The industrial park is located near the lagoons on the south side of the city, along Highway 2.Call it an early Christmas present, call it whatever you want, but Moose Jaw City Hall is buzzing this week after learning that SaskPower has selected the friendly city as their preferred site for a new power generation site in the south industrial park.

It's a major announcement to end 2018 and could be the kick start that 2019 needs.

Councilors held a special executive committee meeting Thursday night behind closed doors to go over the details of the project that still needs a lot of work on behalf of the Crown corporation before shovels hit the ground.

"It's been a lot of hard work," Mayor Fraser Tolmie said. "We've had a lot of conversations with SaskPower and we will continue to have conversations with SaskPower. SaskPower recognizes our community and our community's desire to move forward with them."

Back in July, SaskPower was ready to build a new power plant that would've been near Moose Jaw, but it's officially going to be on the south side of the city near Highway 2.

"SaskPower is looking for an option to buy land here in the City of Moose Jaw in the new industrial park so this is very big news and very good news for the City of Moose Jaw," Tolmie added.

Council gave initial approval to a land agreement Thursday and details are expected to be released Friday at noon during a special council meeting.

Meanwhile, this potential SaskPower project could revive another crown project that was recently moved to the backburner.

SaskEnergy also has an interest in the new south industrial park. The Crown Corporation was planning to build a new town border station on the south side of Moose Jaw to better serve the region's natural gas needs and while they have bought the land from the city, they explained in November that the project had been put on hold.

Officials explained that since the proposed protein plant talks have ground to a halt, there's no need for the extra service and so they'll wait until something actually happens in the area. This SaskPower project could be the kickstart since it will rely on natural gas to create the electricity.

Based on a similar project that was announced for Swift Current, the recently announced plant could be worth upwards of $750 million but is pending a lot more environmental and business work before anything is set in stone. If it goes ahead, the plant will require approximately 600 workers to build and will also create around 25 jobs to maintain the plant after construction is complete.