The Village of Acme continues to see growth and is working hard to manage it as builds for the future.
Over the last few years, the Village has seen great growth in food processing with the establishment of Soleterra d’Italia, which has been producing Italian meat products. This was followed up when Sunterra established its greenhouse.
In January of this year, OTI broke ground on its first Canadian location. The company plans the construction of a 15,000-ton grain storage elevator, a wheat flour mill with a daily capacity of 300 tons, a pasta production line with a daily capacity of 100 tons and a confectionary plant with a daily capacity of 50 tons. In the future, OTI also hopes to add a canola-crushing plant to the north of the wheat flour mill.
When fully operational, the plant could produce more than 350 jobs for the community.
This is on top of a promise of a new school, which is underway.
Acme Mayor Bruce McLeod tells the Mail the OTI Flour Mill construction is underway, and they hope it is up and running in November.
He explains the council has worked hard to be investment-ready, and a couple of years ago, was able to secure grants to upgrade its sanitary system. They are also upgrading their reservoir and pumping station.
“The tender just closed, so we will be starting on that shortly and looking at the major work this spring,” said McLeod.
This will help them as they develop more land for residential and commercial property.
He says the OTI investment also comes with residential investment. The Village is responding to this imminent population increase by expanding the north side of Heritage Estates, with 16 new lots to be built on by OTI.
“It is just the matter (of OTI) gets this thing up and running, and then they move into some housing, and then the pasta plant. And then they move into the confectionery stuff,” said McLeod. “They are taking their time and doing it right, and that is a good thing.”
The new developments are welcome, and the Village has been making changes to facilitate this.
“Over the last number of years, this current council and the previous one to that, all established that we wanted to change our land use bylaw. We wanted to make sure that if someone came knocking on the door, we were ready,” he said. “There was not going to be a roadblock to the permits to do things… that’s what we’ve done.”
With economic expansion, the Village has gone from looking for residential developers to having them actively working in the community.
The Village is also looking into some of the government programs to help with its residential development. They applied for the Federal Accelerated Housing Grant last year but were unsuccessful. They are planning to reapply.
“We have also been in constant contact with our MLA Nathan Cooper about different grants Alberta-wide. Martin Shields, our MP, has been really helpful in pointing us in the right direction.”
With industrial and residential growth, the next in line comes commercial.
“The Downtown core, we are looking at that. It is part of our strategic planning. In that northeast section, they are also looking at commercial there, maybe a service station or a restaurant,” said Mcleod. “We are encouraging our downtown area to clean things up and work with us, and we’ll work with them.
“We have a lot on our plate here.”
