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Placing a value on land

You have to hand it to the Town of Cochrane. Who else could sell 2.17 acres of dirt, lawn and gravel located on a highway for $2.75 million? That is truly an epic achievement. Even more spectacular will be La Vita Land Inc.

You have to hand it to the Town of Cochrane.

Who else could sell 2.17 acres of dirt, lawn and gravel located on a highway for $2.75 million? That is truly an epic achievement. Even more spectacular will be La Vita Land Inc.'s ability to ring this parcel up for enough revenue to pay for the entire project once it's developed.

The plan is a doozy.

Goes to show it's more about what you see in the potential of that dirt patch than just what it is.

That's where Rocky View County's suggestion to expose the Cochrane & District Agricultural Society's (CDAS) patch to developers becomes provocative. In 1986, the quarter-section of land leased to CDAS was little more than that; a quarter (or about 145 acres in this case).

Back then, Cochrane was a standalone community more than a nearly-suburb of Calgary, and the town was largely contained to the town core with nothing but dirt, lawn, gravel - and potential - all around.

Since then . . . well, the town's current hoofprint speaks for itself.

That 145 acres on which the ag society now sits, where Highway 1A meets Highway 22, has the potential to generate millions of dollars for RVC through its sale (at the $1.26 million per acre Cochrane just got for the Old Town Hall site it comes to roughly $183 million).

That amount of money didn't exist here in 1986. And it's several bank vaults more than the estimated cost of the new county municipal building proposed for Balzac ($32 million), but it's unrealistic to expect $1.26 million per acre for the ag society grounds, right?

Still, the economic potential is pronounced. This is where it gets difficult.

While you can put a monetary, market value on the ag society grounds fairly easily, it's hard to juxtapose that value with the land's current and future connection to the community.

That space means so much to so many that it transcends the raw land value as a mere fiscal commodity. The “heritage ” constantly touted as making Cochrane and RVC unique oozes from that place in the form of horse shows, agriculture classrooms, indoor filming for TV shows like Heartland, cattle-roping events, fall fairs, cross-country running meets, Zombie Survivor events and people running high-energy canines out of gas. The highly successful Cochrane BMX Club has a stake with a provincially recognized bicycle racing track there, where kids learn to ride and excel at competitions.

How do you place a dollar value on all that? More importantly, where do you move all that if that parcel does sell to developers after the lease expires in 2025?

It becomes more Gordian when the Town of Cochrane examines its “options ” for the Lions Club Rodeo grounds downtown, with the club's lease on that land expiring in 2019. That prime patch of dirt, lawn and gravel represents another slam-dunk sale of town land for large, development-potential currency - i.e. another epic achievement as viewed through the lens of raw land sales.

The town's simple answer to potentially selling that parcel is that the Lions Club can move its local rodeo facility down the road to an area at or near the ag society grounds, which could very much be in the crosshairs of the development-potential currency scope by that time.

Did we mention this gets difficult?




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