Rocky View County appears to have an economic jewel in its midst – the hamlet of Balzac.
As reinforced by two stories in this week's issue, it's little secret that Balzac has become a logistical and transportation hub for many large-scale corporations' western Canadian operations. The Highland Industrial Park lands to the east of CrossIron Mills have become a prime development area for various conglomerates to set up fulfillment and distribution centres. It started with Amazon and Lowe's, and now Empire Companies Ltd. and Walmart are joining the fray.
If you're a large-scale company, setting up a logistics facility in Balzac makes strategic economic sense. The area is ideally positioned close to a large urban centre (Calgary), is situated right off the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, (which continues south toward the U.S.) and is also just minutes from the TransCanada Highway, the Calgary Ring Road, the Calgary International Airport, and both CP Rail's and CN's intermodal terminals in Calgary.
As Reeve Crystal Kissel outlined in a recent interview with Business In Calgary, East Balzac has grown from being undeveloped pasture lands to "a thriving business community with an estimated 90,000 jobs created in the area" in the last few years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, online shopping in many forms became and has since remained a daily practice for many people. As MP Blake Richards pointed out at the Walmart fulfillment centre's ribbon-cutting last week, gone are the days when families would pile into the car to go shopping together. These days, thanks to the proliferation of e-commerce, all that purchasing can be done at the push of a button on your smart phone.
While it can feel like magic when the items you ordered online suddenly appear at your door a day or two later, the truth is that those items had to be assembled and sorted somewhere, before being shipped to your home via a truck. Many companies have recently recognized that in terms of their western Canadian transportation-related needs, Balzac is the perfect place to set up that logistics hub.
