Prince Albert Daily Herald
The old highway 2 overpass, pictured, will be part of a new development south of Prince Albert being undertaken by Signature Development Corporation. Photo by Michael Oleksyn/Daily Herald
A residential and commercial development just south of Prince Albert will incorporate a historical landmark into its design.
Signature Development Corporation owns the land on the east side of the Highway 2 and Highway 11 corridor just south of Prince Albert near Flaman’s. Work is underway for a multi-phase project set to include commercial and residential development.
The first phase involves building a service road that runs parallel to the highway. It will run from the north and connect with where the RM has land it is hoping to develop into a future shop.
The arrival of the GTP signaled a crucial moment for the opening up and subsequent development of the northern interior, said UNBC history professor Jonathan Swainger. Not only did it provide a vital link to outside markets, it established a string of nonnative settlements that, in many ways determined the future population profile for the region. Although the railway may not have fulfilled all the hopeful expectations of its champions, there is little doubt that it opened a new era of economic development and expansion that profoundly shaped northern British Columbia and its resource extractive identity until well after the Second World War.