The City of Dauphin and RM of Dauphin are once again promoting their Business Park to the north of the City, inviting industry to help boost the area's economy.
Martijn van Luijn, City of Dauphin Economic Development Manager, said it's been a joint venture between the City and RM for a while.
"So it's in the rural municipality, so it's in the RM but is jointly owned by the RM and the City. So it's just north of town, alone highway 362, the Valley River Highway...we have tried to attract businesses in there for many years, but recently we've seen more activity, we've seen more interest in it. We've seen a general growth in business and economy in our community anyway, and this sort of falls in line with that," said van Luijn.
According to van Luijn, now is the perfect time to promote the Business Park. With the Justice Centre set for construction, which will be in the same area of the RM, multiple infrastructure upgrades are needed, like sewer systems. Those upgrades, van Luijn hopes, will serve as another benefit for businesses to consider the Business Park.
"The new Dauphin Centre for Justice is going to be on the west side of the Business Park, so technically within, albeit it's own piece of land, that we have allocated to the Province for this project for many years...we're going to be investing in the Business Park in the future by putting more roads in, different paving, there will be ultimately sewer there, because right now there is water but no sewer, because the Centre for Justice will need sewer, so it's going to be a whole bunch of different things happening, so this is a great time for us to start promoting these lots in the Business Park, and that's essentially what we're doing," said van Luijn.
For local businesses, there are a lot of benefits to getting an industrial lot in the Business Park, from location and future infrastructure improvements, to cheaper prices from the RM and City, and even cheaper prices if your business will bring jobs to Dauphin and the community.
"If you go around in the region, it is about one-third below the average price for industrial land, so we're offering that short price...in addition, if it's a business that you start that has jobs attached to it or an increase in assessment, if you build buildings on it for example, we're actually open to offers that are lower than that," said van Luijn.
Amid recent concerns in the region around infrastructure project delays due to contractors working on flood damages, like the recently announced delay of the Craft District, the Centre for Justice's construction timeline is also uncertain, though no announcements have yet been made by the Province.
