Niverville Town Council Approved a new development plan that includes three parcels of land that will be annexed from the Rural Municipality of Hanover in early 2017.

Mayor Myron Dyck says the development plan sets long term goals for 340 acres of land that will soon be a part of Niverville.

"The annexation that has been approved by the province now takes 80 acres north of third street north and the development plan that council passed tonight says the goal is to have residential development there. There was also a zoning second bylaw reading which would retain those lands as zoned agriculture and that is in discussion with the landowner and how they wish to use it."

Dyck says council also held a public hearing and gave second reading to two zoning bylaws for the three sections of land. He notes the second piece of land is a 180 acre section that will be zoned industrial and the third parcel of land is an 80 acre section on the Southeast side of town off of Highway 311 that is set aside for Highway commercial but will be zoned agriculture for the immediate future. He adds third and final reading to these bylaws will take place when the land is annexed early next year.

Stephen Walker, a Regional Manager with the Province of Manitoba, attended the public hearings and gave a few recommendations from the province.

"They didn't have any concerns with it," says Dyck, "but one of the recommendations was that any highway commercial development be accessible via service road as opposed to direct access onto PR 311 and that is standard, they are looking to limit the amount of entry points onto provincial highways, and then because it is an 80 acre piece they said that is a considerable sum of land to have only as commercial development that council may want to look at a secondary development plan of those 80 acres."

Dyck says council takes these recommendations seriously and will bring them to a committee meeting for deliberation.