would be a septic service and it would be well water or hauled water. It may grow to that if the city expands and the infrastructure can be taken across the bridge … but at this point, in this concept, it’s like living at the lake.”
Fenske also took the time to reinforce the fact that these lots will be built on taxable land and development will be on a cost-recovery basis.
He also said that the size of individual lots could range from one to 10 acres, although that number could be subject to change.
Even though Fenske said that it might take 18–24 months before these lots are available for purchase, his pitch seemed to generate significant interest amongst the meeting’s attendees, including local business owner Andre Proulx, who asked the mayor multiple questions throughout the hour-long session.
“My hope is that it is a go-ahead,” Proulx said once the meeting was over. “People have Ski-Doos, quads, campers and they like to use them. There’s nowhere to put your stuff and nowhere to let your kids go quadding without disturbing the neighbours. I think it will be a positive thing for Thompson as long as the taxes aren’t too expensive.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the city has proposed this kind of land development. Similar plans were proposed a couple years ago and in the 1990s, but those projects didn’t gain much traction.
Fenske said that this newly generated interest in the project is due to the fact that the city’s population has changed over time and their needs are different in the year 2017.
“In the 1990s we were 20 years younger and so people weren’t thinking retirement or acreages and things like that,” he said. “Now they’ve got grandkids here. More people have come from the south, have had hobby farms, had a horse or some chickens and a goat or whatever. So the market now is driving it. The interest is driving it. That’s clearly what’s happening.”
According to Fenske, the next information session about acreage development should take place sometime before city council dials back to meeting once a month in July and August. Until then, any questions about this development project can be emailed to [email protected] with the subject line “Acreage Lots.”
