These days, it’s pretty commonplace at Niverville’s monthly council meetings to hear about new commercial and industrial endeavours. The public meeting held on September 9 was no exception.

Council was pleased to approve Leon Desmarais’s application for the future expansion of his business, Fusion Industries, onto ten empty acres in the business park. Early planning stages suggest that an 11,000-square-foot building will eventually be constructed here to serve as a location for sandblasting, painting, and assembly of his metal fabrications.

Desmarais says that the expansion will create ten or more new jobs in the near future.

According to Mayor Myron Dyck, Desmarais’s story is one that council loves to promote. Getting his start at a local welding shop many years earlier, Desmarais branched out on his own to build a custom steel fabrication shop in Niverville.

Today, he is one of Niverville’s largest employers and his business’s products are shipped around the world.

According to Councillor Chris Wiebe, this kind of internal business growth demonstrates a community’s vibrancy. Performance Insulation, he says, is another Niverville success story that started off small and has since expanded three times.

Two more manufacturing applications were approved on September 9.

H2 Blinds Ltd. was given the green light to open a manufacturing operation to produce blinds, cabinets, and countertops in the business park. This will be the business’s third location, with others in Winnipeg and Headingly. The Niverville location will create jobs for at least 20 labourers.

“The goal was to [build] a large facility,” the H2 representative told council. “That’s what we came here for. Niverville is affordable.”

In recent years, he says that Winnipeg’s costs have discouraged expansion and development of businesses such as his, especially when the company’s mandate is to produce quality products that are affordable to consumers. Reducing the cost of overhead matters.

The representative discovered Niverville when his company was hired for local cabinet installations. He’s also built a working relationship with the owner of Lumbercart, a company that will be his neighbour in the Niverville Business Park.

The last manufacturer to gain council’s approval is invested in metal siding and sheet metal fabrication. The representative making his case before council is affiliated with JAFRI Canada, which operates another location on Dugald Road.

“We need space,” he told council. “Our goal is to make value products at lower prices. I hate price-gouging. And, also, outside of Winnipeg, nobody has these services and people need it.”

His goal, he says, is to sell his products for 50 percent less than his closest competitors.

To accommodate the potential residential growth that may result from these new jobs, council entertained one final application, from Hillside Legacy Development Corp., to construct two three-storey apartment buildings on Fairway Drive.

In total, 105 new rental units would be created, many of which would have access to underground parking. Plenty of outdoor parking would be available as well.

Hillside Legacy is the company behind the row housing constructed on the same street. The new apartment blocks would have similar exterior finishes for a matching aesthetic. Most of the suites would be two- and three-bedroom units.

All of this new residential and commercial growth bodes well for Niverville, Mayor Dyck says. Over the past decade, he says that the community has gone from bedroom to destination community.

“What we’ve seen in communities surrounding Winnipeg is a challenge with labour force,” Dyck says. “We’ve seen businesses that have had to leave and go back to the city because they just simply couldn’t get labour. Niverville is close enough. We think of it as a commuter town, [where] people leave in the morning and come back in the evening. But if you’re ever on the highway, there’s actually a cross flow of traffic with a lot of people coming into town in the morning and leaving at night.”

Dyck concluded the meeting with his bi-monthly mayor’s report. He offered congratulations to Providence University and College on the celebration of its one hundredth anniversary.

As well, he issued a reminder to residents and students to practice an extra level of vigilance around the various crosswalks around town. His message follows on the heels of two near-misses that were reported on social media the day before, one involving a child.

“I just ask all of us to please slow down,” Dyck said, “especially during the busiest times before and after school. I want to say a thank you today [to the RCMP]. As I came to this council meeting, I saw no less than three RCMP members on Main Street, making sure that this community was safe. I also want to give a special thank you to Scott Stroh, who was there on a volunteer basis, also helping to patrol for safety. It takes a community.”

It falls to parents to also remind their children, he said, to check and double-check before stepping out onto a crosswalk.