Edson

EDSON, ALBERTA pieces onto. And we know if that foundation isn’t in good shape that we won’t be successful with some of the higher level objectives of eco- nomic development in our community.” Should Edson ever have the need, or desire, to extend its boundaries sometime in the fu- ture, Derricott says that the town is planning ahead. “We have a project that is shovel-ready,” he states. “We call it the West End Sewer Line. It opens up half a dozen quarter sections of land on the west end of the community to be serviced with water and sewer. It also runs up against the border of our partners in Yel- lowhead County.We want to be proactive in thinking about if those border areas are going to take advantage of our services, we want to make sure we work with our partners to build a cohesive development plan so that at some future date, if we do annex them, it matches up as well as possible with our development here in the town and we have a willing partner in Yellowhead County that’s working with us to that end.” Meanwhile, Derricott says that the down- town area of Edson is in a period of transition. “Like many communities our size, we’ve seen the big box stores that have come to town– Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire – that continue to put pressure on the local businesses,” he explains. “But I would say that our Main Street has been fairly resilient. Some businesses have left, but, overall, we continue to have the professional representative there – chiropractors, lawyers, the banking sector, and then we have kind of a boutique retail sector which has emerged there. We’re quite proud of that, although it continues to be a challenge. One of the challenges that we experienced during the boom times in our community is that rental values went quite high, and so it’s very expensive to rent space in our downtown area right now and so that also puts pressure on some of these smaller, fami- ly-run businesses.We’ve recently revamped our beautification grant, whose intent is to provide some of those local businesses with access to some funding to enhance the aesthetics of their storefronts –whether it’s new signage or plant- ers or flowers or a fresh coat of paint.” “We’re also starting to evaluate mixed-use core development –ground floor retail with potential residential development above,” Derricott continues. “I think conceptually we’re very supportive of that; attracting investment in that type of development is probably a little bit of a bigger challenge for us, but we’ve had lots of conversations about making our com- munity more pedestrian friendly, in general. Recently we completed a Trail Master Plan, to include all people who choose either biking or walking as their mode of transportation. It indicated to us some improvements we can make in our commercial and downtown area