From Downtown to the South End: Morinville’s Changing Business Landscape

Drive by Morinville’s south-end industrial park and you might notice a familiar face in a new place. Trail Tire has traded its longtime downtown location for a much larger shop, right next to a massive new car and truck wash (opening soon). Earlier this year, the Morinville Bottle Depot and Hunter’s Printing & Office Supply also left the town centre for bigger, more car-friendly spaces along the off-highway strip.

It’s a shift away from downtown — but it’s also local businesses expanding, upgrading, and positioning themselves for Morinville’s next chapter.

A South-End Growth Spurt

Trail Tire’s new home is part of a recent wave of south-end activity. Across the street, a big new Shoppers Drug Mart opened last November. This spring, just a few blocks away, Dollarama cut the ribbon on its brand-new store. This stretch of town has some pep in its step. It has most of the expected highway pull-off businesses now: Tim’s, Dairy Queen, McDonald’s, Boston Pizza … gas stations, groceries, and dollar stores.

None of this is accidental. The area is gearing up for the long-anticipated freeway interchange, set to begin construction next year, which will give drivers a quick, convenient way to pull off Highway 2 straight into this end of town. For large-format retailers and service businesses, this kind of visibility and access is gold.

The Interchange Effect

Transportation shapes communities — always has, always will. A new interchange doesn’t just make it easier for residents to get in and out; it changes the mental map for anyone passing through. ‘Suddenly’ after several years of incremental development, Morinville becomes a convenient traveller stop for gas, groceries, a car game from the dollar store, or a bite to eat.

It could also encourage more residents north of us to stop here instead of driving on to St. Albert. In a retail market analysis the Town commissioned a few years ago, Morinville was found to be capturing only a small fraction of the retail spending in our catchment area. The new interchange — paired with a visible, growing south-end business strip — could change that.

Downtown at a Crossroads

Shifts like this can leave older downtown areas a little bruised. There are empty spaces left behind. Some businesses have moved and expanded, true, but others have closed their doors as some of downtown’s daily life drifted to the edges of town. But towns, like people, go through seasons — and downtown has also experienced fresh bursts of energy, when new ideas and new neighbours roll in to change things up.

The south end is becoming the car-friendly, chain-heavy service hub that’s pretty much an expected feature of a North American town our size. And that’s fine. Our older core has space to create alternate experiences, like: 

• Independent shops and restaurants

• Quirky, one-of-a-kind businesses

• Walkable, human-scale spaces that invite lingering and socializing

... and it has. A second dance studio, a clothing boutique, a clay studio, and a thrift shop that just keeps expanding have filled vacant spaces on the main drag. A new hockey-focused sports shop has filled a long-dormant spot on 101 Street, and in the old Shopper's Drug Mart location (for years a Guardian Drugs), someone is opening a virtual golf centre.

Downtown’s Built-In Advantages

Affordable empty retail space is raw potential for new ideas to take root. Look at the great little cluster that’s taken shape near the intersection of 101 Street and 101 Avenue: Sturgeon Brewing, Panchita's Taqueria, and the Ice Hut have turned a small 1970s strip mall and a vacant lot into a family-friendly hangout zone where tacos, ice-cream cones and pints meet at picnic tables on summer evenings.

Morinville’s downtown has a head start most rural small towns don’t: an attractive mix of higher-density housing for all ages and stages woven throughout the core, meaning solid potential foot traffic. It’s also home to a generous greenspace tucked behind main street’s shops with a spray park, playground, sports fields, and ice rink/basketball courts; a seasonal Sunday farmers market; a library buzzing with programs year-round; the seniors’ centre; the museum and historic Catholic mission (church nearly rebuilt); and the Ice Gardens arena with curling and junior hockey games all winter.

If that’s not enough, the area just outside the northwest edge of town has been evolving into a  summer-tourism pocket with Heritage Lake, Morinville Campground & RV Park, Deb’s Greenhouse with its Secret Garden and Mini-Golf, and Boissonneault Family Farms u-pick. 

This diverse mix of people and places is exactly the kind of fuel that sparks funky, small-scale business growth.

Entrepreneurs, start your engines

With the south end of town drawing in more people and the northwest edge building its own seasonal buzz, downtown is primed for a small business explosion. The infrastructure is here.  The potential foot traffic is here. The location is hard to beat and there are other fun new (and newish) businesses in the neighbourhood.

Those empty storefronts are waiting for their next chapter — maybe a bakery, a used bookstore, a craft supply shop, a board-game café for our bored teens, a rustic country market packed with local farm goods, a wine bar to complement Sturgeon Brewing ... who knows, but the stage is set!