$2-million facelift gives Valemount a boost
Derrick Penner
Sun
An artist’s rendering of the $75-million Saas Fee Valemount Village Resort, seen as key to the town’s redesign as a destination for tourists.
Valemount could have simply rolled itself up when its sawmill closed and pine beetles ravaged nearby forests, but the mountain community is fighting back instead.
The village of about 1,300 — nestled in the crook of the Cariboo, Monashee and Rocky mountain ranges about 670 kilometres northeast of Vancouver — has always been dependent on logging and sawmilling. With that industry in decline, Valemount is hoping to capitalize on its scenic location.
The Northern Development Initiative Trust is contributing $300,000 to a project worth almost $2 million to redesign and rebuild the village’s downtown streetscape with new sidewalks, trees and street lights.
Valemount Mayor Jeanette Townsend said the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification Canada is contributing another $600,000, also from a pine beetle recovery fund, to beautify the village, which is slowly styling itself as a resort municipality.
“We just want to make it look good,” Townsend said in an interview. “I said [to architect Oberto Oberti], ‘Let’s consider the pleasure of locals first, and it will attract tourists, too.'”
The street beautification will serve as supporting infrastructure for a proposed $75-million development by Edmonton’s Saas Fee Developments, consisting of a 170-unit condominium complex and retail space for 25 shops. Townsend said that project “will just give us the push over” the cusp in its bid to capitalize on its natural attributes.
Those qualities used to include a forest industry that directly supported some 40 per cent of its households.
So when Prince-George-based Carrier Lumber Ltd. shut down its sawmill, throwing some 90 people indefinitely out of work, it hurt.
“It means the younger families have to move to where the jobs are,” Townsend added. “And then it’s a domino effect. Fewer people buying groceries, fewer people banking.”
However, Townsend, who has been mayor of Valemount since 1990, said the community has also long been keen on diversification, developing secondary industries to act as a “shock absorber” to disruptions in forestry.
In the early 1990s, Townsend added, the community used provincial economic development assistance to facilitate local workshops on economic diversification.
By doing that, she said, community members were able to lay out what its assets were: its location, (near the entrance to Mount Robson Provincial Park, an hour away from Jasper National Park, midway between Edmonton and Vancouver), its scenery and its outdoor recreation opportunities.
“We’ve done our best to capitalize on our assets,” Townsend said.
Valemount has become known for its helicopter and snowcat skiing operations, snowmobiling and summer all-terrain-vehicle rentals, hiking and heli-hiking.
Now, Townsend estimates that Valemount boasts more hotel rooms and bed-and-breakfasts than households.
The Northern Development Trust, established in 2004 with $185 million in contributions from senior governments, was designed to help communities cope with the economic devastation of the pine beetle infestation.
To date, the trust has committed $45 million to 207 different economic development initiatives across a region that spans Lytton to Fort Nelson and from Valemount to the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The federal Western Economic Diversification Fund will spend about $33 million on projects across Northern B.C.
Judging by the traffic she has seen on Highway 5 running through Valemount, Townsend said there is no noticeable slowdown in the number of road-bound tourists heading into the region despite high gasoline prices.
If anything, Townsend believes, there will be fewer long-distance travellers and possibly more B.C. and Alberta residents who are cutting back on the distances they travel.
Townsend added that the town is also attracting a few new residents not bound by location: retired university professors, consultants who use technology to live wherever they want and former urbanites looking to get away from the bustle of cities.
As well, Valemount is booming with an influx of construction workers for Kinder Morgan’s major upgrade of its trans-mountain pipeline.
“I think Valemount’s future is very bright, and there are many opportunities,” she said. “All we need is the people who will recognize the opportunities and work towards having them realized.”
Townsend is also “looking with bated breath to see our forest industry rebound a bit.”
