A developer has announced plans to build a new residential community on the southeast outskirts of Regina that could accommodate an estimated 14,000 people.
Wascana Village would span 736 acres, located near the South City Limits Road and Fleet Street South, in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood.
“Wascana Village will be a vibrant, healthy, sustainable, environmentally friendly and solely dependent live-and-work community,” Daniel Schmid, president of Great Prairie Development Corp., said at a news conference Thursday.
The project would include single-family homes, townhouses and rental and student housing. The new community would also boast commercial shops, a secondary and two elementary schools, a seniors’ assisted living facility, parks, lakes and a toboggan hill.
There are also plans to build a privately funded sewage treatment plant for the development and the surrounding region.
“We realized, through studies and research, that it would not be economically pliable nor feasible to tie into the City of Regina’s sewage treatment plant,” Schmid said.
The proposal has the full support of the RM of Sherwood, says Deputy Reeve Tim Probe.
“Saskatchewan is booming, but it won’t be booming forever and we need to take advantage today of the opportunities we’re presented,” Probe said.
The announcement comes about a week after Regina Mayor Michael Fougere unveiled a long-term plan to annex land and expand the city’s boundaries. The RM of Sherwood has said it was never consulted about the proposal.
“We can work side by side with the City of Regina…at no time are we in competition with the city,” Probe said.
“We simply want to facilitate and create the benefits. Mayor Michael Fougere had made a statement some time ago about housing. Well, if this doesn’t accommodate a housing need, I don’t know what will.”
The proposed site of the Wascana Village development, which is currently under contract, is located near one of the areas the city is looking to annex.
The proposal is expected to be submitted to the province for approval this summer and, if it clears that hurdle, the first phase of construction would begin next spring. It’s anticipated that the project would take 13 years to complete.
The RM of Sherwood also took the occasion to talk about its official community plan, which passed first reading last week.
Despite the city’s annexation intentions, Probe says it’s too late to make changes to the plan, which has been in the works for more than a dozen years.
“When we had the key stakeholders meeting, it should have been brought up then that (the city) had thoughts of annexation,” Probe said.
“They had people that were there; they chose not to participate very much.”
