Battleford Trail approval to help city growth

With the city experiencing robust growth in the last several years, traffic has increased substantially and will continue to increase when the casino, hotel and other commercial developments are completed later this year.

The Battleford Trail extension is now a go as city council members passed to go into phase four of the Springs Valley Commercial Area plan.

"The consulting engineer firm has nearly completed their detailed design drawings and upon completion they are forwarding them to our department. We will then start the process of redirecting our signing contracts with our contractors," said Mac Forster, Director of Engineering.

The city would like to have phase four completed prior to the completion of phase two and three being completed. Forster says the City felt it would be in the best interest to push phase four ahead of the other phases.

"The whole Springs Valley area which encompasses that area north of the North Service Road and south of the Highway Four bypass, that is all known as the Springs. Phase four of that is actually the area just right behind the casino area. In order to facilitate the development of Battleford Trail from Highway Four to Springs Drive, we felt it would be better to push this ahead of the other phases."

Now that the phase four it going to be put in place, Forster says construction will start within the next couple of weeks.

"We are going to begin construction this fall and, depending on weather of course, we will get as much done as we can get done this year. We will get all of our deep underground stuff done but again depending on weather. If we have a very long extended fall there might be a chance that we can get the base in, but if not it would be a spring paving."

The land that is in and around that area is privately owned. Forster says the Director of Finance for the City of Swift Current has made a contract agreement with the landowners.

"Our Director of Finance (Tim Marcus) has made a contract agreement with the land owners. This is private unlike the other developments within the city which are city owned properties, this is privately owned. The city has entered into a partnership with these owners to get this area of their property developed. They have worked out an arrangement for repayment of any monies that our costs to the city. They will recover those costs as the city property is sold for development."