Moose Jaw-Regina Corridor Finally Official
The official Moose Jaw-Regina Industrial Corridor Stakeholders Committee, representing eight municipalities, including the cities of Moose Jaw and Regina, met today and signed an historic agreement to work cooperatively to create mutually beneficial economic development of the region along Canada’s Trans-Canada Highway between the two cities.
Area municipal and economic development agencies had met over the proposed corridor since the 1990s. In 2009, the South Central Enterprise Region and the Regina Regional Opportunities Commission spearheaded a committee to bring community stakeholders located in the corridor together to ensure business and industry could develop with ease. In an exceptional and landmark agreement, the eight participating municipalities raised a total of $100,000, including $25,000 from the South Central Enterprise Region. The committee’s application for matching funds through Saskatchewan’s Planning for Growth initiative, recently approved, will be used to create a growth management strategy for the Industrial Corridor.
The Stakeholders Committee intends to create uniform regulations for companies wanting to locate in the region that include the cities of Moose Jaw, Regina, villages of Belle Plaine, Grand Coulee and Pense, and rural municipalities of Moose Jaw, Pense and Sherwood. In the heart of the corridor lies the RM of Pense, one of the eight corridor stakeholders. The RM’s Reeve Tom Lemon, who also chairs the Stakeholders Committee, says, “We as well as the other RMs in the Industrial Corridor are dealing with several potential developments at any one time and offering a one-stop shop will enable corporations, small and medium-sized businesses and individuals to have access to shovel-ready land and services.”
On the west end of the corridor lies the RM of Moose Jaw, acting as lead municipality for the Planning for Growth Initiative on behalf of the corridor stakeholders. Its Reeve Darol Owens, says, “We are excited to put together a plan to streamline business, industry and residential development that will also be used to make infrastructure investment decisions, as well as other decisions and recommendations down the road.”
Developing the space between Moose Jaw and Regina along the Trans-Canada Highway has been a vision many years in the making, with effort from many people and organizations over recent decades. Over time, the area has developed into a cluster of industries featuring plants which process and manufacture products such as fertilizers, salt and ethanol, and companies which provide storage and handling of crop protection products and logistics and transportation services.