Gander, airport authority enter business venture
The Town of Gander’s 2022 budget includes funds for commercial land investment, a new venture for the town and one that’s expected to bring some dividends for both parties in the deal.
The purchase will cost a total of about $1 million and $450,000 was earmarked in this year’s budget as a cash investment to get the project started.
Some might question the timing of a venture into commercial real estate in a year when the town was forced to raise taxes to cover a projected operational shortfall, but both parties see the move as strategic and positive.
“The town and the airport authority have been kind of beating the bushes on business development prospects for about 10 years or so,” Reg Wright, president and CEO of the Gander Airport, explained.
“We’ve always had a strong collaborative relationship with the town. We’re trying to do things together that grow Gander because we both benefit from that. Gander is the airport and the airport is Gander and it’s largely interchangeable,” he continued.
“The town has a lot of expertise in this. We have land and it’s really a natural fit for us to go forward with this joint venture that can see benefit for both the airport and taxpayers in Gander.
“Gander has a growing retail sector and sort of has a deficit of land for retail at the same time. And we do have one of the best highest visibility tracks for retail on the corner of Cooper and James Boulevard. So, we’ve been talking about a retail campus there with some developers and retailers. This investment will allow us to co-develop the site to bring new retail business to Gander,” Wright said.
He anticipates securing tenants for the new spaces will be easy.
“The prospects are very mature at this point, so that’s why we hope the development phase, with the right signals, could probably commence if not this year, next year,” he noted.
Wilson Hoffe, chair of the town’s corporate services committee, noted developing the five or six acres of land will enhance the land bank available for new construction and is “a strategic investment on the town’s part because we need to have more commercial land for businesses to locate on.”
The remaining portion of the funding will be financed through other means, such as taxation forgiveness and inkind things, he added.
“It’s a great partnership because once it gets taken up, it’s two bangs for the one buck. It provides extra revenue for the authority, which generates significant revenue from rentals and, of course, it provides great taxation revenue for the town.
“It’s appropriate that we do that if we want to grow the community, and the community must grow,” he continued.
“Gander’s ultimate destiny was to be a service centre for a population that probably is somewhere in the area of 70-80,000 people and I think that’s not pie in the sky, that’s reality.”
The investment brings welcomed stability, noted Wright.
“The industry goes in extremely volatile cycles, even outside of a pandemic, so land development is good,” he said. “It pays steady and it’s not subject to the whims and challenges of aviation.”