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Here in Smithers, local businesses and town councils
have really made an investment over the years in making
our downtown a showcase for the community and having a
brownfield, a contaminated site in the middle of town
was not going to be the kind of legacy we wanted to see.
We really felt strongly, because this was a 100 year centennial
project, that we wanted to fully remediate the site.
These are key areas in our community.
You look at Entrance Park, it's the gateway to our main street.
And you look at this, it's right in the heart of our main street.
We took over 100 loads of contaminated soil off this site.
It was taken to PIR, which is our local sawmill.
It was spread out on a concrete pad and various products were
added to it to help break down the oil and petro-chemicals.
A second project that we had was the Husky Gas Station site.
It's essentially the entrance to our community.
We have a nice heritage building here, but the front was a swamp.
Our goal was if we could make both sides of the highway
attractive it makes the highway less intimidating.
We also have a very successful farmers market
that can now use this space and connection to a commercial core.
Our Development Services staff worked over a period of almost
three years to get agreement, a ten year lease on the property.
There are two federal grants totaling $25,000.
The rest is all locally raised.
The concept for it came from the community itself.
We brought people together and we had big poster boards.
This was created for the town's centennial.
There were hundreds of people out to live concerts.
We had some wonderful performances from some local
First Nations artists and Mark Perry who is a local musician
was putting on a fantastic show.
It's the people of Smithers that drive these projects
and make them happen.