CANADA: A rail-anchored industrial park on Calgary’s edge just got a federal push meant to move it from blueprints to bulldozers — with backers projecting up to 30,000 jobs and over Ca$7 billion in economic activity over the next decade.

Canadian Pacific freight train on the CPKC Laggan Subdivision in downtown Calgary, Alberta
A Canadian Pacific freight train on the CPKC Laggan Subdivision in downtown Calgary, Alberta. Illustrative photo. Photo: Milan Suvajac, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The City of Calgary, Rocky View County and the Canada Infrastructure Bank signed a project acceleration Memorandum of Understanding this week to speed the Prairie Economic Gateway from engineering design into construction, according to a City of Calgary announcement. The project is envisioned as a rail-anchored inland port and multimodal logistics hub along the CPKC mainline in Canada’s Prairie Core Trade Corridor.

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How big is the site? Sources disagree

Coverage of the project doesn’t agree on the site’s footprint: Trains.com and the Canada Infrastructure Bank describe a 2,190-acre property adjacent to the CPKC main line, while Global News puts the site at 1,300 acres along 114 Avenue S.E. — the sources do not reconcile the difference, and it’s not clear whether they’re describing the same boundary or different phases of the same project. The Canada Infrastructure Bank is contributing Ca$500,000 toward project acceleration specifically; the site itself sits at the boundary between the City of Calgary and Rocky View County, and private firm Shepard Development Corp. is also involved.

What has to happen before 2027

The agreement follows a 2025 memorandum exploring the Infrastructure Bank’s participation, and the parties say construction could begin in 2027 with businesses occupying the site by 2031 — contingent on financing being secured and due diligence being complete. Rocky View County Reeve Sunny Samra called the MOU a reflection of “our strong partnership with the City of Calgary,” while the project’s backers say it would strengthen Canada’s east-west trade capacity by leveraging CPKC’s rail network into Mexico, made possible by the 2023 Canadian Pacific–Kansas City Southern merger. The announcement does not specify what happens if financing or due diligence is not complete by the target construction date.

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