Winnipeg Airports Authority seeks to develop land for potential WestJet maintenance facility

The Winnipeg Airports Authority wants to develop land west of Richardson International Airport to make way for a proposed WestJet maintenance facility, sources at city hall said.

City council’s executive policy committee votes Tuesday on a deal that would allow the airports authority to build local watermains, sewers, traffic signals and other infrastructure to serve a plot of land along Moray Street, north of Saskatchewan Avenue.

This infrastructure would allow WestJet to build a maintenance facility at the site, provided the airline chooses to build it in Winnipeg, the sources said.

The Winnipeg Free Press initially reported the airline’s interest in the proposed facility earlier this month.

The airports authority will cover all of the costs of extending services to the land, according to a report to council from Gord Chappell, the city’s acting real estate and land development manager.

The city and province have already spent a combined $60 million to extend regional watermains and sewers into industrial and residential lands slated for development west of the airport.

That work will be finished by the end of September, Chappell wrote, adding the airports authority will begin conducting the local work afterward.

First, WestJet must approve a plan to build a maintenance facility in the Manitoba capital. The airline said it has not yet made a decision to do so.

“At WestJet, we are continually evaluating our needs for maintenance capacity across the country and are regularly in conversations with airports across Canada, including Winnipeg,” spokesperson Julia Kaiser said in a statement.

Winnipeg Airports Authority spokesperson Jesse Schmidtke declined to comment on behalf of her organization.

Pending approval by the executive policy committee, the servicing deal with the airports authority will come before city council as a whole on Jan. 29.