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Auto dealer breaks sod on former Opus quarter
An Olds auto dealer is giving a big boost to the Netook Crossing Business Park.
Site work began about two weeks ago for the new Mountain View Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram dealership, a major tenant that will join Federated Co-op’s cardlock station and Olds RV on the former Opus quarter at the Olds overpass.
“It’s real and it’s happening,” said Terry Johnston, spokesman for Prodev Limited Partnership, which owns 23 of the 31 lots in the beleaguered business park.
Occupying a 4.3-acre site with Highway 2 exposure, the dealership is expected to open in March 2013, relocating from its current location at 6207-46 St. in Olds. The steel structure for the 32,000-square-foot building is tentatively scheduled to be going up in late September or early October, Johnston said, calling the Chrysler design “kind of a flagship building.”
The new site will more than double the dealership’s space, allowing it to offer more inventory and customer parking, and plans include hiring more staff, general manager and co-owner Dan Wiebe told the Gazette last month.
Looking ahead, Moody’s Equipment, which owns a 3.8-acre parcel directly south of the Dodge Chrysler site, is expected to start construction on its dealership next year.
“There’s also a couple of other possibilities, but it would be premature to discuss them,” Johnston said.
“We just need to turn this ship around.”
During the past month, a Combine Clearance Centre was also set up in the business park, selling used equipment that was trucked in from Agro dealerships across Alberta.
Meanwhile, some points of contention with Mountain View County should be settled over the coming weeks, Johnston said.
“This big issue of infiltration with groundwater, I believe, subject to one or two more tests, we have it resolved,” he said. “In August we’ll be doing some road maintenance, some landscape maintenance and other things that the county has been complaining about, so you’ll see some of those issues addressed in August.”
The business park’s wastewater system – gravity flow into a holding tank – imposes severe limitations on how much of the park could be developed, Johnston said.
“It sort of depends on the business, but maybe a third of our lots could hook onto that without it being a problem,” he said.
“Water-wise we’re restricted to the water well supply. They compelled us to install a water system with pipes and hydrants. We spent two-and-a-half million dollars on that and now they don’t want to give us regional connections. That is one of our major issues.”
In a joint statement issued following the final adoption of the county’s new Municipal Development Plan, Netook developers on both sides of Highway 27 said they will review the document “in consideration with its development over the course of the next few weeks to determine their course of action.”
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