LETHBRIDGE- Lethbridge’s west side has seen a major increase in growth, and experts say the boom isn’t stopping anytime soon.
“We were kind of lonely over here when we first built 15 years ago,” said Dr. Rod MacFarlane, owner of Highlands Pet Hospital.
MacFarlane may have been early to the party, but he’s quickly being joined by dozens of other business owners who call Lethbridge’s booming west side home.
“We did some investigation looking at the demograhics and what was available and what wasn’t available,” he explained. “There was one small existing clinic here on the west side at the time, but we certainly saw the future and thought positively of the future and the growth that we thought was going to happen.”
Everywhere you look something new is going up in west Lethbridge. The ever changing landscape has seen a particularly large boost in growth over the past five years.
“There’s quite a large growing population there and it has been for quite some time and there wasn’t a lot of commercial development previously,” said City of Lethbridge community planner Tyson Boylan.
“It appears that we’re at the tipping point and businesses are finding it feasible to develop there.”
With developments happening in the blink of an eye, community planners work with developers to help designate commercial, recreational and residential areas.
“In terms of residential plans, there’s plans for the Crossings area, Copperwood II, the Canyons which is fairly new and has been under development about a year or two as well, and Garry Station and Country Meadows,” said Boylan. “As well, there will be commercial development in the Crossings and coming towards the highway almost, there will be industrial, commercial development.”
Developers aren’t the only ones working with community planners. Officials are also keeping the town of Coalhurst involved in west Lethbridge’s future, and those town officials say they’re on board with the boom.
“We’ve had some discussions with their planning department in terms of their plans obviously, and some of the impacts it may have on our community, as well as some discussions on the potential road structures that may come out as a result of that,” said Coalhurst’s chief administrative officer Kim Hauta.
No matter what the outcome decades down the road officials say they look forward to building Lethbridge’s future.
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