At its June 13 meeting, council approved Sundial Growers Inc.'s development permit to build a federally-licensed medical marijuana production facility in the town's southeast industrial area.
Sundial still needs to receive approval from Health Canada in order to cultivate medical cannabis. Getting approval for the development permit was a prerequisite to that part of the process.
Company founder and director Stan Swiatek was in attendance and said the facility would be built to meet federal regulations, with the goal of starting construction in spring 2017.
"The medical marketplace is growing exponentially … All I can just summarize is, thank goodness for Olds for the benefit of Alberta. We need the jobs and we need the economic growth so it's a serious matter," he said.
Development would take four phases. Sundial estimates 22 jobs would be created for each one.
Council was the development authority for this application after creating a Direct Control 7 land use district for the property last summer. The vote to approve the permit was 6-1, with Coun. Rudy Durieux opposed.
"There is already a medical marijuana production plant in Cremona. I'm not sure why we need to have one in Olds," Durieux said.
Coun. Mary Anne Overwater made the initial motion to approve Sundial's application. The absence of opposition at the initial public meeting last year was one reason why.
“It's great they want to come here,” Overwater said. “We need to encourage more businesses to come here. Just having residential development is not enough.”
As town approval was needed to give Sundial a chance with the feds, Olds mayor Judy Dahl didn't want to get in the way.
"For them to even step into that second phase, getting the federal government to approve it, we would have to support it. So why would we stop something that still needs to go through regulation," Dahl said.
Chief administrative officer Norm McInnis said the 10-acre piece of land still requires some infrastructure improvements.
"They're going to have to pay for all of their own servicing. They're going to have to get water, sewer and roads to their 10-acre land so we'll be working with them on those costs ," he said.
"I look forward to working with them and getting their plant up and running, create some jobs in town and seeing where this leads."
"Thank goodness for Olds for the benefit of Alberta. We need the jobs and we need the economic growth so it's a serious matter." STAN SWIATEK, Sundial Growers Inc. founder
