Just listen to the words of a friendly voice in a short commercial promoting Lethbridge over the oilsands boomtown: "What do you pay for a house? Like a billion dollars? Does that include doors? I, on the other hand, have a great job in Lethbridge. I own a home, a car, my kids go to university here and I have money left after I pay for it all, doors included. The way I see it, where you are is not better, just expensive."
The voice on the radio commercial goes on to direct job-seekers to www.chooselethbridge.ca. While that commercial was produced for the Fort McMurray market, EDL is also promoting Alberta's arguably most diversified city to Calgarians stuck in traffic on Deerfoot Trail or the roads now choked by southwest LRT construction. It can do so because Lethbridge is a geographically large city for its population, but it's also fairly easy to get around.
"We forget that traffic is part of people's days. You forget that until you go to Calgary … ," said Jean Greer-McCarthy, president of the Canadian Home Builders' Association's Lethbridge chapter.
A builder in Lethbridge since 1993, Greer McCarthy points to Lethbridge as a stable growth market that's insulated from the booms and busts of the petroleum industry.
"The market still goes up and down, but we don't experience the real roller-coaster highs or the big crashes. It's a more moderate picture that develops over time in Lethbridge," said Greer-McCarthy. "Our market is very stable here. We're not dependent on oil and gas."
Lethbridge's stability comes from its strong public-sector presence as well as its steady agri-food and associated manufacturing, transportation and service sectors.
Government jobs
Indeed, nine of the city's top 10 employers are public-sector entities - the growing University of Lethbridge (over 7,200 full-time equivalent students and more than 1,200 FTE staff) among them.
Greer-McCarthy points to the university as an important piece of the puzzle for home builders, explaining that it's not unusual for starter homebuyers on the city's west side to be students with a co-signer, or parents of students looking to build equity from the roommates of their children.
The University of Lethbridge isn't the only post-secondary institution in the city that is contributing to the demand for housing - Lethbridge College is also a part of the picture. Adding to the government presence are two research stations outside the city and regional government offices downtown.
Growth in the city is occurring mostly in west Lethbridge (now the most populated of the city's three sectors), but new homes are also popping up in subdivisions on the north and south sides. Starter homes vary from 900-square-foot single-family homes to townhouse units and apartment-style condominiums.
West Lethbridge, on the west side of the wide Oldman River Valley, has traditionally lagged for commercial development (much of the new commercial is on the south end of the city), but that also appears to be changing, with Save on Foods announcing this fall it wants to open a new 40,000-square-foot store on the west side in 2011. That development is expected to spawn more retail space nearby.
The city's two new westside high schools opened this fall, along with a new public library branch, providing more amenities for west Lethbridge.
Housing starts in the region are expected to hit about 1,400 in 2010 (above the 10-year average), but local agents don't expect to see prices rising much.
House prices
The average selling price of a Lethbridge single-family home in 2010 was $280,400 as of September 30, up about 1 per cent from 2009.
The City of Lethbridge is the city's largest land developer, but there are also significant private-sector-developed subdivisions on the city's north and south ends, providing decent land availability and adding to stability.
The home-building sector itself employs about 4,400 people in the region, Greer-McCarthy said, making it a private-sector economic engine on its own.
The stability of Lethbridge is also highlighted by Stan Mills, president of the Lethbridge and District Association of Realtors, who said homeowners and other investors enjoyed significant price growth in the 2005 to 2008 period, but that prices have levelled off after falling close to 20 per cent after the 2008 economic crash.
"We rode the tide, but everybody else called it a boom," Mills said.
Growth in amenities on the west side, including the long-awaited new high schools, will be a drawing card for people, Mills agrees.
There's also talk of constructing a third bridge over the Oldman, but the project to further link west Lethbridge with the older south side appears a decade away - unless the province dumps a load of cash on the city to help with the work.
The city is in the midst of preparing a large area structure plan for the west side, and it wants to see more employment on that side of the river and reduce additional traffic load on six-lane Whoop Up Drive.
Industrial
Other key projects are also underway. EDL is one of the partners in the new Lethbridge Technology Commercialization Centre (TCC), which is set to open in spring 2011.
Construction on the building in Sherring Industrial Park in North Lethbridge is intended to expand the information communications technology sector, further diversify the economy and provide entrepreneurial and employment opportunities in southern Alberta for post-secondary graduates.
EDL is facilitating this project with significant financial investment from three partners. Western Economic Diversification is investing $4.17 million in facilities and equipment for the centre and its supporting data centre. The City of Lethbridge's $1.1 million infrastructure investment goes toward meeting its economic objectives.
"The long-term success of the TCC will support diversification of our economy, continuing Lethbridge's history of relative economic stability," said outgoing mayor Bob Tarleck. "However, I'm particularly encouraged by the opportunities that it could create for high-tech graduates of our university and college to stay and work in this region."
EDL is hoping that space and related services will appeal to technology firms that are interested in co-locating in Lethbridge with an established and growing local company specializing in the rapidly expanding geospatial imaging industry.
Adjacent to the TCC, Iunctus Geomatics Corp. is constructing a separate corporate office building and Tier III data centre, the only one south of Calgary in Alberta. Iunctus will provide data-centre capacity for TCC clients as well as $1 million over the next five years to support the startup operations of the centre.
from Western Investor, November 2010
