Alberta

The southern Alberta town of High River grew significantly on January 1.

While urban municipalities are expanding, the oil and gas industry in Alberta continues to gobble up the rights for oil and gas deposits in the province - and to pay significantly for those rights.

The City of St. Albert wants to actively pursue with landowners the development of designated industrial lands in the southwest and southeast corners of the city, to accommodate industrial growth for the next several years. But there is a hitch.

Building activity in Red Deer remained in bounce-back mode for 2011.

The central Alberta city of Wetaskiwin, known as the car-buying capital of Alberta, has rolled closer to a fancy new aquatic centre, but not without agreeing to take on more debt.

With large investors buying apartment blocks, the rental vacancy falling and the oil-fired city economy booming, developers have started or built more than 1,800 new rental apartments in Edmonton in the past year.

$1,000 per-square-foot Its results: sales that hit the annual $1,000-per-square-foot milestone for the period ending September 2011.

A shared ownership concept that has been used in B.C. for more than a decade to finance hotel development appears to be ending as investors face staggering losses in hotel-condos and fractional real estate plays.

A record sale price for a Calgary condominium - $8.3 million - is the latest signal of a muscular residential market re-emerging in Alberta's largest city.

Calgary-based Resorts of the Canadian Rockies has purchased the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort near Golden, B.C. from Dutch-based Ballast Nedam. While the purchase price was not disclosed, Western Investor sources say it was close to $28 million.