Celebration Ford will anchor new development: New business park in works for Moosomin

October 3, 2012, 4:32 am
Kevin Weedmark

A new 33-acre business park is being developed at the corner of the East Access Road and the Trans-Canada Highway, anchored by a new 20,000 square foot building that will be home to Celebration Ford.

The new Eastgate Business Park will be immediately west of the Borderland Co-op gas bar, and east of Miller Equipment.

The new Celebration Ford dealership will be located close to the corner of the East Access Road and the highway.

An east-west road will be developed south of the dealership, dissecting the property. There will be land available to be developed west of the dealership facing the Trans-Canada Highway, and south of the new east-west road.

Celebration Ford general manager Tyler Thorn said the original plan was to just build a new dealership at the site on the Trans-Canada Highway, but since the company had to purchase the entire 33-acre site in order to secure the land Thorn wanted, the decision has been made to develop the entire area as a business park.

Thorn says there were a lot of issues to consider when deciding whether to renovate Celebration's existing location or build new.

The dealership is currently spread over three buildings along Broadway Avenue.

"It's been about two years since we seriously started thinking about renovating versus building a new facility," he says.

"We looked at renovating and staying here, but it is an older building, and parking is an issue. At 9 a.m. the parking spots are full on the street, and then customers are driving around the block looking for a place to park.

"We thought if we renovate here, we're still not set up to handle the volume of business we're handling.

"We don't have the room to expand. We can't hire any more techs. We don't have any more room for them."

He said the new location will give Celebration Ford the room to grow.

"Any of my peers that have gone this route and decided to build say they've been able to recruit new people and take the opportunity to grow the business."

He said the auto dealership has been increasingly constrained by its downtown Moosomin location.

"You get to the point where you're limited by the number of employees you have, and if you don't have the space to add employees, there's no way you can grow."

The first task in the new development will be surveying the land across the property and making plans to service the land.

Thorn is hopeful that some of the earthwork can start this year, and that construction can start on the dealership next year.

He hopes Celebration Ford will be moving into its new building in the spring of 2014.
Thorn says he is starting to get excited about the development.

"It's pretty exciting," he said. "Initially the size of the investment scared me, but once you talk about it long enough, you get your head around the numbers and you figure out how it can work, you get a lot more comfortable with it.

"Now we're to the point that we're talking to the architects, we're going to go see a couple of new dealerships. It's getting more exciting all the time."

Thorn says there has been a lot of interest in the business park.

"We had people interested before we owned it," he said. "There are people interested in having their own business out there, and we have one company interested in helping develop the land."

With the development planned for Eastgate Business Park and other developments planned for the community, Thorn believes the face of Moosomin will change considerably over the next few years.

"Moosomin is going to look awfully different five years from now, especially along that highway," he said. "Look at the changes in the last five years.

"I have no doubt we're going to have more and more businesses wanting to come into Moosomin.

"It's obvious that businesses want to be here. Geographically, we're in a good spot, not just because of the economy around us, but because we're far enough from the major centres."

Thorn says the two options he considered were renovating his existing location, or building on the highway, but never considered investing anywhere but in his home town.

"I would never dream of doing it anywhere else," he said. "This is our home, and there's going to be lots of opportunity in the next 10 years. Our economy's going to grow. Our town is going to grow. I sleep great every night. I have no doubt that this is going to be a success."