Cochrane grew by nearly 200 acres overnight after the province officially gave the thumbs up to the annexation of land from Rocky View County (RVC).

Years in the making, the annexation officially clears the way for ambitions of the town. The town intends to expand and diversification of outdoor recreational opportunities as outlined in the Horse Creek Sports Park master plan. In addition, it will allow for a future new high school and will be instrumental in developing a long-sought second major access route into the Sunset Ridge neighbourhood.

“I am pleased that the recently elected provincial government was able to process our application in such a timely fashion,” says Mayor Jeff Genung. “With formal approval of our application, we can now proceed with all of the work required to complete these important community projects.”

The annexation has its roots back to when Rocky View Schools bought property north of Cochrane corporate limits to prepare for future secondary education needs. The recreational potential of land west of the proposed school site was quickly identified and its use has been debated in the background for years. At one time, it was seen as a possible future home of the Cochrane and District Agricultural Society and the new location for a new rodeo grounds.

With the land now within corporate limits, the town can proceed with the purchase of about 129 acres of land from Rocky View Schools. The memorandum of understanding between the town and school division set the purchase price at $1,575,560 plus GST.

Once that is completed, the town will proceed with redesignation and subdivision applications throughout 2019 and expect to service the land in 2020.

The quarter section north of Heritage Hills will include land for town maintenance and transit facilities.

Over time, pressure grew to find a better solution to developing a secondary access route into Sunset. This is seen as the fix.

A portion of the 40-acre parcel north of Sunset Ridge will be dedicated to the secondary access, following successful negotiations with Rocky View County, a private landowner and Melcor, the developer of the Sunset Ridge community.

The long-term access plan will be completed in phases over multiple years, with the initial phase being two-lane northern access followed up by the full build-out of four-lane access to be completed over the next 10 years.

The administration will proceed with the registration of the road plan as the first step to facilitating this project in early July 2019.

The access route plan won't come to fruition until Hwy. 22 is widened and dual turning lanes are developed from Sunset Boulevard on to Hwy. 22. Residential development in the third and final stage of Sunset is not anticipated to begin until Stage 2 is complete.

For the annexation, the town will be paying $80,000 to RVC to compensate for a loss in tax revenue over the next 10 years, explained Drew Hyndman, Cochrane's senior manager of development service last September. Currently, the county collects $8,000 in taxes annually from the one privately owned property while the land owned by the school division isn't subject to taxation.