Seaside town enjoys the second-highest rate of population growth in N.B.

A7

By James Foster
Times & Transcript Staff

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

SHEDIAC - Once known almost solely as a vacation destination or a great place to build your single-family home, this town 25 kilometres or 16 miles east of Moncton is now becoming the area of choice in which to build apartment buildings.

Enlarge Photo

Ron Ward

Development in Shediac continues with new apartments and a new Shoppers Drug Mart on Main Street.

It's the kind of high-density residential development that municipalities love because they bring in more new residents and more development but at the same cost, almost, of serving a single home.

Town manager Gérard Belliveau has seen it happen in other places, where citizens are looking for a small town feel but within a reasonable driving distance of a bigger city.

"It's the trend, because people are more and more returning to the concept of the friendly community concept, where you can walk to church and where the medical clinic is almost next door and you take a walk downtown or over to the marina," Belliveau says.

"It's all very interesting."

With Moncton being the major centre of employment in the southeast of the province and located only a 15-minute drive away, Shediac is increasingly viewed as a choice town in which to live. The town showed population growth of 12 per cent in the last census, a trend that has remained consistent since. Increasingly, those new residents are either younger people choosing apartment living in the leafy seaside town or empty-nesters opting to sell the family home in favour of high-end condos and apartments in the town's more relaxed setting.

Most recently, developers built a 13-unit building near Grand-Pré Street, featuring a view of Shediac Bay, a 32-unit complex on Pascal Poirier Street near the downtown, three other apartment buildings scattered about town and a plethora of duplexes.

"And it's not slowing down," Belliveau says.

Expect future growth to focus on the town's south, towards Highway 15 and perhaps even on the south side of the highway, but also in the east on newly annexed lands near Seaside Chev-Olds. Those properties were annexed at the request of private investors who plan a major development there, though they have not announced what will be built or when.

It's a strategic corner, with very high traffic, right at the intersection of Scoudouc Road and Highway 15 (Veterans' Highway.) Shediac has run its water service to the land and the Shediac Sewerage Commission is now connecting it to the sewage system so it could be developed as early as the coming spring.