Mayor looks forward to the New Year

Adelle Ellis
Times Reporter

 

Another year has come and gone, and Strathmore Mayor Michael Ell has spent his time focusing on the positives of this past year and is very excited for what is coming in the New Year.
“We’ve had a downturn in the economy and it’s affected a lot of people. But our community comes together and helps, it’s unbelievable,” said Ell. “I think there’s been some understanding that by working together we can accomplish more.”
The Town of Strathmore has had a bit of a slow year; however, Ell is looking to all of the good things that have happened for inspiration about what can be accomplished in the New Year.
“We are looking at doing some major improvements in our downtown with revitalization,” said Ell.
Some of those improvements he is talking about include several new businesses and other groups that are moving into the downtown core: the Catholic Church has bought the old IGA location and they are going to turn it into their place of worship; the Wheatland Society of Arts has moved into the downtown area; Bow Valley College is looking at moving next year into the old Co-op building, which will be renovated and leased out to multi-use type businesses; Wheatland Further Education is looking at moving in with Bow Valley College.
With all this new activity taking place in downtown Strathmore, Ell is certain that it will bring more activity and tourism into the downtown area.
“There’s going to be opportunities to be able to find a way to encourage people to come into their stores. [And] I would encourage the businesses downtown to revitalize the appearance of their businesses,” he said, adding that if the outside of the businesses downtown get a facelift it adds to the curb appeal of the stores, which could bring in more tourists who usually don’t leave Hwy #1. They could also get more customers from those people who will attend the new Bow Valley College location.
“What will bring the tourists into Strathmore if you can’t get them off the main highway, if you can’t get them into the downtown? Businesses downtown need to find a way to encourage those people to come into their stores,” said Ell.
There have also been some exciting plans set in motion for the next few years, including the Canada 150 celebrations that will hopefully be a big boost for tourism in Strathmore.
Last year, the Golden Hills School Division (GHSD) had a K-9 school approved for the town. Strathmore, Wheatland County and GHSD are coming together to build a recreation facility attached to the new school that will be opened in 2018.
“That recreation facility will have a walking track for everybody. In the cold weather the seniors will be the biggest users of the track. It will also have lacrosse, futsal (which is soccer on a smaller field) and pickleball for those of us who don’t bend as well as we used to,” said Ell with a laugh, adding the partnership “says a lot about us coming together to make sure that our citizens are well served.”
Another exciting change coming to Strathmore in the next year are some much needed improvements to the hospital.
“For many years we’ve been trying to get some improvements in our hospital and this year, the new government is making sure that those improvements happen. Some are long past due, and there’s still much more that has to be done, but we’re finally getting some things done and it will help serve our community much better,” said Ell.
Improvements coming to the hospital will include renovating and enlarging the emergency services that the hospital provides.
Ell hopes that in the future the hospital will also see another x-ray machine put in, as well as possibly looking at getting some dialysis machines.
Another exciting project the town is currently researching, and hopes will be put into place in the next two years, is a transit system that will connect Strathmore to Chestermere to Calgary.
The transit research is still being looked at to see the viability of the project in Strathmore, but Ell hopes that it will connect to a LRT station in Calgary and that the system will bring out more tourists to events that Strathmore holds. The system also has the possibility of it bringing out a labour force that Strathmore currently doesn’t have, to the industrial land that the town offers.
Strathmore is part of a foreign trade zone, which allows businesses to import goods from countries not in the “free trade zone” and hold the goods for a period without needing to pay the duties on them right away. This is currently directed by the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP).
“The provincial government is updating the Municipal Government Act,” said Ell. “With the update, they are turning the CRP into a growth management board and what we will be doing is concentrating on managing the growth in our region. Calgary and surrounding communities (part of the foreign trade zone) will all work together to do our growth and planning which will include economic development, and transit to a certain extent.
“There’s some exciting times, really great opportunities for us to work together as a region to make our area that much stronger. This gives us an opportunity to be less reliant on oil,” he said.
Being connected to Calgary and other surrounding communities as part of the growth management board presents Strathmore with an opportunity to have their voice heard in relation to economic development, and will help local businesses to thrive.
“We’ve had a downturn in our economy, and we’ve had some negatives, there’s no two ways about it. But the positives in our community outweigh those negatives like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve got a lot of work to do, it’s not going to be easy, and there’s going to be several challenges. But there is no way that you could not see the benefit in this community,” said Ell.