"Some people look at us being too close to Winnipeg. I look at Winnipeg as 700,000 people that we can draw from. If we got 5 per cent coming through for a night or two and enjoying a getaway from the city, we would be successful," he said.
There's even a more ambitious plan to build a marina to take advantage of the city's location along the Red River. A feasibility study and a business plan have already been completed: now the city just has to come up with money to build it.
"We'll put it on the shelf for now. If there was ever any stimulus money available to do something with recreation, we'd be shovel-ready. We would need help on it. It would be too big a project for the city itself to undertake," he said.
The mainstays of the local economy are tourism, the Gerdau AmeriSteel mill (known locally as MRM or the Manitoba Rolling Mills) which recycles steel into railway material, and the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, the largest mental health facility in the province.
Infrastructure
To prepare the city for future growth, Johannson, a councillor for the previous four years, is also overseeing upgrades to its water plant. It recently received a $6.5 million federal Building Canada grant, which he said will help it become a state-of-the-art facility. Road repairs are also on his agenda.
"They're not as exciting as hotels and condos but infrastructure is huge. It's on everybody's minds. Everybody has problems with infrastructure. We're no different but we're addressing the problem," he said.
The city is also preparing to welcome a sure-fire sign that it's about to take the next step - bus service will begin next year. One 25-person bus will start a half-hour loop in March or April. A second bus has been purchased to serve as a backup.
Said Chris Carter, Selkirk's director of community services: "It's a social service that everyone can use, especially when it's -40 C. It's going to assist students getting to work and seniors getting around the city. This is an essential service while you continue to grow."
Carter estimated Selkirk's population to be about 13,000, roughly the same size as Portage la Prairie, which is the fourth-largest city in the province, trailing Winnipeg, Brandon and Thompson. Its trading area is about 40,000 people but that swells in the summer months when cottagers at Victoria Beach, Lester Beach and Grand Beach on the east side of Lake Winnipeg travel less than an hour to Selkirk to fill their mini-vans with groceries or to visit a walk-in clinic.
Retail
Revitalizing Selkirk's downtown is another priority. Carter said he'd like to convince some businesses that have moved out in recent years to move back and he'd also like to make the core as attractive as possible for new entrepreneurs looking to hang up a shingle.
"We want to make it the business hub that it was at one time. We don't want to lose track of downtown. We want to get ahead of the game. I don't think we've lost downtown but it's finding that difficult balance to have people shop downtown and in outer areas. You want to make sure people aren't just shopping in one location, that they spread out the retail pie," he said.
Carter is optimistic the city's efforts to enhance residential, industrial and commercial development while simultaneously trying to attract businesses and private organizations to move there and start developing could means hundreds of jobs for Selkirk.
There is a little activity on the retail front, with Domino's Pizza building its first store and Tim Hortons finishing up its second, but it's small potatoes compared to a few years ago when heavyweights such as Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and Canada Safeway opened their locations. A new Autopac automobile claims centre is currently under construction, too.
The development plans likely won't be enough to provide a boost to the local real estate market in 2011, according to Albert Sheppard, a realtor at Frontier Realty. He said many contend Manitoba wasn't affected by the recession going on all around it.
"But we were. People are a lot more careful now. Last year and the year before there were bidding wars on homes and now you don't see that at all," he said.
House prices down
In the fall of 2008, an 1,100-square-foot, three-bedroom bungalow with a double garage would have sold for about $215,000. Today, the same house is fetching about $199,000.
"Not many homes are selling at their list price. Many people are reducing their prices after a couple of months [on the market]," he said.
Sheppard said homes in the $135,000 to $190,000 range are selling in about a month while higher-end properties are tending to take two to three months to sell.
One area of strength for Selkirk has been its ability to attract more than its fair share of big-league events. In 2003, it hosted the Western Canadian Summer Games, and four years later it joined Winnipeg in co-hosting the 2007 Women's World Ice Hockey Championships. In 2009 it held the provincial men's curling championships. Carter said Moose Jaw will apply to host as many different events as possible next year and into the future.
from Western Investor, December 2010
