Putting city paydays in perspective

Well, a hundred-million bucks ain’t what it used to be. Oh, it’s big, but increasingly common these days in Medicine Hat.

Last week, Aurora Cannabis announced it would spend “well north of $130 million” to build a 1.2million square-foot medical marijuana facility here.

A few weeks earlier, Hut 8 cyptocurrency said it would spend $100 million to level a site in northwest Medicine Hat and outfit it with 40 seacans full of super computing power.

Big portions of both budgets are for high-tech equipment that arrives from, well, elsewhere, but the number of zeros have some Hatters wondering how the project investments stack up historically.

Could they be the biggest in the city’s history? Well, combined they come close, but no cigar.

One need only look at the potential of a $1.3-billion expansion of the Methanex plant to get an idea how they stack up in today’s marketplace.

However, looking historically, the original Allarco methanol plant, greenlit in 1973, was tagged with a budget of $18.7 million.

Now, considering the rate of inflation as posted by Statistics Canada and compounded since the mid-1970s, the amount would be equal to $37.9 million in 2017 dollars. (And recall that eventually three would be built before they were bought by Methanex.)

Still it’s only about double, considering the general consumer price index, though we well know construction has its own inflation rate.

The largest industrial investment in Gas City history appears to be the follow-up from Allarco to build an ammonia and urea plant that eventually became Western Fertilizer.

The complex was budgeted to cost $55 million in 1974 dollars, or about $260 million in today’s dollars.

That puts it ahead of the $20million Northwest Nitro Chemical plant announced in 1955 and would be valued at $184.6 million today.

The announcement hailing Goodyear’s arrival in 1959 pegged that facility’s construction budget at $4.5 million, or $37.9 million in today’s dollars.

Going a little further back, three major flour mills constructed in 1914 and 1915 cost a combined $1.8 million. Over the next 104 years, the budget value would have grown to $37.3 million. arrival of spring temperatures.

For the first time in memory, last week, cart pickup coincided with the actual start of yard raking and cleanup. Typically a big initial load from tidying up yards (which usually happens in late March), is followed by not much activity until mowing starts in earnest in early May.

Administrators set the startup date years ago, in part to avoid running crews and trucks around town to pick up relatively little compost. Also, council members were forever asking why the service wasn’t operating despite an overflowing been of leaves from flower beds.

Can we all agree that the green carts are a convenient blessing compared to bagging, hauling and burying leaves and clippings that should be turned back into soil?

We’ll see what the opinion of blue cart recycling shakes out when it’s introduced in May or June time frame.

Since the coming week is technically the fifth in April, city council and committee meetings that run on a four-week rotating won’t begin again until May 7.

Enjoy the weather.

A “name that movie star” promotion offered a $5 first prize ($100 in today’s dollars) to Medicine Hat News readers who could identify 10 stars of the silver screen in contest that ran in this week in April 1918.

Sponsors were the Monarch, Empress and Dreamland theatres, as well as City Shoeshine Parlor and, notably, Wright’s Jewelry.

Local insurance agents created an association of “Life Underwriters” to monitor and promote the industry in the region.

The total destruction of a vulcanizing plant on Second Street was blamed on the ignition of gasoline vapours.

Governments in Washington, London and Paris proposed the eventual creation of a transatlantic aerial service. At the same time Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, announced that airplane production in England would quadruple in 1918.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com