Photo by Curtis Galbraith

By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

Council to discuss new economic development strategy for Grande Prairie

Jul 11, 2019 | 12:29 PM

A city committee is recommending council approve a new economic development strategy.

The city’s senior economic development officer Rebecca Leigh says this is meant to be a long-term plan.

“The intent of the Long Term Economic Development Strategy is to help really establish a vision for where the city wants to grow to. As the title states, it’s a long-term vision, so 20 years out and looking at specific action items we can take to help move us towards that ultimate vision we have for the community.”

The objectives set out in the plan are what is termed smart growth, along with attracting new investment and maintaining diversity.

Paul Blais with MDB Insight, the consultant hired to come up with this plan, says the local economy is already quite diverse, but there is room for more things in existing areas.

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“Beyond diversifying the sectors, diversify within the sector. Currently, in the oil and gas sector, you don’t have a lot of professional, scientific, and technical kind of occupations in the community, but you could. Those types of entrepreneurs and that type of labour skill set is very flexible in where they can move.”

Blais says building the quality of life in Grande Prairie would help attract new people and make the ones already here want to stay.

Leigh says there are some things they want to do right away if the plan is approved.

“One of those is a place-making or branding strategy, helping to identify or communicate what’s so great about Grande Prairie and why you should live there and helping to craft really specific messaging around attraction of new work force, but also retention of existing work force. That’s one of our key, immediate priorities. Our other one is looking at a business retention and expansion program. So, really just formalizing that relationship that we have with our existing businesses and making sure that they know that we’re there for support or to help them overcome challenges or look at capitalizing on new opportunities.”

Council will discuss this at its next meeting. It is set for Monday