Monday at their regular meeting Battleford town councillors received a building permit for April indicating two new homes to be built plus a $6.7 million metal tank fabrication plant.
Leading Manufacturing Group Inc. is a manufacturer specializing in shop fabricated heavy oil tanks from 50-barrel to 3,000-barrel capacity. Founded by Lee Gottschlich in 2010, it has an administrative office in Nisku, Alta., a sales office in Calgary, Alta. and a large manufacturing facility located in Vermilion, Alta.
The Battleford plant is to be located at 601-18th St. in the industrial area.
For the planned Battleford plant, resumés are being accepted for apprentice welders, journeyman welders, foamers, labourers and shipper/receiver.
Also planned for the industrial area is a trucking operation storage facility. A building permit for a value of $400,000 was issued for that facility in March.
In other business, Battleford town council has been doing some zoning changes in the way of housekeeping details, sorting out property affected by the twinning of Highway 4 and the development of the commercial highway area west of the highway.
Monday, councillors passed a bylaw rezoning land owned by Kramer Ltd., which has built a new dealership west of the highway, from the Future Urban Development to Highway Commercial District. The bylaw also renamed a street in the area from Yellowhead Crossing to Kramer Crossing.
Council also resolved to subdivide property along the highway, allowing for two slivers of land to be attached to adjacent property, one to Battlefords Esso and the other to Battleford Towne Square. Mayor Derek Mahon said that would take them out of a "no man's land" situation. The slivers were left over from a previous bylaw for a street closure.
In another bylaw, council was authorized to enter into an agreement with the Battlefords and District Co-op for a utility easement. The sewage pumping station for the highway commercial area is located on land owned by the Co-op, which is planning a gas bar/convenience store development near Tim Hortons.
Council also amended its residential incentive policy to reduce what planning and development chair David George said was an "administrative nightmare." Incentives to do with water and sewer were removed in favour of increasing the tax holiday from two years to three. It works out to be about the same savings for the applicant, said George, without the extra paperwork for Town Hall.
