Earlier this week, a committee of council voted to transfer $250,000 from reserves to the Community Improvement Plan.

It offers incentives to landowners and developers to spruce up their properties.

It covers the airport, the downtown and any brownfield developments.

There is a call from some councillors to expand it to include West Ferris.

Councillor Derek Shogren is a big supporter of doing something for this part of the city.

“Some buildings have gotten old and need a refresher. Lakeshore Drive can be vibrant. If you can envision sidewalks on both sides of Lakeshore Drive all the way down. New industry, buildings fixed up and potentially a new twin pad arena. There’s a lot of potential and we have to start somewhere,” he says.
City staff say it would be take more than 6 months to initiate such a plan for West Ferris.

Councillor Mark King says the arena piece could be important to the future development of West Ferris

The arena committee has supported the Omischl Complex as the site on the public proposals but we are still waiting to hear on the private sector plans.

“There are other proposals coming that will be highly interesting,” King says.
He says the tender timeline to present private sector proposals expired on Wednesday.

Filed under: Community Improvement Plan, Derek Shogren, West Ferris