Infrastructure Minister Ray Danyluk announced in early August that the province would be selling off two parcels for industrial land south of Fort McMurray starting in September.
The land that will hit the market first includes 625 acres on the east side of Highway 63, about nine kilometres south of Highway 69. It will be sold in its current state as raw land, meaning it could still be months before any servicing could be done on it, and land servicing in the winter in northern Alberta isn't an easy task.
The second parcel of land consisting of about 600 acres near the airport is close to Highway 69, and won't be listed for sale until early 2011.
The province owns virtually all of the raw land close to the city.
"Government is responding to a critical need in this community," said Danyluk, the former municipal affairs minister who is well aware of the issues facing Fort McMurray and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
Developers, who have voiced repeated concerns about Fort McMurray's land crunch, welcomed the decision, with reservations.
"Commercial land is of high need and in very short supply," Bryan Lutes, president of the Wood Buffalo chapter of the Urban Development Institute, told Western Investor in early June. "The province has indicated that they may be letting some out this summer," Lutes said at the time"… but it will be raw land, and raw land is probably two to three years away from being useable land."
from Western Investor September 2010
