AGRO moving to larger facility
Another sod turning has taken place in the fast growing area of Rocky View County surrounding the popular CrossIron Mills shopping centre alongside the QE II Highway between Calgary and Airdrie.
AGRO, a division of Cervus Agricultural Equipment, broke ground on Dwight McLellan Way directly east of the shopping centre, for XPS Contracting to begin construction of a new 66,000-square-foot dealership that will replace AGRO’s existing Calgary dealership on 84th Street at 24th Avenue N.E.
AGRO general manager Sheldon Gellner says the company has outgrown its current 26,000-square-foot facility and the new location with a much larger main building plus a 17,500-square-foot combine storage building on 4.5 hectares will better meet the demands of his growing agricultural and turf industries.
Gellner grew up as a farm boy in Saskatchewan and always wanted to be in the business of farming. He earned a degree at the University of Saskatchewan in agricultural engineering and then joined John Deere where he served for 12 years before joining Cervus in 2003.
Today he is responsible for 15 wholly owned and managed company John Deere dealerships in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 11 in New Zealand and seven investment partnerships in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The new Balzac location is ideal for access by customers via the QEII, Stoney Trail, Metis Trail and Highway 566, and is so convenient for them to shop at the big centre or the nearby Costco, as well as being adjacent to the planned racing entertainment centre.
The land was purchased through Sean Bradley, now with Jones Lang LaSalle, working with Terry Johnston, Cervus’ senior real estate adviser.
The building was designed after Gellner and his team visited many other dealers throughout North America to ensure it would enhance the customer experience and improve dealership productivity. Last year, he says, Cervus completed a similar facility in Saskatoon and that experience was a big help in determining the best design for the Balzac operation.
The new shop area will take up the majority of space, allowing technicians lots of room to work on the larger agricultural equipment. John Deere combines and tractors are huge and sprayers with 37-metre booms are commonplace.
It will include three fivetonne and one one-tonne overhead crane, high efficiency lighting and in-slab floor heating.
Equipment is becoming more advanced and the dealership has been designed to include a sophisticated training area for both customers and its own John Deere technical staff with a full complement of audio-visual equipment and high speed Internet connectivity for remote two-way video conference training.
Half of the employees at the new $16-million facility, planned to be open by next November, will be technical staff while others will work in the parts department and sales where the 7,500-squarefoot showroom area will allow them to show customers the latest agriculture and turf equipment—anysizecombine or tractor displayed indoors.
Cervus acquires and manages authorized agricultural, commercial, industrial and transportation equipment dealerships with interest in a total of 57 in Western Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Besides John Deere, its primary equipment brands include Bobcat and JCB construction equipment, Clark, Sellick, Nissan and Doosan material handling equipment and Peterbilt transportation equipment.
Hard to believe that this year is coming to an end, but I am reminded by a note from the Rozsa Foundation that you only have until Jan. 14 to make submissions for the 2013 Rozsa Awards for Excellence in Arts Management.
Bow Valley College president Sharon Carey and Becky Kelly, her program co-ordinator for the School of Health, Justice and Human Services, made a quick trip to Jamaica recently. They were welcomed to the Mico University in Kingston to participate in celebrations commemorating the first graduating class of its early learning child care program.
BVC partnered with the university to deliver the program that has attracted 52 students and was taught by local instructors BVC trained, all of whom had gone to school in Canada or had worked with similar projects in Jamaica.
BVC has also developed an articulation agreement into the Bachelor of Education at Mico.